The new Wags are no less glamorous – just less obvious about it
The new Wags are no less glamorous – just less obvious about it
Rebecca CopeTue, June 23, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC
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The 2026 World Cup is well and truly under way, and with it comes a new cast of Wags. Yet this year’s class is a surprisingly low-key bunch, certainly in comparison to the originals. After all, when the term (a catch-all for “wives and girlfriends”) was first popularised back at the 2006 tournament in Baden-Baden, we had the likes of Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Cole, Abbey Clancy, Alex Curran and Colleen Rooney wearing skin-tight dresses and six-inch heels to go shopping, drinking bottles of Veuve Clicquot with a straw, and taking giant designer It bags into the stadium that would definitely struggle with the current bag-size restrictions. Beckham even reportedly took 60 pairs of sunglasses.
The 2006 World Cup Wags made headlines for their high-octane style, turning Baden-Baden into a fashion stage - Ian Vogler
For fashion and football journalist Felicia Pennant, founder of Season magazine, the 2026 Wags feel more understated simply by virtue of the fact that they are more omnipresent at games year-round. “For those in and around football culture, you see these women week in, week out at the games,” she says. “And you have to remember, we’ve had 20 years of this now, so they’re never going to stand out in the same way. The original Wags were so famous because no one had seen a group of women out supporting their partners and having fun at the same time.”
For Pennant, Tolami Benson, who is engaged to Bukayo Saka, is the style leader. “I think people are interested to see what she is wearing,” she says. “She’s just released a range with River Island so she’s definitely capitalising on her influence in the fashion space. She’s also already been spotted in great custom football merch, designed by independent fashion designers, so I think that again marks her out from the rest.”
Rather than flashy labels, Tolami Benson’s appeal lies in custom pieces and fashion-world credibility - Getty
Pennant isn’t sure if we’ll ever see a group of Wags as iconic as the 2006 class, largely as their influence has been curtailed thanks to stricter rules on players mixing with their partners during tournaments. “I think it’s interesting that people are talking about ‘who is the queen of the Wags?’” she says. “Because to me there’s only one, and it’s Victoria Beckham.”
Kate Kane
Kate Kane kept things understated for England’s opening World Cup match, elevating a simple denim dress with luxury accessories - Bradley Collyer/PA
Despite being the wife of the captain, Harry Kane, mother-of-four Kate is without doubt one of the most laid-back-looking of the Wags in terms of her fashion. At the opening game against Croatia, she wore a simple belted dark-denim mini-dress, with minimal jewellery and sunglasses perched on top of her head. Although don’t be mistaken – there’s very much a designer element to her style. That dress was by Celine and she carried a Chanel cross-body phone-case bag. In the past, she’s stuck to an England shirt to support from the stands, smartening up in tailoring for awards ceremonies. While she’s certainly not of the Victoria Beckham or Colleen Rooney school of dressing, she has also been spotted carrying a mini Birkin handbag.
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Megan Pickford
Megan Pickford embraced match-day dressing with a personalised denim cowboy hat bearing her husband’s squad number - Bradley Collyer
The 30-year-old wife of goalkeeper Jordan is perhaps the most obviously “glamorous” of this year’s crop of Wags, wearing baggy jeans, a tight white crop top and a denim cowboy hat with her husband’s number “1” on it for the opening game. A week ahead of the tournament, she filmed a TikTok video of a shopping spree in Celine, trying on a variety of red, white and blue outfits. She also joked about measuring her Lady Dior handbag to check it adhered to bag-size restrictions – luckily it does. On Instagram, she wears a lot of Revolve, Skims, Sandro, Zara and River Island, as well as designer brands like Chanel and Mugler, and is perhaps the most fabulously dressed in the stands, wearing leopard-print faux-fur hats, zebra-print coats and knee-high boots.
Tolami Benson
Tolami Benson finished her custom match-day look with a red Kangol hat - Bradley Collyer
The Wag with the clearest fashion pedigree this year is 25-year-old Tolami Benson, the fiancée of Bukayo Saka. For England’s opening game she wore a pair of long denim shorts, which she had commissioned the upcycling brand Loom to embroider with a lion and the number 87 (the latter being a nod to Saka’s debut shirt number for Arsenal). She finished the look with a matching denim jacket featuring cut-outs, plus a red Kangol hat and, of course, a perfectly sized Chanel handbag. She’s known for her penchant for a custom look: at the 2024 Euros she wore a custom leather biker jacket by Antonia Bronze, again emblazoned with “87”, which was layered over another bespoke piece – an England corset by designer Hattie Crowther. Her most recent fashion coup is a collection for River Island, described as “tomboy silhouettes softened with feminine details”, which features jorts, bandeau tops, shirts and a leather blouson jacket.
Ellie Watkins
Ellie Watkins opted for a relaxed match-day uniform, elevating an England shirt with cropped leggings and low-heeled flip-flops - Instagram
The wife of centre-forward Ollie wore an England away shirt, black cropped leggings and low-heeled flip-flops for her first night at the World Cup, accessorised with a Chanel cross-body vanity bag. As a lifestyle influencer, she’s used to dressing to the nines, often sharing pictures of herself in glamorous looks, including lots of mini-dresses, sequins and faux fur. For her 2025 wedding, she wore a Galia Lahav mermaid gown with a detachable overskirt, telling Vogue she was going for a “Kate Middleton vibe”.
Ashlyn Castro
Ashlyn Castro in a cropped England shirt and camouflage mini skirt at England’s opening World Cup match against Croatia - Reuters
Another influencer among the Wags, 28-year-old Ashlyn has reportedly been in a relationship with Jude Bellingham since 2024. At the Croatia game, she opted for a cropped England shirt with a camouflage-print mini skirt. On social media, she posts a mix of different looks, from sexy resortwear to elevated athleisure, including New York Yankees caps and Adidas Firebird joggers. She rarely tags what she’s wearing – having previously spoken out against those who thought she was trying to flog them clothes on Instagram: “I’m not an influencer making money off of you guys trying to give you a certain perception. I post on Instagram for fun,” she said on TikTok last year.
Lucia Loi
Lucia Loi often keeps things casual (photographed above at England versus Senegal, 2022) - World Cup News Pool
Twenty-eight-year-old Lucia has been Marcus Rashford’s on-again, off-again girlfriend since they were in secondary school. The couple are both clearly into fashion, with Marcus sitting front row at the Louis Vuitton show at Paris Fashion Week and appearing in a Burberry ad campaign, and Lucia working in fashion PR, having previously interned at Pretty Little Thing. She usually keeps things relatively simple in the stands, often proudly wearing a Three Lions T-shirt with jeans or cut-off shorts.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
