What happens when you take colour away from one of the boldest brands in couture? If you’re Daniel Roseberry, apparently, magic. For Schiaparelli’s Fall-Winter 2025/26 Haute Couture collection, Roseberry stripped it all back. No corsets. No pink. No shock-factor accessories. Just black, white, and flashes of deep, bleeding red. “I asked myself, ‘If I stripped these pieces of colour, or any notion of modernity, and focused obsessively on the past, could I really make a collection that looks like it was born in the future?’” he said. The answer? Pretty much.
This season, Roseberry wasn’t interested in AI aesthetics or retro-futurism; instead, he looked to the pre-war era: Paris in the 1930s, that “elegant decadence” before everything fell apart. “A world without screens, without artificial intelligence, without technology. Maybe it’s an old world, but also a post-futurist one.” The silhouettes evolved too. The tight corsets we’ve come to expect were gone, replaced with new kinds of tension around the waist and hips, designed to fit the body perfectly, with fabric cut on the diagonal for a softer, flowing shape. Jackets came sharp and sculptural, and evening gowns flowed with that precise, surreal Schiap cut. No body modification this time. “I wanted to do less body modification,” Roseberry said. “I wanted it to be intense in a different way.”
The whole thing felt more focused, but not boring. Cardi B showed up holding a real raven (yes, an actual raven). She was wearing a custom black column gown from Spring 2024. It featured sculptural shoulders and pearl-fringed sleeves draping dramatically past her knees. The look was bold, theatrical, totally Cardi, and a strategic nod to her upcoming album rollout, Am I the Drama?, where the imagery of birds is included. Next to her sat the stunning Dua Lipa, who wore a sheer embroidered white corset-style dress. With her wedding coming up, was this a low-key bridal test drive?
One jacket came with a hidden ceramic keyhole detail, a quiet wink to the house’s surrealist roots. There was a sculpted dress with a crystal beating heart pressed between the shoulder blades. Gowns that shimmered. And the Elsa jacket, named after the founder, made its official runway debut. It referenced the past but kept its eyes firmly on what’s next. As Roseberry put it, “I think this show carries more heritage than any collection I’ve done so far.” And honestly? We can clearly feel it.
