7
7
5 standout looks from the Schiaparelli couture show
For the first Fall/Winter 2025-2026 couture show opening the Fashion Week, Schiaparelli unveiled a collection that revamped the heritage of the house founded by Elsa Schiaparelli. Numéro takes a closer look at 5 standout looks presented at the Petit Palais.
By Léa Zetlaoui.
Schiaparelli opens the Haute Couture Fashion Week
On Monday 7th of July 2025, at 10am, the Schiaparelli haute couture show kicked off the Fall/Winter 2025-2026 couture week in Paris. Before taking their seats on the Napoleon chairs, one could observe the ballet of attendees arriving to discover Daniel Roseberry’s latest creations. As is often the case for haute couture shows, the house’s regular customers mingled with celebrities and fashion industry insiders.
Cardi B and her raven at the Petit Palais
Who made the most memorable entrance this season? Likely Cardi B, who appeared wearing the look 24 from the Schiaparelli Spring/Summer 2024 haute couture show – a sumptuous black velvet dress featuring an oversized collar adorned with fringe and pearls.
In front of the majestic main gate designed by Charles Girault, the American rapper struck the pose. And with her, an unexpected and quite poetic companion: a raven. A scene worthy of a fairy tale, enhanced by the light rain and grey sky on that Monday morning.
Dua Lipa, Hunter Schafer and Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu
Spotted in the front row: singers Dua Lipa, dressed in a gown adorned with white scales, Karol G, American actress Hunter Schafer and artist Nadia Lee Cohen. As for French stars, the front row also welcomed Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu and Joséphine Japy, both wearing looks from the Schiaparelli Fall/Winter 2025-2026 collection.
Back to the future: a Schiaparelli show
For Daniel Roseberry, this Fall/Winter 2025-2026 haute couture collection marks a turning point for Schiaparelli. If his previous show was about “making something baroque look modern, this season is about inverting archives to make them look futuristic,” he explained. To do so, the creative director, who has held this role since 2019, drew his inspiration from a very specific period in Elsa Schiaparelli’s career.
In 1940, the designer who founded the house in 1927 left occupied Paris for the United States. Her exile was preceded by a decade during which she had risen to the forefront of the fashion design scene. And so much so that she was considered as a rival to another icon: Gabrielle Chanel.
“Over the previous twenty years, two designers had changed not only how women dressed, but the meaning of fashion altogether. The first of those vanguards was Gabrielle Chanel. She liberated women from the corset and put them into body-skimming jersey,” the collection notes tell us. “Then there was Elsa, whose contribution was less about the physical and more about the conceptual. She questioned and challenged what fashion was.”
Elsa Schiaparelli vs. Gabrielle Chanel
As Olivier Saillard points out in his book Le Bouquin de la mode, the French fashion industry was largely run by women during the interwar period. Off on the battle fields, men had to unwillingly leave their positions. It was during this time that female designers modernized haute couture in many ways.
Ultimately, this supposed rivalry between Elsa Schiaparelli and Gabrielle Chanel may have helped solidify their legacies. Can one really speak of competition when their respective artistic visions differ so radically?
Of course, one cannot deny Coco Chanel’s influence in this Schiaparelli haute couture Spring/Summer 2026 collection. Beginning with the omnipresence of black, a colour she elevated to the rank of elegance in 1926 with her iconic little black dress.
Gabrielle Chanel opted for restraint. Paul Morand described her as the woman who invented poverty for billionaires. As for Elsa Schiaparelli, she embraced silhouettes infused with artistic references. Let’s not forget that the latter was close to artists like Dalí, Cocteau, and Warhol.
Haute couture without artifice?
“Conceived entirely in black-and-white, I wanted the collection to ask whether we can blur the line between past and future. If I deprived these pieces of colour, or any notion of modernity, if I focused obsessively on the past, could I actually make a collection that looks as if it was born in the future?” Daniel Roseberry asks.
Thus, this collection goes back to the very essence of haute couture, that is, the craftsmanship of the ateliers. Surrealism is no longer an aesthetic here. It is a technique that allows the artistic director to expand his creativity. Five exceptional silhouettes from the Schiaparelli Fall/Winter 2025-2026 haute couture show illustrate it.
5 standout looks from the Fall/Winter 2025-2026 haute couture collection
Look 14: The “Eyes Wide Open” gown
The eye becomes a trompe-l’œil in this stunning column bustier gown. “Eyes Wide Open” is entirely embroidered with open eyes whose irises are hand-painted resin cabochons.
Look 24: The trompe-l’œil red gown and human heart necklace
A true work of art, this back-to-front red satin gown with moulded breasts perfectly embodies Elsa Schiaparelli’s vision. From the 1930s onwards, she collaborated with Salvador Dalí. The human heart necklace made of red rhinestones and featuring mechanical pulsations, was designed by the Spanish artist and crafted by jeweller Carlos Alemany. According to Daniel Roseberry, it represents the beating heart of couture.
Look 26: The saddle bustier
“Schiaparelli’s famous corsetry is absent and replaced by a new exploration of drama. It defines the waist and hips with unexpected techniques, offering both intensity and ease to the wearer.” Here, the saddle – a nod to the equestrian style popularized in women’s fashion in the 1920s – becomes a bustier crafted from stretch velvet, satin, and black lambskin leather.
Look 29: The “Apollo of Versailles” cape
Extracted from the Fall/Winter 1938-1939 collection, the “Apollo of Versailles” cape was created for Lady Mendl, an American actress turned decorator with a taste for the spectacular and 18th-century style. The pattern in gunmetal sequins and rhinestones, emphasized by a tone-on-tone black horsehair trim, is reminiscent of the Apollo fountain in the gardens of the Château de Versailles.
Look 30: The “Apollo of Versailles” necklace
Worn by Alex Consani, the final look of this rinway show opening the Haute Couture Fashion Week also draws on the Apollo of Versailles motif. The necklace is “reimagined here as an enormous spray of diamanté bijoux in three layers of metal starbursts, galvanized in different shades of black, gunmetal, and satin silver.” This striking piece contrasts with the diagonally draped black satin bustier gown inlaid with sheer tulle to reveal the hips with exquisite simplicity.
The looks from the Schiaparelli Fall/Winter 2025-2026 haute couture show
