Earlier this month, the international fashion milieu flocked to Copenhagen for spring 2026 fashion week. Everyone, it seemed, got the memo to wear a tiny crochet skullcap.
The Danish streets were flooded with caps of all colors, some adorned with beads, others more like netting. Chloe King, director of Fashion and Lifestyle for Saks Global, was among the trend’s fans in Copenhagen, though her Alessandro Michele-era Gucci hat has been in her collection for many seasons now. “I first wore my Gucci hat in NYC a few years ago to mixed reviews from friends and colleagues. I was happy to be among fellow quirky hat fans this time,” she says.
There was no editor group chat where everybody decided to wear the hat (that I can confirm, anyway), but King says that the trend has been brewing for a while. “There has been hat enthusiasm building the last few seasons, so it makes sense chic Danish girls would be right on trend,” she says. “Crochet in particular feels like a natural part of the Copenhagen fashion jargon, adding an artisanal quality to minimal pieces like shirting or denim.”
Fashion content creator and writer Mandy Lee (AKA @oldloserinbrooklyn) notes that the hat is in line with the trend cycle. “One of the more overarching trends of the 2020s has been this obsession with nostalgia. The early 2000s references ’70s fashion,” she says. (American Girl Doll aficionados may recognize the hat on Julie Albright, the bellbottom-wearing ’70s doll.)
Still, Lee adds: “I think there’s definitely more to it.” No trend falls, quoth Kamala Harris, out of a coconut tree. Lee first noted swimcap-esque skullcaps on the Prada spring 2024 runway. The brand doubled down with the same tight-fitting cap, but in a more traditional knit, for the fall 2024 menswear show. (King cites brands like Bode and Diotima, who share an emphasis on craft, as fellow leaders.) “For a while, especially post-pandemic, we were covering our faces, and it sort of bled into covering our heads,” Lee says.
Now, Lee sees this emerging trend as a product of a cultural move to the right. (She notes that it is also similar to religious head coverings, like the kufi and yarmulke.) “There’s a movement within fashion that we see pretty vibrantly now, where there’s been a conservative shift in tandem with more head and face coverings,” she says. She sees it as a consistent thread through fashion right now; a response to surveillance culture, along with the balaclava and face masks.
In spite of the darker undercurrent, Lee sees the crochet skullcap trend as emergent, likely to peak this winter as temperatures drop. “There is pre-approved buy-in from fashion history, and that’s always going to be a factor at play: this reference does exist,” she says. “There is some vetting that has happened historically, and I think that makes people feel a lot safer to participate in trends.”
