Ashley Graham spent 2026 turning shoes into the sharpest part of her look. Across red carpets, fashion shows, tennis events and parties, she kept shifting between polished classics and bolder silhouettes, building a run of appearances that made her footwear as memorable as the dresses above it.
That is why Graham is back in focus now: the year-in-review comes as she heads toward a return to the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show runway in Los Angeles on Sunday, Oct. 18. The timing matters because her 2026 looks already traced a clear pattern — each appearance felt distinct, but none of them looked accidental.
She opened the year in a deep burgundy pair of Charles & Keith satin-pleated slingback court shoes when she was seen leaving the Today show on Feb. 11 in New York City. Five days later, in Milan during the 2026 Winter Olympics, she switched to Charles & Keith satin crystal-embellished ball-heel pointed-toe slingback pumps for French Alps 2030 at Omega House. On March 5, at the Isabel Marant fashion show during Paris Fashion Week fall 2026 at Palais de Tokyo, she moved into gold Pafya sequin pumps, a flashier choice that matched the pace of the room.
By mid-March, Graham was back in a darker register at the 2026 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, where she wore glossy black illusion mules with a V-shaped vamp and a clear slingback strap. Weeks later, at the Variety 2026 Entertainment Marketing Summit Presented By Deloitte at The Beverly Hilton, she traded that for tiger stripe d’Orsay pumps with a square toe. The contrast is what made her 2026 shoe run work: she leaned adventurous, but she did not stay in one lane long enough for the look to go flat.
Her most pointed examples came later. On May 2, she and Justin Ervin were spotted at Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos’ Met Gala pre-party in New York City wearing Gianvito Rossi’s Manhattan sandals. Then, on Sept. 12 at the 2026 US Open Women’s Tennis Final Blue Carpet in New York, she returned to tiger stripe again, this time in sandals with a wide criss-cross strap vamp and a peep-toe. The next day, she was in New York for Mario Carbone and Cait Bailey’s wedding celebrations, a reminder that her style choices did not just belong to one type of event.
What stands out most is not that Graham wore bold shoes. It is that she kept alternating them with cleaner, more classic shapes, as if each appearance was a fresh test rather than a repeat. That is the through line in her 2026 run, and it leaves one thing unresolved: which pair she would pick as the favorite. If the rest of the year is any clue, she may not be choosing just one.
