All buttoned up: How the skirt suit reclaimed its cool status in 2026

During the last great hurrah of the skirt suit, back in the eighties, it became a kind of neat shorthand for ‘successful career woman’. There were shoulder pads and dinner-plate-sized buttons, all rendered in shades of citrus, salmon, and lavender. Even at the time, fashion’s marriage of corporatism and femininity was a little too facile to be convincing — oh, you want to work in an office, but you’re a woman? Let’s swap those pants for a skirt. Ta-da!

But now, the skirt suit is having a new kind of resurgence (and there’s not a pastel or Xerox machine in sight).