Beyond Power Shoulders: What the Era of 'Power Hips' Means

October 28, 2026

There is a surprising body part that has recently been attracting attention in the fashion world. It is the hip.

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Acielle/StyleDuMonde

How did the fashion world come to present designs that emphasize women’s hips and pelves? Behind this trend there may be a rather important message that goes beyond mere fashion. For months designers and fashion houses have shown which silhouettes, colors, and materials might define the season. Sometimes they do this by deliberately highlighting a particular part of the body. Decades or even centuries later, that part of the body is often reinterpreted from a new perspective.

For example, in the 1940s and 1950s, the female waist was emphasized by being cinched extremely tightly. In the 1960s, thanks to a freewheeling and provocative sensibility, the miniskirt that fully revealed the legs became popular. And as everyone knows, the 1980s were defined by overwhelmingly broad shoulders—the so-called 'power shoulder' era.

The hip has caught the fashion world’s eye before. In the 1990s, when Tom Ford was Gucci’s creative director, he used slightly revealed thong underwear to naturally draw attention to the hip. In the 2000s, the Y2K trend surged and cropped tops that revealed the abdomen became everyday fashion. Most recently, the naked dress—garments that reveal much of the body—was at the center of trends.

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Alaïa 2026 F/W RTW

Fashion has, at different times, spoken of sexual liberation, the reclaiming of power, and self-determination. The approach of magnifying a specific part of the body in fashion is never mere coincidence or an arbitrary choice.

This season, the body part catching designers’ eyes is the hip. The hip captivated attention across many Fall/Winter 2026 collections. A prominent example is Alaïa. The house strategically placed gathers at the dress’s hip area to naturally draw everyone’s gaze to the body’s center. The design used a Basque-style line where the waistline drops down and extends to envelop the pelvis, evoking the dress silhouettes of the Rococo and Victorian eras.

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Chanel 2026 F/W RTW

Chanel made a similar suggestion on the runway. A piping detail shaped like a flower traced a curve along the hip line. It was a far more restrained approach than Alaïa’s, however.

Dior made abundant volume a central element running through the entire collection. The brand emphasized this through several tops, including its signature Bar jacket. The peplum silhouettes that flare widely below a tightly cinched waist served to clearly accentuate the hip line. Erdem presented designs that seemed to play with proportion: both dresses and skirts became much fuller from waist to hip, producing an exaggerated hourglass silhouette that was impossible to miss.

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Dior 2026 F/W RTW

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Erdem 2026 F/W RTW

Some brands made their historical references very explicit. A prime example is Saint Laurent. Creative director Anthony Vaccarello presented a black lace dress that used pannier structures to make the skirt flare widely at the sides. Combining Baroque motifs and party-girl styling, the dress captured the attention of actress Zoë Kravitz—she even wore it to this year’s Met Gala in person.

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Zoë Kravitz at the Met Gala.

Stella McCartney is another brand that impressively signaled the hip’s return. Multiple looks on her runway featured boldly raised hip lines. You could even see the silhouette in delicate camisole tops. While these were more restrained and wearable for everyday life, the hip silhouette was still clear.

Junya Watanabe emphasized the hip with avant‑garde looks that recalled heavy armor. Duran Lantink, creative director at Jean Paul Gaultier, dramatized the hip in two ways: one by expanding it widely and roundly outward, and the other by using excessive gathering reminiscent of stage curtains.

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Stella McCartney 2026 F/W RTW

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Junya Watanabe 2026 F/W RTW

Speaking of stages, garments with wide hip lines seem to have firmly established themselves as stage costumes. A representative example is the singer Rosalía, who released a new album, Lux, and embarked on a world tour. She took the stage in an outfit composed of an oversized hat by the millinery brand Vivascarion—its styling inspired by 16th‑century women’s hairstyles—paired with a satin bra and a custom‑made pannier skirt. Katy Perry, who performed at the opening ceremony of the North American World Cup, also wore a pannier dress.

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Rosalía at the 2026 BRIT Awards.

Some readers may think, 'Isn’t this something that’s been done before?' And they would be right. This trend is not entirely new, like many others. In fact, if you trace it back, it has a similar feel to garments from the era of Marie Antoinette and the romantic period.

Across culture—fashion, literature, and film—interest in Romanticism has been revived. Classic literature is gaining popularity again, and adaptations of works like Wuthering Heights are splashing the screen with that era’s ornate, dramatic aesthetics. Minimalism, which has long dominated fashion, is giving way to more lavish styles overall. Extreme silhouettes using frills, ruffles, lace, corsets, and pannier skirts are emblematic of this shift.

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Dior Fall 2026 Couture

How should we read the revival of Romanticism? One way is to interpret it as a collective desire to return to an era that feels, perhaps wrongly, free of prejudice and indulgent in pleasure—an era imagined as enjoying life more candidly than we do now. Like the characters in the film Midnight in Paris, people are tempted by escapism, and escapism is one of the designers’ most frequently used and effective creative tools.

But the resurgence of Romanticism alone doesn’t fully explain the hip’s comeback. This shift is interesting for several other reasons. The hip, or wide pelvis, has traditionally been a symbol of femininity. Culturally and in evolutionary biology, it has served as a sign of fertility and childbearing capacity.

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Jacquemus 2026 F/W RTW

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Jacquemus 2026 F/W RTW

Discourse around women’s hips and bodies has, in recent years, been increasingly debated, politicized, and instrumentalized by outside forces. Once again, the female body has become a political battleground. At the same time it has begun to be seen as something to be surveilled, controlled, and dominated. From that perspective, the designs emerging from fashion houses recently can look like a direct rebuttal: 'Hey, hands off my hips!'

About 26 years ago the hip was also a hot topic in fashion. In the early 2000s, the low‑rise trend made the hip a natural focal point because pants sat below the waist and across the lower hip. But then and now are clearly different. At that time, wearing the style required an extremely thin body—a very strict aesthetic standard.

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Katy Perry performing at the opening ceremony of the North American World Cup.

Until quite recently, wide hips were treated as flaws—one of many women’s 'trouble spots.' But no longer. Designers now celebrate the hip like a sensual monument. The hip stands as a symbol of sensuality, resilience, and bodily autonomy. Boldly widened designs create physical and symbolic distance from others, allowing the hip to be free in itself. The era of 'power shoulders' has passed; the era of 'power hips' has begun.

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