Schiaparelli

03.05.2026

Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2026

Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2026 “The Agony and the Ecstasy”

Celestial Schiaparelli Ascendant

“Long-term cultural relevance requires resisting the temptation of constant reaction. At Schiaparelli, we are fortunate to inherit a house founded on artistic radicality. Elsa Schiaparelli worked with the surrealists and believed that fashion should be in dialogue with art and culture, not simply with trends. That philosophy still guides us today. In a world driven by immediacy, our responsibility is to protect the integrity of the house — its imagination, its craftsmanship, its sense of audacity, whilst expressing it in a contemporary way. If a house has a strong creative language, each collection becomes more than a seasonal moment; it becomes part of a cultural conversation. Immediacy creates attention. Cultural vision creates legacy.”

— Delphine Bellini

In October of last year, during a creative retreat outside Rome, Daniel Roseberry arranged a last-minute tour of the Sistine Chapel. What transpired in those hallowed chambers would fundamentally alter the trajectory of Schiaparelli's Spring/Summer 2026 Haute Couture collection. Standing beneath Michelangelo's ceiling — a work that changed art forever when one man presented a wild, visually rambunctious, vulnerable and romantic imagining of the divine — Roseberry experienced a revelation that would become the emotional heartbeat of this season.

“The first thing you see isn't the ceiling, but the walls, densely painted by an army of artists in ecclesiastical scenes meant to tell, to educate. But crane your neck skyward and thought stops. Feeling begins.” Here were agony and ecstasy commingled, terrible and exquisite. Michelangelo hadn't told his audience what happened; he gave them permission to feel when they looked at art. Five centuries later, it woke Roseberry up too.

For the first time in years, the creative director stopped thinking about how something should look and instead considered how he felt whilst creating it. This revelation — this shift from cerebral to visceral — informed every element of The Agony and the Ecstasy. Sharp strokes and rapid squiggles became scorpion tails. Stingers and snake teeth emerged as chimeraed archetypes of couture with venom woven into their very silhouettes. These reptilian and arachnid creatures, these infantas terribles, would become the heroes of the collection: birds of flight defying gravity, bold in colour, explosive in silhouette.

The result is a collection that honours the depth of skill and talent within Schiaparelli's ateliers, all working at the height of their technical and imaginative powers. Inspired by the colours of birds of paradise — pinks, blues, saffron — these fantastical creations pay homage to nature's majesty whilst alluding to Elsa Schiaparelli's own fascination with animal life. Who, after all, could forget her interest in the lobster, that ultimate scaled creature indelibly associated with the maison she created?

This is couture as Roseberry believes it should be: not clothing for daily life, but an invitation to unchain imagination. “Stop thinking,” it tells you. “It's time to feel. You only have to look up.”

The Sistine Chapel revelation crystallised a profound truth for Daniel Roseberry: couture exists within structure, within the rigour and rules of its own traditions, yet the designer must find freedom within those confines, pushing the medium to its absolute limits. This collection channels that duality — agony and ecstasy intertwined — through sharp, scorpion-tailed silhouettes that defy gravity with architectural audacity. The infantas terribles emerge as the collection's protagonists: reptilian and arachnid creatures rendered in explosive volumes and bold colour. These are not merely garments but sculptural visions — birds of flight captured mid-ascent, their plumage rendered in the vivid hues of paradise birds. Each piece possesses a "hook", a name that captures its essence, transforming the seasonal into the eternal.

The technical virtuosity on display represents the Schiaparelli ateliers working at the apex of their powers. Hand-cut lace achieves bas-relief dimensionality, creating depth and shadow through meticulous construction. Feathers — both genuine and trompe l'oeil silk bouquets — are hand-painted, airbrushed, or ceremonially dipped in resin and crystals. Layers of neon tulle stack beneath lace to produce a sfumato effect, that Renaissance technique of subtle gradation. Consider Isabella Blowfish: an extraordinary skirt suit constructed from gossamer layers of tulle and organza, dusted with shadows of crystals in blowfish colourisation and finished with organza spikes. One of the collection's most fantastical jackets required over 4,000 hours of embroidery alone, a testament to the marriage of imagination and craft.

The accessories bristle with artificial bird heads — sculptures fashioned from silk feathers, their beaks rendered in resin, their eyes pearl cabochons. These are fantasies, certainly, but they serve as homages to nature's majesty and to Elsa Schiaparelli's own fascination with creatures of sea and sky. The keyhole, that portal to mystery and signature iconography of the maison, recurs throughout. So many question the purpose of couture, Roseberry acknowledges. It certainly isn't to create clothing for quotidian existence. Rather, it allows connection with the hopeful adolescent who chose to chase fashion's singular fantasy. "Let the rest of the year be about reality, but nothing is more powerful — or timeless — or for me, more now — than getting to unchain my imagination… and, I hope, yours."