DUNHILL AUTUMN/WINTER 2026: A STUDY IN GREY, TEXTURE AND MODERN BRITISH TAILORING

Dunhill’s Autumn/Winter 2026 collection places grey at the centre of the season, but treats it as anything but uniform. Across tailoring, outerwear and separates, Simon Holloway builds a palette of charcoal, stone, deep brown and midnight blue, punctuated by restrained flashes of burgundy and Windsor blue. The result is a wardrobe shaped less by overt colour than by the subtle distinctions between fabric, surface and proportion.

Presented at Dunhill’s Milan headquarters, the collection draws on a distinctly British visual vocabulary while looking to 1960s London for its character. The period provides an especially apt reference for Holloway: an era in which traditional tailoring could coexist with emerging attitudes towards individuality, photography, music and youth culture.

The collection’s central figure is Lord Snowdon, the British photographer and former husband of Princess Margaret. His personal style offered Holloway a useful counterpoint to conventional notions of aristocratic dress. Snowdon could appear impeccably composed while retaining an element of informality and creative independence. Dunhill’s official description of the collection similarly frames the season around the tension between aristocratic restraint and unguarded creativity.

That duality is particularly visible in the tailoring. Rather than relying on dramatic silhouettes, Holloway works through fabric and construction. Super 120s and 150s wool flannels, alpaca, merino barathea and cashmere-silk blends bring differences in weight and surface to otherwise restrained shapes.

Grey therefore becomes a study in texture. Sharkskin, birdseye and nailhead suitings sit alongside Prince of Wales checks and houndstooth, allowing pattern to emerge through close tonal relationships rather than high contrast. The effect is considered and quietly complex: a charcoal suit might reveal its character through its weave, while a checked jacket introduces movement without disrupting the overall restraint of the palette.

The emphasis on texture extends into the trousers and outerwear. Corduroy, flannel, cavalry twill, suede and leather provide different responses to the colder months, giving the collection a tactile quality that colour alone could not achieve. Outerwear is similarly grounded in material, with car coats and field jackets carrying the practical spirit embedded in Dunhill’s history.

The car coat is particularly significant. It belongs to a longstanding strand of Dunhill design associated with the House’s early relationship with motoring. Alfred Dunhill inherited his father’s saddlery and harness business in 1893 and subsequently transformed it into a business producing accessories for the emerging automobile age. The connection between craftsmanship, utility and modern mobility has remained an important part of Dunhill’s heritage.

For Autumn/Winter 2026, that history is revisited through different lengths, materials and proportions. The approach avoids treating archival references as fixed historical replicas. Instead, familiar forms are adapted to the rhythm of a contemporary wardrobe.

A similar idea informs the suede field jacket associated with Snowdon’s image on Holloway’s mood board. The piece references photographs of the British photographer riding a motorcycle and translates that relaxed, practical attitude into the collection’s predominantly grey palette. It is a useful illustration of how the season moves between formal tailoring and more informal garments without separating the two worlds entirely.

The blazer occupies a similarly important position. Rather than being restricted to traditional suiting, it is presented as one of the wardrobe’s most adaptable pieces, capable of shifting between tailored trousers, textured separates and more relaxed combinations. This versatility reflects a broader change in contemporary menswear: formal dressing increasingly depends on how individual pieces are combined rather than on wearing an entire suit as a single, prescribed unit.

Holloway’s treatment of the blazer is therefore less about reinvention than refinement. Its proportions, fabrication and styling allow it to function as a bridge between the structured and the relaxed. In a collection built around tonal dressing, that versatility becomes particularly valuable.

Accessories continue the same conversation. Leather driving gloves, silk ties and cashmere scarves introduce small areas of contrast without disrupting the season’s muted character. Dunhill’s current collection also draws on the House’s tradition of leather craftsmanship and metalwork, with its broader accessories offering extending from leather goods to hard luxury.

The heritage behind this approach stretches back to 1893, when Alfred Dunhill, aged 21, inherited his father’s saddlery business in London. His early decision to adapt the company towards motoring accessories established a philosophy built around functionality, craftsmanship and innovation. Dunhill continues to describe this heritage through the principles of attention to detail, quality, utility and personalisation.

That history also informs the House’s approach to tailoring today. At Bourdon House in Mayfair, Dunhill continues to offer bespoke tailoring, with hand-cut garments created by master tailors in London. The service reflects the brand’s ongoing connection to English tailoring while allowing individual clients to determine the details of their garments.

The Autumn/Winter 2026 collection carries this heritage into a more atmospheric setting. Its London is not a postcard of Savile Row formality, nor is it a literal recreation of the 1960s. Instead, it draws on the period’s contrasts: polished yet mischievous, conventional yet individual, carefully dressed yet never overly controlled.

For those looking to experience Dunhill in person, the House’s current official store locator lists boutiques and selected retail locations, including Bourdon House and Harrods in London, as well as Gleneagles and Bicester Outlet in the United Kingdom. The official Dubai Mall boutique also offers ready-to-wear, tailoring, leather goods, footwear and hard luxury.

Ultimately, the strength of Dunhill’s Autumn/Winter 2026 proposition lies in its restraint. Grey becomes expressive through weave and finish; tailoring becomes more versatile through styling; archival references gain relevance when stripped of nostalgia. In Holloway’s hands, the season suggests that modern British elegance need not announce itself loudly. Sometimes its character is found in the difference between charcoal and slate, the texture of a wool flannel, or the relaxed attitude of a well-cut jacket.

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