In fashion parlance, a “grail” usually means something far removed from the days of King Arthur. But this season, all things Middle Ages have been everywhere. Glenn Martens cited “medieval architecture” as an inspiration for his fall 2025 Maison Margiela Artisanal debut, with masked models and crumpled, deconstructed silhouettes.
Louis Vuitton’s cruise 2026 show took place in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes, a Gothic palace in Avignon, France. Artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière put his models in outfits a 16th-century knight might wear: textural minidresses that were equal parts radical armor and modern-day jester. To accessorize? Bags printed with millefleurs motifs, inspired by paintings and tapestries from the Middle Ages. And Alessandro Michele included medieval court–ready diamond-print pieces in his Valentino couture collection this past January.
Louis Vuitton resort 2026.
Times are strange, and apparently call for even stranger fashion. Earlier this year, someone wearing a 15th-century suit of armor became the street-style star of the front row at Burberry. Elsewhere, Dries Van Noten, Rick Owens, and even Calvin Klein have all tapped into the aesthetic. On TikTok, accounts like @nichefashiongirl post outfit ideas for “weird medieval” or “weirdeval” fashion, while other videos recounting the era’s beauty trends (big foreheads!) and slang (“fadoodle”) rack up hundreds of thousands of likes.
Amid widespread turmoil, medieval style feels like a veil of protection. “It’s the perfect combination of strength and horror and femininity,” says the stylist Genesis Webb, who recently put Chappell Roan in several medieval-inspired outfits, ranging from a Piers Atkinson hennin hat to a gauzy Y/Project gown complete with chain mail gloves and a cross necklace. Webb regularly mixes metal, knits, and real antique pieces to come up with Roan’s historically driven looks.
Dries Van Noten fall 2025.
Designer Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen’s deconstructed panniers and corsets also naturally lend themselves to the trope. “What’s interesting about it, to me, is that it’s somehow coined as fantastical,” she says. Whalen is inspired by all things pre-Industrial Revolution, and believes there’s an interest in the very old due to fatigue with mass-produced clothing.
“There’s a lot of upheaval in the world,” Webb adds. “There are plenty of generations where society naturally becomes more maximal, when things are going down, and people aren’t comfortable anymore. Especially in fashion, the world is just as tarnished as what we are going to wear.” Today, fashion seeks heavy metals and hooded silhouettes not as armor, but as creature comforts.
A version of this story appears in the December 2025/January 2026 issue of ELLE.