The V-Neck Obsession Is Only Getting Deeper, Literally

For years, the crewneck had a pretty good thing going. It was simple, sensible, and seemingly impossible to get wrong. The V-neck, meanwhile, had been relegated to the realm of school uniforms, dad dressing, and the questionable going-out tops of decades past. Lately, though, I've had to reconsider.

Lately, I’vebeen seeing them everywhere. Prada has been making a case for the V-neck for a while, and for Fall/Winter 2026, the rest of fashion appears to have caught up. At Chanel, Matthieu Blazy cut a soft grey sweater vest into a deep V and styled it with a low-slung black skirt and glossy red belt. Elsewhere in the collection, the neckline appeared layered under an oversized blazer, proving that even the most familiar V-neck can feel new with a shift in proportion and styling.

And fashion being fashion, it couldn't stop there. The knitwear may have marked the V-neck's return, but it was only the beginning. As the neckline moved beyond sweaters and into dresses and eveningwear, it also started moving considerably further south.

By Spring 2027, the V-neck had made its way into an entirely different wardrobe. At Gabriela Hearst, a fluid blue dress was cut with a deep V that extended almost to the waist. On the red carpet, Zendaya made an even more convincing case for the shape at the Emmys in Prada, where a sheer V plunged through the front of her crystal-covered gown.

Maybe I've just spent too many years covered up in crewnecks, but there's something about all that empty space, especially on a dress, that feels very appealing. It's not quite a cutout, not quite naked dressing, and it doesn't rely on anything particularly complicated to make an otherwise simple silhouette feel a little less expected.
And no one seems more committed to finding its lower limit than Valentino.

For Fall 2026, Alessandro Michele appeared less interested in simply reviving the V-neck than seeing how far he could push it. In one look, a black lace bodysuit plunged almost to the waist, while a lilac jacket left open beneath an enormous brown fur collar only made the V-neck feel deeper.

Another took things even further. A black lace bodysuit opened from the neck almost all the way down the torso before meeting a voluminous red skirt. At that point, calling it a neckline feels almost generous.

The V-neck hasn't come back exactly as we left it. First it reappeared on the sort of sweater your dad might own. Then it got wider. Then lower. Then considerably lower. To borrow from Miranda Priestly, the V-neck itself is hardly groundbreaking. What designers are doing with it now is another story.

If the past few seasons are anything to go by, we've apparently reached the point where the question isn't whether the V-neck is back.

It's how low it can go.