As the autumn nights draw in, we all want someone to cuddle up to. Or, to put it in online parlance, cuffing season has well and truly begun. But, if compatibility typically centres around chemistry and common interests, there’s now an additional factor: style. So-called couple dressing – as practised on the red carpet by everyone from Hailey and Justin Bieber to Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz – is working its way down to regular folk. So, in 2026, how much do we need to think about how style when thinking about relationships? And, crucially, do both people in a couple need to wear orange leather, as Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet did at the premiere of Marty Supreme last year?

When it comes to celebrity couple dressing, Jenner and Chalamet’s orange outfits loom large. But there are also less headline-grabbing appearances. Bardem and Cruz looked in perfect equilibrium when attending the Venice Film Festival last month in a tux and evening dress – both at matching glamour levels. Zoë Kravitz and Harry Styles or Kendall Jenner and Jacob Elordi often give a masterclass in off-duty dressing, the kind that implies they borrow from each other’s wardrobes. Meanwhile, A$AP Rocky and Rihanna show how individual fashion prowess doubles when it’s side by side.

Elsewhere, the Biebers are often seen as the archetypal example of what’s known as swag-gap dressing: Hailey’s dressed-up look is contrasted by Justin’s oversized slacker-coded look. Fashion’s read? He needs to make more of an effort.

The swag gap is, of course, a phenomenon familiar to those of us who don’t have long lens cameras pointed at them daily. Justin Myers, the writer behind dating site The Guyliner, sees it as men get older. “You’ll get a guy in a football shirt and jeans, and then you’ll get a woman next to him who looks immaculate, head to toe in Bottega,” he says. “You wonder when that diversion happens.”

Zak Maoui, style director at Esquire, sees this difference as a potential problem. “If your sense of style is something that clashes with a partner, it could cause a strain on the relationship,” he says. “Especially if one half dresses in a subdued, chic manner and the other prefers to go full Bieber.”

The other side of the argument is that swag-gap dressing actually demonstrates how healthy a relationship is. Daniel Rodgers, senior fashion news and features editor at Vogue, regularly writes about couple dressing. He doesn’t think the swag gap is necessarily negative. “If anything, I’m like, ‘Oh, wow, you must really like each other because you’re so different.’”

Rodgers says even if we focus on how celebrity couples balance each other in terms of what they wear, everyone does it to a certain extent. “It’s rare for couples to have completely different sense of style,” he argues. “You spend years going to the same places, watching the same movies. So, some convergence in taste is inevitable.”

Myers thinks this is also easier to do now. “We have access to trends more quickly than we would have 20 years ago,” he says. “Your partner goes out and gets something amazing, then you’re going to want to look amazing with them too. You want to be part of a package.”

Celebrities have even more motivation to be part of a package. If couples in the public eye have always had the camera tracking how they look together – think of Yoko Ono and John Lennon or Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg – the idea of couple dressing as we know it today took root at the turn of the 21st century. See iconic work from Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears in matching denim, or David and Victoria Beckham both in purple, or head-to-toe leather. As much as these examples are the stuff of cringe on social media now, they also provided a blueprint. “These couples became brands, in a way that perhaps didn’t happen before,” Rodgers says. “The collision of pop culture and entertainment and business birthed a new party in a celebrity’s relationship – the relationship itself.”

While the rest of us aren’t worrying about endorsement deals, this kind of thinking does trickle down when it comes to the image we’re presenting to the wider world. “People are probably thinking more about how they look, generally, than they have done in any of the time in history,” Rodgers says. “So, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are now starting to think about how their partner looks and whether that reflects well or badly on them.”

Maoui has noticed how the couple-dressing trope has made its way into the general populace. “I recently saw a couple do head-to-toe matching, and I struggled to see the appeal,” he says. “That said, I think it’s nice when you see a couple with a shared sensibility or interest in the same style of clothing.”

If the couples in the public eye mentioned here are all heterosexual, a same-gender relationship might have some different optics to manage. “I’m gay, my partner is a man, so it stands to reason that my partner will sometimes dress a bit like me,” Myers says. “He hates it if we’re even wearing the same colours. He wonders what people will think.” Myers says he now modifies what he wears to ensure there’s not too much of a match.

Whoever is on your arm, the best way to delve into couples dressing is to keep it low-key. “I remember a few years ago, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wore outfits that complimented one another in a subtle way, his suit lining matched the green of her dress,” Maoui says. “This was at a time of contention and public scrutiny. It was, I think, his way of showing solidarity with his wife.”

While not all of us have the world looking at us in this way, this kind of underlying mirroring has merit. Rodgers points to A$AP Rocky and Rihanna and Styles and Kravitz as examples that work. “[In each couple,] they have that sense of belonging to the same world. Neither disappears into each other’s look,” he says. “They both have a distinct presence… You can imagine something passing between each of their wardrobes without it looking out of place.”

Should we all now be attempting to align what we wear the next time we head out as a couple? Myers says there’s something to be said for sticking to your own style, as well as that of the two of you as a unit. “You can be in a couple for a long time and still maintain some kind of style autonomy,” he argues. “And I think that’s much more important than making sure that you match.”

Kylie and Timothée, take note.