As our favourite prestige brands move beyond colour blocking, they’ve embraced texture play with suede, mesh and animal print to add interest to the humble trainer. The gorpcore aesthetic remains strong, blurring the line between performance footwear and the fashion trainer, while sleek designs from Tory Burch, Prada and Saint Laurent bridge the gap between smart and casual. There’s also a wide array of heel choices to browse, from boxing and ballet-shoe inspired to more sculptural, hardwearing rubber soles.
The fluid lines of Loewe’s monochrome Flow Runners were a popular street style choice at the SS26 shows, while we adore New Balance’s continued collab with Miu Miu. Ultimately, the best designer trainers of 2026 unite comfort with considered design. Ahead, our edit of the best designer trainers to shop now and wear throughout 2026. From straight-from-the-runway styles to tactile details that will more than prove their worth, there’s a pair for everyone.
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Meg (she/her) is the Associate Fashion Commerce Editor at ELLE.com, where she specializes in shopping stories spanning the fashion, home, and lifestyle categories. Over the past three years, she has devoted countless hours to researching brands, testing hundreds (maybe even thousands!) of products, and deep-diving into market and consumer trends. Her favorite job responsibilities consist of co-writing the monthly series Same Same But Different and curating the fashion market for ELLE Escapes. Meg graduated magna cum laude from the Missouri School of Journalism with an emphasis on magazine editing. In 2020, one of her feature stories in the service article category was recognized by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The year prior, the Society of Professional Journalists named voxmagazine.com “Best Affiliated Magazine” in its Mark of Excellence Awards, when she was on staff. Meg’s stories have appeared on Cosmopolitan, Town & Country, Harper’s Bazaar, and Good Housekeeping, among many other outlets. Her personal passions include travel, buffalo sauce, and gardening. You can find her in New York, where she lives, or on Instagram, where she also lives. She will never stop hoping for a One Direction reunion tour.
Esther Coombes is the Senior Ecommerce Editor at Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE and Esquire, overseeing luxury shopping content across fashion, beauty, travel and homes. She graduated from London College of Fashion with a First Class BA in Fashion Journalism in 2010, and has since worked at Marie-Claire, Easy Living, GLAMOUR and Women’s Health.
She held positions as Senior Fashion and Beauty Executive, Senior Lifestyle Executive and Content Lead during her nine years at HELLO! and HELLO! Fashion, creating editorial and branded content across the lifestyle sector and interviewing talent and experts including Lisa Eldridge, Jo Malone and Katie Jane Hughes for print and digital features.
With exacting standards and a critical eye for editing new launches, she enjoys recommending readers best in class products and experiences, be that a glow-giving skin tint, a boutique hotel stay or the perfect slingback stiletto.
In her spare time you can find her at a spin or reformer class or streaming the latest zeitgeisty podcast or television drama.
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