Clothing stains are a nightmare of mine. A trickle of ketchup from a quick stop at the now-defunct Papaya Dog, falling like a dribbling bull’s eye on a pale pink Petite Bateau tank. A beautiful Brooks Brothers white cuff, dusted with black residue from my leather jacket, as if I climbed out of a chimney. Don’t get me started on a silk Tom Ford Gucci top: readers, I decided to eat a pomegranate while wearing it.

Stains on clothes are a map of my mistakes; a record of my sloppiness. They should be a no-no, but going by the recent runways, there might be vindication for the dollops of grease that dot my vintage Levi’s. At the fall 2026 Prada men’s show, jumbo cuffs were speckled with grit and dirt was embedded in the creases on white tops. The collection seemed to say: There’s more currency in something with a stain-storied history than in something else that’s box-fresh.

The wear-your-stains-with-pride sentiment is nice, but I wanted to test it out for myself. Walking the Prada runway is different from, say, turning up at an office meeting looking not just disheveled but dirty. For my little experiment, I did some DIY arts and crafts, staining the cuffs of an ancient collared shirt of my father’s with Sriracha sauce and Mike’s Mustard (Dijon: I liked the deep hue). I used a straw cleaner to brush the sauces on my cotton fabric, and the process was not unlike painting.

To me, it looked like a Monet canvas of condiments, but I needed a second opinion. I snapped a picture and sent it to one of my group chats. Emily Dawn Long, who specializes in lived-in-looking pieces from suede coats to slinky jersey dresses to be-logoed vintage tees, at her eponymous brand, responded with glee. “As a designer whose core pieces have a French cuff, I understand the audacity of them getting into all the bits of everyday life.” Nice!

My next port of call was the local nail salon, where I go to get my cuticles cut, where, unfortunately, I received a befuddled stare from the manicurist. Did I look unkempt and messy? Or did I simply reek like an end-of-day hot dog at Citi Field Stadium? Either way, I became self-conscious. I had massive splotches of sauce and a plexus of spicy scents on my otherwise perfect shirt. Afterward, I ran into my husband. “Hey, nice shirt,” he told me. He’s not a compliment-giver usually, so I was pleased. Did I ruin my dad’s shirt with the stains? “They look like a design,” he reassured me. True, the colors did melt together quite nicely.

Perhaps stains are acceptable if they look deliberate? It made me think of a Mentos commercial from the early ’90s: A man in a suit accidentally sits down on a freshly painted bench. Realizing he has stained his suit, he pops a Mentos and then rolls around on the bench, creating a natty pinstripe effect. Maybe stains are like anything else, if you embrace them with confidence you can usually pull them off.