"Polka dots are in fashion this year": A deep dive into the "trend" of polka dots from the heart of fashion, NY!

Introduction: "Polka dots are in fashion this year"

I have titled this piece by riffing on a very famous passage in the fashion world.It is from theorist Roland Barthes: "Blue is in fashion this year."

Simply put, Barthes says something like this: The phrase "Blue is in fashion this year" written in fashion magazines is not important because blue itself is actually trending. Rather, what Barthes focused on was the mechanism by which everyone recognizes that "Oh, blue is in fashion this year" because the magazine writes it.

The absolute authority of fashion magazines that create this "trend" isVogue—a name many of you have likely heard.

And,this year, "polka dots" are a major global trend in women's fashion.Though it feels like the peak has already passed.

In fact, there is an important starting point for this current polka dot revival.The 2023 Miu Miu collection.

So, this time I will introduce the following.

1. When and where did the polka dot trend start? —The 2023 Miu Miu collection and Vogue—

When considering the current polka dot trend, the first important thing is"polka dots did not suddenly start trending in 2026."Rather, it can be said to be a flow that has gradually shifted from the minimalism that was mainstream for a while. And,if we trace the current polka dot trend, we can go back at least to the Fall 2023 runways.

In August 2023, Vogue published an article titled "Polka Dot Prints Are Having a Major Moment." It featured the Fall 2023 collections of brands like Miu Miu, Marni, Valentino, Saint Laurent, and Balenciaga.

In Miu Miu's Fall 2023 collection, sheer pencil skirts, blouses, and dresses featuring small dots appeared. Sheer materials. Pencil skirts that hug the body. Slightly disheveled styling. Combined with these elements, the polka dots were presented as something different from the 1950s-style retro femininity.

Similarly, in the Fall/Winter 2023 season, Marni also featured very large polka dots. They used dots on knits, dresses, and giant outerwear. Also, at Valentino, dots appeared on jackets and sheer blouses. In this way, Miu Miu had dots. Marni had them too. Valentino had them as well. In other words, at this point, multiple brands were already using polka dots in the same season.

Reference: Vogue, "Polka Dot Prints Are Having a Major Moment"

And this is where Vogue's work comes in. They collect them all, line them up in one article, and introduce them like this:

"Polka dots are back"
"From Marni to Miu Miu, polka dots are the highlight of this autumn"

In other words, they take clothes made by different designers and bundle them into a single "trend" phenomenon.Vogue puts multiple phenomena into words as a single "trend," gives it a name, and visualizes it on a global scale. This is Vogue's great power. In that sense, Vogue can be said to be the greatest authority in the fashion industry.

Reference: Vogue, "The Vogue Shopping Report: 11 Trends to Incorporate Into Your Fall Outfits"

And by 2025, this flow becomes even larger.

In February 2025,Vogue finally used "Polka Dots Are Trending" as a title for a "trend."This article introduces Jacquemus and Acne Studios for Spring/Summer 2025, as well as Altuzarra and Brandon Maxwell for Fall/Winter 2025. The polka dots that appeared in 2023 are being repeated in the pages across multiple seasons.

Reference: Vogue, “Polka Dots Are Trending—18 Ways to Wear the Runway-Loved Print”

Furthermore, in July 2025, Vogue published an article titled “It’s the Summer of Subverted Polka Dots.” This piece showcased the styles of ultra-famous influencers, models, and artists such as Hailey Bieber, Olivia Rodrigo, and Rihanna. By the time it reaches this phase, it can be said that the fashion industry has entered the stage of mass adoption.

Reference: Vogue, “It’s the Summer of Subverted Polka Dots”

And now, in the spring of 2026. Vogue published an article titled “Spotted! Everyone’s Dotting Their Dresses With Polka Dots for Spring 2026.” Here, they highlight the “major polka dot trend.” The Spring 2026 collections of Khaite, Dries Van Noten, Altuzarra, and Tory Burch are cited as examples. Vogue describes the dots this season as larger, bolder, and more graphic. More importantly, this Vogue article also features ZARA products. I will explain who ZARA is later.

Reference: Vogue, “Spotted! Everyone’s Dotting Their Dresses With Polka Dots for Spring 2026”

So, to briefly summarize this polka dot trend:

2023: Polka dots reappear in the collections of Miu Miu, Marni, and Valentino.
↓
Vogue summarizes it as a “polka dot revival.”
↓
2025: Spreads to Jacquemus, Acne Studios, Altuzarra, Brandon Maxwell, and others.
↓
Vogue declares “Polka Dots Are Trending.” It spreads widely through social media and influencers.
↓
2026: Vogue summarizes it as a representative trend for Spring 2026.
↓
It reaches the point where low-priced items like ZARA are listed on the same page. That is the flow.

