Haute Couture

Untamed Beauty! Schiaparelli SS26 COuture

| Design & Culture by Ed

This really is a delightful couture season, with a renewed emphasis on the haute. Daniel Roseberry presented one of his strongest Schiaparelli collections to date – peacock-y enough to dazzle without tipping into gimmickry. “The idea,” he said, “was to keep the rigor of the last few seasons but make it far more expressive.”

Among the beautiful creatures stalking his runway were “Isabella Blowfish“, a rigorously cut tailleur bristling with spiny spikes and named after the late couture collector Isabella Blow, and a pair of “Infanta Terribles“: one a bustier top, the other a fitted jacket, both adorned with almost menacing scorpion tails that curved outward and upward from the small of the back. “Alien” meets the Sistine Chapel? Hell yes.

There was something extraterrestrial and otherworldly about the collection, yet also animalistic in the most untamed sense. Roseberry pushed that energy into new realms with a wing sprouting from the back of a strapless black dress, and with claws erupting from the breasts and shoulder blades of feathered jackets. Yes, there were unmistakable echoes of Alexander McQueen – but Roseberry is an A-plus student of fashion history, and he understands Schiaparelli as the ultimate sanctuary for fashion obsessions and passions, a place where they can freely collide, mingle, and fuse.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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All Is Full Of Love. Dior SS26 Couture

| Design & Culture by Ed

This haute couture season isn’t legendary only because of two debut collections at two major maisons. It will be remembered as the fashion week when couture finally leaped into a new era. It is relevant again.

Jonathan Anderson’s Dior collection had been in the making for over six months, and it shows in every single detail. Everything is imbued with passionate love for craft, art, and… FASHION. John Galliano not only blessed the project, but in a way initiated its birth with a cyclamen bouquet he gifted Anderson at the very beginning of his tenure at the house. The fragile purple flowers – symbols of lasting feelings, sincere affection, and tender love – were not only present in the show’s scenography, but were eternalized by Jean-Pierre Ollier’s atelier, which created thousands of handmade, hand-painted silk flowers. These blooms adorned the collection’s hero accessories: oversized brooches, bomb-shaped earrings, and more.

Above all, this was a couture show that exercised surrealism in the most extraordinary way, turning to the beauty of Mother Nature for inspiration. Dresses were airy like dandelions; skirts could easily be mistaken for hydrangea bushes; 18th-century-inspired portrait brooches were framed with orchids. One silk skirt in a subtle chinoiserie print appeared to explode with tiny green cones. The opening look’s bag referenced a couture hanger, yet it was entirely covered in hand-dyed, extra-long grass.

In the hands of another designer with the same haute couture possibilities, such effects might have veered into saccharine sweetness, or worse, princess-y costume. In Anderson’s, however, the collection struck with delightful eccentricity – and, above all, modernity. This was conveyed effortlessly through cool pink bangs (Sandy Hullett’s work), cocoon-like coats, and astonishing knitted dresses that quite literally flowed down the body. Jonathan Anderson has insisted that, for him, haute couture is something you collect. This enchanting, breathtaking collection could easily stand as the sole subject of a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition. Yet it also feels confident enough for a beautiful, bold life beyond the museum walls.

Yes – this is exactly what haute couture should be in 2026.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Church. Dolce & Gabbana Alta Sartoria 2025

| Design & Culture by Ed

It’s been years since I wrote about a Dolce & Gabbana show. But this one caught my attention for all the right – and maybe not so right – reasons.

The haute couture season doesn’t really end until Dolce & Gabbana says the last word with its opulent, over-the-top alta moda shows (there are three of them: for jewellery, womenswear and menswear). They are presented not in Paris, but in Italy – that explains why it’s off the official couture schedule.

Most of the time I don’t engage with what contemporary Dolce & Gabbana does. Yet I have a sentiment for old Dolce & Gabbana, especially from the 1980s, 1990s, when the designers dissected the codes of Italianity and created an entire visual lexicon that was very rawn and undiluted. And I must admit that the brand’s latest Alta Sartoria collection – which goes for menswear couture – presented not just anywhere in Rome, but at the steps of Castel San’Angelo – and with IRL bishops in attendance – is really something worth analyzing. READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Brut. Maison Margiela AW25 Haute Couture

| Design & Culture by Ed

Couture is the most archaic branch of fashion sensu lato, and this time around I really wondered if it shouldn’t be put to sleep – and wake up only when it has something meaningful to say again. Or at least when a prince – a new, revolutionary talent – emerges and gives it a kiss of life.

Glenn Martens certainly isn’t that prince. I’ve never been a number one Y/Project fan, and his Diesel isn’t my cup of tea either. So when the news broke that he’s the new creative director of Maison Margiela, you can imagine I wasn’t overly thrilled. After seeing his debut artisanal collection yesterday, all I thought was: damn, we’ve been really blessed to see John Galliano’s final act over a year ago (and we just didn’t deserve it).

To me, Martin Margiela isn’t just the ultimate fashion genius – but also a designer of silence. It took years for Galliano to get into that “silence”. Martens, who’s from a generation that studied Margiela at school, and whose work has been heavily influenced by Margiela since day one, is a “loud” designer. As in “pop-loud”.

That says a lot about why his first collection for the house lacked the soul-touching subtlety of Martin – or Galliano – and instead relied heavily on straightforward references, such as the masks. READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Fin. Balenciaga AW25 Haute Couture

| Design & Culture by Ed

This haute couture season proves that fashion indeed needs a reset – and the seismic shift of designer departures and new appointments is a healthy cleanse of the system. Chanel’s final pre-Matthieu Blazy show, coming from the overstayed, post-Virgie Viard studio, looked and felt like a parade of dusty, beige utensils that found their way out of a cupboard. Demna‘s final act for Balenciaga, although high on farewell emotions, did convince me that it’s really time to move on. Whatever his Gucci will be, it should definitely operate on a different methodology than the one he created at Balenciaga. It’s understandable he chose to close his chapter at the maison with a collection that was one big bowl of reheated nachos, from the model casting (from synonymous-with-the-brand Isabelle Huppert to on-the-nose Kim Kardashian) to the line-up’s overall look, a Frankenstein hybrid cross-pollinated by the Georgian designer’s idiomatic volumes and proportions, and Cristobal’s archival tropes. But somehow I hoped Demna’s Balenciaga fin would be a one last conceptual stretch, like a dress made from hundreds of meters of taffeta draped on the model a few minutes before the show, or the memorable “Parliament” show.

Nevertheless, here’s to Demna’s new chapter at Gucci, and as for Pierpaolo Piccioli: the Balenciaga floor is yours.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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