VINCE is giving leather more to do than headline a jacket. A lambskin midi skirt, flared trousers and a full trench show how differently the material can behave when the garment changes.
Leather usually gets its loudest role in the jacket. VINCE is giving it more range. In its current new-in selection, lambskin appears as a midi skirt, flared trousers and a full trench coat, moving the material through three very different parts of the wardrobe.
That matters because leather changes with the garment around it. A skirt gives it length and restraint. A flared trouser introduces movement. A trench keeps the authority of outerwear but stretches it across a longer, more formal shape. The material stays the same, yet the effect does not.
VINCE also avoids the easiest version of the story. These pieces are not all black, and they do not lean on biker hardware or obvious rock-and-roll references. Dark moss, smoked truffle and pinewood pull the leather into the same muted winter palette as the rest of the collection, which makes the experiment feel much more considered.
The skirt makes leather feel less obvious
The Leather Midi Skirt is the clearest break from the usual jacket-first idea. Cut straight and falling below the knee, it gives lambskin a broad, uninterrupted surface. There are no biker references, no visible hardware trying to announce the material before the garment itself.
Dark moss helps. Black leather comes with a set of ready-made associations; this shade softens them without making the skirt timid. The colour lets the finish register gradually, which makes the piece feel easier to place beside knitwear, tailoring or a simple blouse.
What works here is restraint. The skirt does not need to prove that leather can be dramatic. It proves something more useful: that leather can hold its place in a wardrobe without turning every outfit into a leather look.
That distinction is important because a midi skirt already has a life beyond evening dressing. Rendered in lambskin, it gains more presence, but not so much that the garment loses its familiarity. The leather changes the mood without swallowing the idea of the skirt itself.
Leather Midi Skirt £1,355
The trousers change the pace
The Stretch-Leather Mid-Rise Flare Pant takes the material somewhere less expected. Leather trousers often lean on a close, straight line, but VINCE lets this pair open from the knee. That flare gives the lambskin movement and makes the cut, rather than the surface alone, do much of the work.
The smoked-truffle colour reinforces the shift. It has the depth expected from leather, but none of the automatic severity of black. Paired with the flare, it reads less like a statement trouser and more like a familiar shape reworked in a heavier material.
That is the more interesting use of leather here. VINCE is not asking the trousers to behave like a jacket moved below the waist. They remain recognisably trousers, with the leather changing their weight and presence rather than erasing the category altogether.
The flare also gives the pair a different energy from the skirt. Where the midi is controlled and still, the trousers depend on the line opening as it moves down the leg. It is a small shift in cut, but enough to stop the two pieces from feeling like the same idea repeated below the waist.
The trench keeps leather in familiar territory
The Leather Trench Coat is the one piece here that keeps leather where we expect to find it: in outerwear. Even then, VINCE avoids the obvious short jacket. The double-breasted front, belt and storm-flap details belong unmistakably to the trench, while lambskin changes the way those familiar elements read.
There is more surface, more weight and more continuity than a cropped leather jacket can offer. The result is not a reinvention of the trench so much as a reminder that changing the material can be enough to alter its character.
The coat also makes sense of the other two pieces. Outerwear is the familiar starting point for leather, so the trench acts almost as the control in this edit. Beside it, the skirt and trousers feel more surprising, not because they are outrageous, but because they move the same material into places where we are less used to seeing it.
Pinewood also keeps the coat connected to the earthy palette running through the other leather pieces. Dark moss, smoked truffle and pinewood move the collection away from black without making colour the story. The shades simply give the material more room to behave differently from one garment to the next.
Leather Trench Coat £2,325
Our View
VINCE’s leather works because it is not treated as one big statement. The skirt, trousers and trench each keep the logic of the garment they belong to, while lambskin changes their weight, movement and presence.
The skirt is perhaps the most convincing departure because it makes leather feel unexpectedly composed. The flared trousers are the most directional, using cut to give the material movement. The trench is the most familiar, but its length and colour keep it from falling back on the usual jacket formula.
The result is less about “wearing leather” than choosing where you want it to enter the outfit. VINCE has taken a material often confined to outerwear and made a credible case for letting it travel much further through the wardrobe.
