BLACKPINK's Jennie and Rosé Are Leading the Lingerie Core Trend Taking Over Summer Fashion

BLACKPINK's Jennie arrived at Chanel's Spring/Summer 2026 ready-to-wear show in a pale blue camisole and matching skirt that looked, deliberately, like something you might find in a lingerie drawer. Her groupmate Rosé made the same argument at Saint Laurent's 2026 summer collection, choosing a silk romper that sat right at the edge of sleepwear.

Their choices were not accidental. Lingerie core, which pulls lace, satin, slip silhouettes, and corset construction out of the bedroom and into everyday dressing, has re-emerged as one of the defining fashion directions of this summer. The detail that gives it away is not nudity or exposure but fabric: satin where you would expect cotton, lace where you would expect a plain hem.

The 1990s root

The trend's lineage runs back to the 1990s, when the maximalism of the previous decade gave way to a stripped-back minimalism. The boundary between outerwear and underwear began to dissolve in that climate. In 1990, Madonna took the stage on her world tour in a cone-bra corset designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, repositioning an undergarment as a statement of personal expression rather than something to conceal.

The slip dress became the era's other defining piece. Kate Moss wore a sheer version to an Elite Model Agency party in London in 1993, and the image has since become shorthand for the sensual minimalism of that decade. What the 1990s established, and what lingerie core is now retrieving, is the idea that undergarment construction can carry visual authority on its own terms.

Runway confirmation

The current cycle sharpened when several major houses put lingerie details at the center of their collections rather than the periphery. Miu Miu had been building toward it since the early 2020s with its low-rise micro silhouettes. By the Spring/Summer 2023 collection, the house was showing sheer looks and bra-cut tops; the Fall/Winter 2023 collection followed with a pantless look pairing briefs and tights. Those presentations were widely read as a catalyst for the broader trend.

This season the vocabulary has widened. Chanel's haute couture show featured sheer looks in fine muslin, and a Chanel representative described the house's thinking plainly: the lingerie core direction is about dissolving the boundary between interior and exterior space and about respecting the freedom of the person wearing it. Dolce & Gabbana placed a sky-blue men's pajama top alongside lace bras, corsets, and bodysuits at its Spring/Summer 2026 ready-to-wear show, treating the combination as entirely resolved rather than provocative.

How it reads in practice

Off the runway, the approach is less absolutist. ITZY's Yuna and model-influencer Lee Si-an, who drew attention through her appearance on Single's Inferno 4, have both posted images pairing slip dresses over wide-leg trousers or jeans, letting the lingerie silhouette show without committing fully to it. Red Velvet's Joy has been spotted in a sagging-style look that lets lace waistbands show above the trouser line, which takes a style rooted in 1990s hip-hop and redirects it toward a more feminine register.

Fashion curator Kim Hong-gi draws a clear distinction between the 1990s iteration and the current one. The Madonna-era lingerie look led with overt sensuality, he argues. Today's version is more about a woman expressing comfort on her own terms, layering a feminine lace top against a structured jacket, for instance, in a way that mixes references rather than sending a single signal.

Professor Lee Sun-young of Sejong Cyber University's Fashion and Beauty Management department frames it similarly, placing lingerie core within a broader hyper-feminine mood that also includes ballet core, the trend of working ballet-inspired pieces into everyday dress. The difference, in her reading, is that lingerie core's appeal is not about looking sexy for someone else. It is about the wearer's own relationship with femininity.

What comes next

The trend appears to have staying power beyond summer. Saint Laurent's 2026 winter collection showed lace dresses, skirts, and slip silhouettes throughout. Fendi added lace-detailed silk dresses and a removable-slip lace dress to its Fall/Winter 2026 collection, which suggests the houses are committing to the direction rather than treating it as a one-season experiment.

Lingerie core's longevity will likely depend on how well it translates at street level, where the full runway execution is rarely practical. The slip-over-trousers combination and the visible lace hem are both workable entry points, and those are the versions that tend to carry a trend past the runway and into actual wardrobes.