Fashion collaborations are nothing new, but 2025 felt like a year particularly stuffed with branding matchups.
There’s a reason why this might be happening. “Online platforms have become crowded, [there are] rapidly accelerating trend cycles, [and] it’s become more challenging than ever for brands to stand out,” Cassandra Napoli, a head culture forecaster at WGSN, says. Collaborations continue to be a unique and important tool for marketing and maintaining cultural relevance. The best lead to attention-grabbing virality, as was the case with Nike x Skims’ first drop, Sandy Liang x Gap, and Willy Chavarria x Adidas.
“Collaborations have become so important because brands have a need to attract new cohorts of communities and consumers . . . as well as provide a new expression of brand DNA and satisfy many customers’ need for newness,” Gemma D’Auria, global leader of apparel, fashion, and luxury at McKinsey, tells Fast Company.
But the truth is fashion has become inundated with collabs, and the net result of so much noise has ultimately had the opposite effect: We’re numb to them. A collaboration alone is no longer enough to excite. To sell, they’ll have to resonate with a brand’s core audience, while also tapping into culture and surprising consumers with something new.
What brands could break the internet together? Insiders reveal their blue-sky collaboration ideas for 2026.
1. A Gap collab with a luxury design partner
Gap has been on a roll. The American fashion brand not only wooed shoppers this year with the aforementioned Sandy Liang drop, but its denim campaign with Katseye went viral for good reason: an incredible campaign spot that called back to its Y2K days with rising talent and fresh choreo (unlike the controversy-laden American Eagle “good jeans” mess that dropped weeks before).
Multihyphenate host and former Essence editor Blake Newby wants to see Gap bring more designer partners on board. “I feel like there’s a synergy in the brand ethos of a Loewe girl and a Gap girl,” Newby says, adding that Loewe has already proven it’s comfortable with collabs thanks to its drops with On Running, for instance. (Plus, Loewe has its own denim with real brand ID.)
“Gap has also just been doing such cool creative things. We would of course expect this to be at a higher price point [than normal Gap], but it would be so fabulous to see Gap merge their love for denim and basics with the way Loewe does [a similar thing].”
2. A Chanel partnership that scales smaller masters of the métier
People are expecting a lot from Chanel right now. The French luxury house is freshly under the creative leadership of Matthieu Blazy, who made his runway collection debut in October. He’s being celebrated for breathing new life into the brand, and fashion people are curious to see a Chanel collaboration.
Technically, the brand edged into collab territory in October: Blazy revealed a white button-up on the runway in partnership with 187-year old Parisian shirtmaker Charvet. But for Blazy, it wasn’t a collaboration as much as it was highlighting a house of craftsmanship, as the brand already does in its Métier d’Art collection.
“It’ll be interesting to see what other things [Chanel Creative Director] Matthieu Blazy taps into because he’s really attuned to craftsmanship,” Jalil Johnson, author of the Consider Yourself Cultured Substack says. “It would be more interesting for these storied houses to give resources to smaller entities to see what they can produce on a bigger scale, like if Chanel worked with Gee’s Bend quiltmakers,” referring to the intergenerational group of women in a rural Alabama town crafting brightly hued and intricate patterned textiles.
3. A pairing that dares to expand Hermès sportswear
Adjacent to Chanel, strategist and collaboration expert Bimma Williams wants to see a storied house work with an unexpected brand. For Williams, the dream would be to see Hermès and its recently appointed Men’s Creative Director Grace Wales Bonner do a collaboration with Adidas. (Believe it or not, Hermès already offers an HermèsFit line, and Wales Bonner and Adidas have already done drops.)
Adding Hermès to that mix, he thinks, would be a ”masterclass in craft and restraint, merging heritage, sport, and contemporary cultural intelligence.” Perhaps what people are craving is for an uber high fashion house to finally cave and break its mold to collaborate with another brand that seems out of the high-end purview.
A spin on the Birkin would inject some much-needed energy into the highly coveted bag for Amy Odell, a New York Times bestselling author and writer of Back Row on Substack.
“I think the Birkin is getting stale, and they’ve got to mix it up,” Odell, who wrote biographies on Anna Wintour and Gwyneth Paltrow, tells Fast Company. “Hermès won’t sell the Birkin to Nike . . . but what if you had a Birkin you could take to the gym? I feel like everyone would talk about that. Or, they could collaborate with Tiffany & Co.—opulence is coming back—and do a fully glittery, diamond bag.”
The economy is recovering in a biforcated K-shape, meaning that while inflation and a tight job market has led to less spending among lower-income consumers, America’s wealthiest shoppers are still buying, so there could still be a market for what would surely be an exorbitantly priced luxury good.
4. A collaboration that revives ’70s era Elsa Peretti x Halston
The Italian jewelry designer and fashion model Elsa Peretti has had a legendary collaboration with Tiffany & Co. since 1974. Peretti, who passed away in 2021, is behind the American jeweler’s popular bone cuffs and other sculptural pieces. But what some may not know is that Peretti also worked with Halston to design not only a fragrance bottle, but jewelry and accessories, too.
A re-edition of this duo’s work would be a dream come true for The Millenial Decorator’s Julia Rabinowitsch, who recently collaborated on a shoe collection with Reformation. “I’d love to see a revival of the pieces Peretti did, especially as I collect vintage Elsa for Halston pieces, and they are becoming increasingly rare,” she adds.
5. A duo that offers a new take on classic Missoni patterns
Across the board, experts want one thing in a collaboration: for it to be unexpected. For stylist and founder of experiential shopping platform Sweet Like Jam, Mecca James-Williams, “designer-led collaborations with bigger luxury houses” would catch her eye. Imagine Christopher John Rogers, known for his unique technicolor touch and bold silhouettes, with Missoni, she says.
James-Williams isn’t the only one interested in merging Missoni’s signature zigzags and geometric patterns. British TV exec June Sarpong would be interested in the brand working with British artist Yinka Ilori, known for his savvy use of bright colors, evident in his collabs with The North Face and Bloomingdale’s. Across both fashion insiders, there’s a real interest in seeing how the brand would keep the foundations of its signature while playing with a more flexible element, namely color.
Whatever brands decide to do in 2026, it’s important that their collaborations form with intention and a real understanding that to land well, they have to make us wish we thought of the pairing first.