The fencing jacket is TikTok’s next viral fashion trend

After the triumph of military wear, with historic uniforms and imperial jackets dominating the runways, the fashion radar of Gen Z already seems to be projecting elsewhere. It may be time to forget the braids and trims of the so-called “Napoleonic” jacket, as the cool kids of fashiontok are swiftly shifting their attention to a new obsession: the fencing jacket. A garment defined by its unmistakable diagonal fastening, borrowed from fencers’ uniforms, is emerging as the first signal of a fencing-fashion revival, an aesthetic gradually taking shape across recent runways through both explicit references and subtle stylistic allusions.

The new fashion trend on TikTok

Driving the rise of this trend is a very specific niche within Gen Z’s fashion community, composed mainly of male creators fascinated by Japanese tailoring and rare military archive pieces. Their For You Pages, until recently flooded with Our Legacy’s camion boots and Lemaire’s croissant bags, are now making room for the fencing jacket.

Some of these young “swordsmen” are scouring second-hand platforms looking for the piece, while others have even launched their own brands. This is the case for Sergi Studios and Tiat Studios, which have introduced their own interpretation of the fencing jacket through mini-drops. The cut of the jacket remains faithful to the Victorian fencing uniform (once crafted in canvas or leather), but is now reimagined in denim, often styled with bootcut jeans and English loafers.

The history of fencing in fashion

Stylistic references to the world of fencing are far from new in fashion. Alexander McQueen was among the first designers to shape the visual vocabulary of fencing fashion in his iconic “No. 13” collection (Spring/Summer 1999), featuring sculptural garments inspired by lamés, the padded uniforms worn in foil fencing. Particularly symbolic was the look worn by Paralympic athlete Aimee Mullins: a leather bodice with exposed diagonal seams paired with carved elm-wood prosthetic legs, creating a hybrid figure somewhere between a fencer and an Amazon warrior.

It was Maria Grazia Chiuri who renewed and cemented the aesthetic bond between fencing and fashion during her creative direction at Christian Dior, often drawing inspiration from Olympic sports uniforms reimagined as ready-to-wear or even Couture. In 2017, she dedicated an entire collection (SS17, ready-to-wear) to the foil uniform, sending fencing jackets and quilted bodices down the runway — always in white — with high neck-button closures and side straps, paired with cropped trousers reminiscent of those worn by athletes on the piste.

The romantic swordsmen on the runway

During the latest fashion weeks, fencing fashion has emerged along two main aesthetic paths. Some designers have drawn inspiration from the romantic and historical imagination tied to fencing. Brands like Dior Homme, Wales Bonner and Enfants Riches Déprimés introduced nineteenth-century elements in their summer collections — plastrons, ascots, capes and redingotes — all connected to the historical iconography of the foil through cultural references such as Dumas, The Three Musketeers or Cyrano de Bergerac. At Ann Demeulemeester, Stefano Gallici incorporated waistcoats with oblique button rows reminiscent of musketeers’ attire into his revival of the hussar military jacket.

Other designers, however, have focused on the modern version of fencing fashion, closer to the contemporary sportswear of fencers. Vaquera and Fear of God, for instance, presented their own fencing jackets in their summer shows: the former opted for white leather coats and bombers with the typical diagonal wrap closure, while the latter absorbed the fencer’s jacket into the American brand’s quiet-luxury vocabulary.

The representation of Asian fencing

Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton and Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta implicitly embraced the trend through shirts featuring a kind of Mandarin collar or Korean-style collar, still used on fencing jackets today to protect athletes’ throats during combat. Another interpretation came from Pieter Mulier, who in his latest Alaïa collection seemed to look beyond the Western fencing tradition by referencing the Japanese art of Kenjutsu (the art of the sword).

The Belgian designer created SS26 kimono and long shirts with tall, structured collars evoking the ceremonial and duel garments of samurai with katanas. More recently, fencing fashion has been explored through its technical, functional and protective dimension. A clear example is the collaboration announced by Songzio and Heliot Emil. In their “Duel” collection, the brands drew inspiration from modern fencing equipment, designing pieces with architectural and functional silhouettes reminiscent of carbon-fiber armor — a perfect match between historical elegance and technical avant-garde that the “swordsmen” of fashiontok will undoubtedly appreciate.