In other words, even though we say “polka dots are trending in 2026,” there has been a long movement in the fashion industry spanning at least three years.

2. What is the absolute authority in the fashion world, "Vogue"? — The challenge of Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto!

I have been talking about Vogue for a while now. Who exactly are they?

Vogue is a fashion magazine founded in New York in 1892.Vogue is not simply a “magazine that introduces currently trendy clothes.” It is a magazine that selects what is important in fashion and preserves it for posterity through words and photographs. In other words, Vogue is a medium that reports on current fashion while simultaneously serving as a massive archive and historical record for future generations to understand the “fashion of that era.”

Vogue’s authority extends beyond its pages. Through the Met Gala, the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, Vogue Runway, and Vogue World, it connects museums, designers, brands, celebrities, and social media. And, Anna Wintour, famous for being the model for the character played by Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada,” is the head of Vogue Global. She has also been the supreme director of the Met Gala since the 1990s.In that sense, Vogue is an entity close to the institution of the fashion world itself.

Now, the one who shook such a Vogue to its core was none other than Japanese fashion designers. In 1981, Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto’s Yohji Yamamoto presented their collections in Paris.
This is an event known globally as the “Black Shock” (Issey Miyake had already made his European debut).

Specifically, they made heavy use of jet black and gray, used large shapes that enveloped the body instead of showing it off beautifully and snugly, intentionally disrupted the symmetry of garments, and incorporated fraying, holes, imbalance, and layering.In other words, they threw a stone into the fashion industry by completely deconstructing/dismantling Western “beauty” and competing with black, which is associated with funerals and the like.

Their work caused great confusion and controversy, but Vogue took a very suggestive position regarding this “challenge from Japan.” In the September 1983 issue of Vogue, they predicted that these clothes from Japan would eventually melt into the mainstream, while asking, “Is this a temporary phenomenon, an influence, or an evolution?” This was a bullseye.

As time passed, Vogue re-positioned the “Black Shock” as one of the “freest layering styles ever seen” and one of the “most rebellious moments in fashion history.” In 2017, they evaluated that Rei Kawakubo had a major influence on the fact that asymmetry, raw edges, all-black outfits, and oversized fits have now become part of modern fashion.

In other words, Vogue retells “what was historical” after time has passed. In that sense, too, Vogue is a medium that shapes fashion history. And the stone thrown by the two Japanese designers is preserved as solid history.

3. The “Trend Observation Point” of fashion: What is ZARA?

When a certain fashion becomes a trend, I first go to a certain store.
ZARA.
This is because ZARA is an easy-to-understand observation point for seeing “what is selling best in the world right now.”
What does that mean?

Conventional companies typically used a method of predicting what would sell next spring or what color would sell this autumn, and then producing large quantities of goods at an early stage. However, fashion is rarely as predictable as that.

That is why ZARA created a revolutionary system that places great importance on store feedback. ZARA first produces goods in relatively small quantities to observe actual sales and customer reactions in stores. They then established a method of turning production around very quickly in small lots, immediately reflecting that information in product creation and releasing new items to stores one after another. Because of this, ZARA can relatively easily see "what is selling in the world right now."
Reference: Inditex, “Innovation in Customer Services”

Furthermore, ZARA's strength lies in popularizing trendy designs while basically using brand runways as a reference. ZARA incorporates the latest trends and transforms them into products like dresses and blouses that are easy for general consumers to buy at affordable prices. Moreover, they quickly change their next products and assortment while watching actual sales. By doing so,they turn high-end brands into affordable and repeatable products. This is ZARA.

4. Theoretical models explaining trends: Trickle-down and bottom-up

So, how does the idea that "polka dots are in this year" spread?

One of the classic ways of explaining fashion trends is trickle-down.In 1904, sociologist Georg Simmel argued that "imitation" and "differentiation" work simultaneously in fashion. Simply put, the upper class wears a fashion → the middle/lower class admires and imitates it → the upper class dislikes the same fashion and wears a new one → it gets imitated again... This is the idea that fashion trends through this repetition.

However, in modern fashion research, this model alone cannot explain everything. This is because trends do not just flow from "top to bottom." Fashion that originally has roots in the "bottom," such as street, youth culture, workwear, sports, and hip-hop, is often adopted by designers and makes its way onto the runways of luxury brands. Thismovement in the opposite direction is called "bottom-up."

