While popular culture gets a lot of things wrong about fashion editors, the “hard to please” allegations are probably fair. But then, what some might call picky, we call discerning. It’s why it was so noteworthy when Vogue’s global fashion news and features director Nicole Phelps observed the immediate impact a certain Dries Van Noten’s menswear collection had on the wardrobes of the team in the US.
“Days after Julian Klausner’s Dries Van Noten men’s show in June, sarongs were trending in the Vogue offices,” she said in her review of the label’s spring/summer 2026 collection. “It was summer, yes. Still, we were miles from a beach or the idea of a vacation, and there they were: with pants underneath or without, lifted straight off the runway and into the real lives of the young people who populate One World Trade Center.”
For many of us, the sarong will always evoke a certain Noughties holiday nostalgia: as key to a getaway as Dove gradual tan, candy-coloured VKs, trashed Havaianas and Kodak digital cameras. In the intervening years, though, the beachwear staple fell out of favour, possibly due to the influx of cheap, mass-produced styles sold at beachside tourist shops the world over.
