Daniel Roseberry

Drag. Schiaparelli AW26

| Design & Culture by Ed

There comes a moment when even the greatest magician has no more rabbits left to pull out of the hat. Daniel Roseberry‘s Schiaparelli haute couture is increasingly turning into drag – exquisitely engineered drag, granted – but it no longer has the same effect. Dressing a woman as a latex octopus in 2026 feels more gimmicky than groundbreaking. Putting her in yet another hyper-cinched jacket or a skin-tight, body-moulded bustier (really, how many more McQueen echoes can we take?) feels equally tired. Then comes a pink explosion of hand-applied feathers, perhaps meant to evoke a sea urchin. I just can’t shake the feeling that Schiaparelli deserves to aspire to something more profound than this.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Sphinx. Schiaparelli AW26

| Design & Culture by Ed

At Schiaparelli, Daniel Roseberry has definitively abandoned the ornamental eyes, noses, and mouths, turning instead toward a more profound interpretation of the body. This season, he does so with finesse, envisioning a woman akin to a sphinx – not entirely human, closer to a deity; familiar, yet mysterious. The sphinx concept comes into focus in a phenomenal skirt suit made from wadding-stuffed hosiery – it appeared as though fashioned from a human corpse, yet remained oddly chic. A sense of delightful strangeness continues in another skirt that extends into a tail with the help of a wired hem, accompanied by hirsute fur prints and painted crocodile scales. Then there are the more conservative-looking, yet equally striking, liquid-gold draped pieces with Mariano Fortuny-esque pleating. Roseberry is finally finding his method for Schiaparelli ready-to-wear.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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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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Shock Effect. Schiaparelli AW25 Haute Couture

| Design & Culture by Ed

Sparking a shock effect is obvious as day for Daniel Roseberry and his vision of Schiaparelli; ultimately, it was Elsa who coined Shocking Pink. Yet there was nothing pink about the autumn-winter 2025 haute couture show. Roseberry continues to examine radical restraint – of the woman’s body, rather than the discipline of dress-making or tailoring – and this collection felt darker than usual. It referred to Schiaparelli’s late 1930s collections, which were peak surrealist – but also carried a sense of growing melancholy and unrest, as if they foresaw the upcoming tragedies of Second World War. There are many indicators that the world we know today is off to a burning, unstoppable crisis, so it’s no wonder why Roseberry is in a gloomier mood. But then there’s the shocker that lets the mind escape for moment: amidst the corseted matador suits, body-morphing padding, hourglass shapes and heavily embellished gowns, a red corseted satin dress constructed with a fake torso and breasts in the back, with a pulsating (as in for real, not trompe l’oeil) red rhinestone heart necklace hanging just below the nape of the model’s neck. The sight was both sinister and highly body horror, somewhere between “The Substance“, “Death Becomes Her” and “Suspiria“. But it also screamed: madame couture has arrived.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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NET-A-PORTER Limited

Flashy. Schiaparelli SS25

| Design & Culture by Ed

At Schiaparelli, I feel like Daniel Roseberry doesn’t have a clear idea of what the brand’s ready-to-wear line should look like. For a consecutive season now, it’s more of an after-thought of his haute couture that was forced to be less in-your-face, more “commercial”, but at the same time still look flashy and rich. In a way, Schiaparelli ready-to-wear is giving Olivier Rousteing Balmain or something Alexandre Vauthier-ish. Paris is overfilled with fashion like this, and Roseberry’s is just adding up to that certain not-so-niche niche.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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NET-A-PORTER Limited