Schiaparelli Spring 2026 Couture: The Agony & The Ecstacy – Our Culture

Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry has become one of couture’s most established presences. Not because he’s been around forever, he hasn’t, but because so many of the people who were supposed to be here simply aren’t. With Giambattista Valli’s last minute cancellation and Giorgio Armani leaving us a few months back, Roseberry is what happens when the room thins out and someone keeps showing up strong.

The final say of the collection’s emotional center is all Roseberry’s, but the Sistine Chapel played a part, a big one too. “If you’ve been there, you know that the first thing you see isn’t the ceiling, but the walls, densely painted by an army of artists in the years before Michelangelo began his work in 1508. They’re decorated by ecclesiastical scenes: images meant to tell, to educate. But crane your neck skyward, and thought stops. Feeling begins,” the maison’s director pressed on. “He didn’t tell us what happened, but instead gave his audience permission on how to feel when they looked at art. It woke up the world. And 500 years later, it woke me up, too.”

Scorpions, snakes, birds, if it bites it’s in the collection. The ateliers layered feathers, lace, and tulle until each piece felt like it could crawl off the runway. Α nod to Elsa Schiaparelli’s lifelong obsession with animals, still alive in spikes, claws, and keyholes, though no lobster, or anything else, was harmed in the process. Think trompe-l’oeil effects, 3D feelings playing with depth and shadow, resin and crystals, structured volumes, fringe layers, horns born from the back ending inches over the head, and 25,000 silk thread feathers paired with 4000 hours of work just for one bustier.

The collection had me hooked from start to finish, but there were three looks that really made me stare, eyes glued and all. Look no. 6 was the first one. A black wool crepe bustier dress, featuring a front satin-stitch trick that makes a crocodile tail appear. And if the front wasn’t enough, the back steals the show with a cloud of white tulle dotted with delicate black silk mimosas. And seven looks later, no. 14 came, and it went by the name “Isabella Blowfish”. A structured skirt suit layered in tulle and organza, spikes at the top and crystals all over that added just the right shadowing. A little tip of the hat to Isabella Blow and her wonderfully eccentric taste. My final stare went to no. 17, a skirt and a jacket. To be clear, a reptilian-looking jacket with two curved horns emerging from the breasts, drenched in pearls and sparkling bullion lace, paired with a translucent, gradient skirt that carried everything the jacket did, minus the horns. Add a hint of turquoise, or Elsa’s “sleeping blue”, her second signature color, first introduced in 1940. Should I ever reincarnate as some kind of creature, I’m coming back as this one.

In the end, it’s the wildness and the precision, the claws and the crystals, that make this Schiaparelli show feel alive. You can see the hand of the ateliers everywhere, but you can also see Daniel Roseberry playing with tradition, and letting the collection breathe in its own strange glory. Some looks bite, some fly, some just make you stare, sometimes at your own feelings. And with that, the Sistine Chapel did its job. Someone book Roseberry a trip to Sagrestia Nuova next.