Men’s denim is ready for a season of ease.
Brands have turned to vintage influence, Western roots and coastal cool as inspiration for their Spring/Summer 2026 men’s collections. They’re delivering relaxed styles built for comfort, with looser fits, lighter fabrics and sun-streaked washes dominating the market for next year for a consumer interested in an effortless, easygoing feel. The market has displayed an openness for deviations from the status quo, and brands are counting on nostalgia-tinged, casual-coded styles to keep propelling their men’s businesses.
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Off the Cuff dives deeper into these ideas. In this content series, creatives and executives from crowd-favorite denim brands share more about the trends, ideas and innovation shaping their upcoming men’s collections.
Here, Paige men’s president Jon Geller describes how lightweight fabrics and a sporty color palette will shape the men’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection.
On the men’s business: Men’s, especially when you have a women’s counterpart as big as ours, tends to fly a little bit under the radar. But our business is fantastic, both domestically and internationally. I think we’ve seen a return to sort of classic denim dressing as silhouettes have started to move a little bit wider.
On fits and washes: Slim-straight and straight-leg are our two dominant fits. We saw a lot of guys transition from slim and skinnies into slim-straights, but there’s [also] the group of guys that were already in our slim-straight fit, not moving up to straight legs or relaxed. I think the super relaxed and super-relaxed straight legs have been left to the youngest consumers…Naturally, right now, slim straight is probably our biggest focus as we continue to move forward.
On non-jean denim styles: We tend to bring in our lightest-weight denims and chambray fabrics for summer. In terms of chambray for summer, we have both short-sleeve and sleeve offerings. And [for] a denim jacket, we brought in our lightest-weight denim fabric that we like to use in summer for the hotter months… [We’ll have] two different color offerings—there’s a summer pop color as well as a washed-out indigo for that sun-faded jean jacket look.
On inspiration for S/S ’26: Spring and summer have one overarching, holistic theme for us as we move into next year, which is this idea of courtside polished. Sporting events have become fashion shows, not only in the crowd, but also for the athletes as they enter the tunnel. The two things that grabbed our attention for the upcoming season was one, the U.S. Open last year—the color palette. There was a lot of crossovers with what we were doing: whites, pastel blues and yellows, this idea of courtside polish. And then as we move into summer 2026, we’re going to have the World Cup here in the U.S., and a lot of our design team are big sports fans and big European soccer fans. We pulled inspiration from World Cups from the past…and really leaned into some classic styling for the World Cup.
On opportunities: Most guys aren’t going to go back to wearing sandpaper or rigid denim once shown that you can look as good, if not better, wearing comfort fabrics… We’ve added additional fabrications, but we’re never going to go out and do 100 percent rigid denim. Other brands that do that stuff, and they do it great, [but] we feel that we do stretch and comfort denim better than anyone, and that’s where we want to continue to focus and bring that to the world. I’m yet to find the guy that you know puts it on, looks good, feels good and wants to wear something else.
This article was published in SJ Denim’s fall issue. Click here to read more.
