Hiding in plain sight: everyone from Meghan to the Beckhams wants a funnel neck

Shoppers are avidly searching for jackets that cover half your face – so much searches are up 1,000% year on year at John Lewis.The funnel-neck jacket is boxy, generously cut and comes with a permanently popped collar, between 9cm and 14cm high running from clavicle to nose; high enough to cover your mouth, low enough to see out – just.M&S funnel-neck bomber jacket. Photograph: M&SDubbed the “one and done” coat by John Lewis’s design director because you don’t need a scarf, such is the reach of the style that the high-street giant (and barometer for everyday taste) currently stocks 10 different versions of it.Elsewhere on the high street, Marks & Spencer is selling 10 of its funnel necks every day. There are suede versions in roomy shapes at Reiss, teal versions at Uniqlo, while Mango, the hugely influential Spanish brand, has been selling out of three different funnel-neck styles. Vogue magazine has just earmarked high-neck coats at Barbour, Monki and Uniqlo as its most chic. And earlier this week, the English rugby player Tatyana Heard wore a black bomber style to London fashion week.Men are also in on it; on Monday evening, Burberry introduced a black greatcoat with a funnelled leather collar, suggesting it could replace the trench as the must-have outerwear for 2026.Rugby player Tatyana Heard at London fashion week. Photograph: Shane Anthony Sinclair/GettyThe figures from John Lewis are startling and reflect a wider change in necklines. From quarter zips at Chanel and Nike, to popped-collar polo shirts at Dior and Uniqlo, high necks have been busy this spring. But it’s the funnel-neck coat that has been hiding in plain sight.The sociopolitical landscape is a case in point. This week the Duchess of Sussex popped on a porridge-coloured funnel from Zara while visiting the NationalCentre for Rehabilitation of Addicts in Jordan. At £109, it sent a very different message compared with her usual cashmere wardrobe. Add that to last month, when the first lady of New York, Rama Duwaji, wore two different funnel-neck coats in brown and black to her husband’s inauguration and private swearing-in ceremony, and funnel coats could be the new uniform of the progressive left.Rama Duwaji, in a brown funnel-neck coat, watches Bernie Sanders embrace her husband, Zohran Mamdani, at his inauguration ceremony in New York. Photograph: Jeenah Moon/ReutersThe jacket shape has become such a fashion fixture that it has earned some nicknames, including the “feminist facelift” because the shape hides the lower face without the need for any cosmetic “tweakment”.Bridget Dalton, a semiotician and cultural analyst at Truth Consulting, describes the trend as “performative hiding”. “It’s like celebrities so-called hiding in their baseball caps. The reality is, these styling tricks simply make them stand out more,” she says. “Forget quiet luxury. This is more like silent luxury.”Ever canny in using fashion as a shorthand communication device, the most memorable thing worn by Victoria Beckham in her recent documentary was a leather funnel-neck jacket that covered most of her face and later became a catwalk success. Little wonder that her son Cruz wore something similar this week to mark the first day of his band’s tour. “It’s all very ‘don’t look at me, but also look at me’,”says Dalton.On the other hand, covering up in cooler weather is just plain sensible, and few body parts are as charged as a woman’s décolletage. Dalton says it’s the opposite of the big lapels and low-cut sweetheart-shapes that have dominated womenswear; rather, the high neckline renders its wearer “an anti-trad wife”.Audrey Hepburn, in a red funnel-neck coat, with Cary Grant, left, and Jacques Marin in a scene from the 1963 film Charade. Photograph: Landmark Media/AlamyFunnel necks have roots in both military coats and luxury fashion. During the 1950s, Balenciaga and Givenchy introduced high-neck outerwear into their collections. Though the neckline sat on the chin, Audrey Hepburn’s widow-on-the-run in a Givenchy cherry-red skirt suit from 1963’s thriller Charade is a sharp lesson in how to romanticise spy-wear.When the cult designer Phoebe Philo launched her eponymous brand in 2023, she did so with a generously cut leather jacket with an eye-height funnel neck. Over the past few seasons, this shape has found its way on to the catwalks of Chloé, Proenza Schouler, Gucci, Stella McCartney and, this week, Arielle Uno in London and Boss in Milan.From the catwalks to the political podium to the high street, the funnel jacket is the outerwear that says, hey, my eyes are up here.