However, I think it is also wrong to conclude that "trickle-down is old" and "everything is bottom-up now." Let's re-examine this polka dot trend. Influential brands like Miu Miu, Khaite, and Tory Burch present polka dots on the runway. Vogue introduces multiple brands together as "polka dots this season." And then large-scale retailers like ZARA change the same trend into more affordable products; that was the general flow.

In other words, what becomes clear from this is that the direction changes depending on where you look.If you look at the source of the ideas, there is naturally a bottom-up movement from "bottom to top." However, if you look at the process of spreading from the runway to Vogue and retailers like ZARA, it can also be seen as trickling down from "top to bottom."

In short, it might be better to think of fashion as spiraling in a circle rather than a simple composition of "top to bottom, bottom to top."However, it is not a perfect circle. The clothes change surprisingly during one cycle. When clothes born on the street enter a luxury brand, the material, shape, and price change, and when ZARA turns them into products, they reach consumers at yet another price and shape. In that sense, it is a spiraling circle. However, in the fashion industry,there is still a strong top-down (trickle-down) force in who recognizes what as a "trend," gives it a name, and spreads it on a large scale.

5. From the fashion capital NY—The current state of "polka dots" in SoHo

I am currently living in NY. The text so far is based on the inspiration I gained in NY, the center of global fashion. And I also visited SoHo, the fashion hub of NY, and actually did some fieldwork. I'm not just making things up. Lol

The area I frequent fromChelsea to SoHo/NoHo is like a microcosm of fashion. At the 23rd Street subway station on the R line, an incredible level of fashion models get off the train. This is because world-class modeling agencies, including those where Kendall Jenner and others are signed, are all gathered around here. And for some reason, everyone in the fashion industry wearsPrada sunglasses/glasses (I feel like it's the influence of Anne Wintour). Lol

After work, I immediately went to the ZARA in SoHo. As I mentioned earlier, I look at ZARA first. Among ZARA stores, the one in SoHo reflects trends very strongly.

Actually, even in ZARA's women's section, there were fewer polka dot products than I imagined.I feel like the peak of the trend has passed. They haven't disappeared, but they were no longer the center of the sales floor.

Next, I also went intoH&M. There were a few polka dot items in the women's section. However, there weren't as many as I had imagined after reading the Vogue article, and it no longer felt like "polka dots everywhere this year."

Furthermore,I couldn't find a single polka dot item for men in either store.The men's section at the SoHo ZARA was much more colorful than H&M. There were many items with vivid colors and slightly bold designs, so it wasn't just the typical "men's clothing is all black, navy, and gray" feel. Even so, there wasn't a single polka dot. While the polka dot pattern itself is gendered, I felt there was a deeper reason.

Fashion trends and gender differences: Who is this trend for?

When we say "polka dots are in this year" here, there is one more thing to consider. That is, the trend is not the same for men's clothing as it is for women's clothing.

In Europe from the late 18th to the 19th century, the suit was born. This is the greatest revolution in the history of men's fashion.As a result, changes in men's fashion became more subtle and smaller. Rather than changes in fashion itself, it became mainstream for lapel width, shoulders, length, and pant width to change. Men's fashion is still an industry with little change, based on the "standard equipment of a suit." I feel that this is one of the reasons why there are absolutely no polka dots, which are currently a huge trend, in the storefronts of SOHO.

On the other hand, women's clothing has changed significantly throughout history.As the theorist Thorstein Veblen once stated, women's clothing has operated within a system of "conspicuous consumption."In other words, the very act of women "following fashion trends" and "wearing trendy clothes" was an indicator of their social and economic class. This is one explanation for why the structure where women's clothing shows stronger changes in "this year's pattern" and "this year's silhouette" still remains.

When we say "polka dots are in this year," who is it a trend for?These polka dots clearly show that gender difference.

Summary: What comes after polka dots?

This time, I introduced the fashion industry's perspective using the polka dot trend as a case study. I hope this is helpful, even if only a little.

So, what will come after polka dots?

If we look a little ahead at Vogue from Autumn/Winter 2026 to 2027, the next movements are already being presented. Checks, animal prints, vibrant colors, Art Deco, romantic decorations, and large, playful silhouettes. What they have in common is that they are moving further away from the minimalism of the past few years, and fashion is shifting back to "showing off." Among them, how will the animal prints that Vogue is focusing on affect the fashion industry in the future? Let's keep an eye on it.