Back to the Future: Schiaparelli’s Next Step

For his Autumn/Winter 2025–2026 couture collection, Daniel Roseberry steps into the future while honouring the past — exploring a moment when fashion, art and history teetered on the brink. The result? A vision of couture that looks backwards — and eerily forwards — all at once. Here’s everything you need to know.

Between Past and Future
This season, Daniel Roseberry is in a philosophical frame of mind. He wasn’t content to design a collection merely for beauty’s sake; he wanted to ask questions — and offer some answers. In his show notes, he referenced two of the most defining couturières of the early 20th century: Gabrielle Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli. Gabrielle, who liberated women from the corset with her radical use of jersey. And Elsa, who imbued fashion with meaning — and often, mischief. This was the crux of Roseberry’s message: these are not just clothes; they carry intent.

By referencing Elsa’s legacy, Roseberry examined how the past can illuminate — and perhaps even shape — the future. “In retrospect, the years preceding Elsa’s temporary flight from Paris would turn out to be a year of peak elegance, as well as the beginning of the modern era of war,” he writes, recalling Schiaparelli’s escape to New York in the early 1940s. “Two poles, existing improbably in the same city, at the same time. This collection is dedicated to that period, when life and art was on the precipice: to the sunset of elegance, and to the end of the world as we knew it.”

In Black and White
“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?” Roseberry continues. The opening look set the tone: a sharply tailored black jacket embroidered with a silver palm tree motif from the house’s archives, paired with a matching pencil skirt. Schiaparelli herself wore similar silhouettes — immortalised in her iconic 1930s portrait by Horst P. Horst, whose imagery, along with that of Man Ray, shaped the visual mood of the collection. Hence, the metallic, grey-tinted surfaces throughout. Suits were a cornerstone — from a black-and-white tweed pantsuit with saddle-shaped shoulders to a series of commanding matador jackets in black and off-white. Monochrome ruled, with the exception of three looks in high-impact red. One standout: a dress worn almost backwards, revealing a literal beating heart at the back — a visceral symbol of life, pulsing on regardless. “I’m proposing a world without screens, without AI, without technology — an old world, yes, but a post-future one as well,” Roseberry wrote. “Maybe they’re one and the same. If last season was about making something baroque look modern, this season is about inverting archives to make them look futuristic.”

The Trompe L’Oeil Effect
The entire show unfolded like a surrealist trompe l’oeil — from the makeup to the textiles. Think Donegal wool, high-shine satin, and exaggerated silhouettes that deceived the eye. There were dinner suits with knee-grazing skirts, their jackets glittering with silver thread and iridescent embroidery. There was the debut of the Elsa jacket, with its sharp shoulders and archival nods, offered in both tailored cuts and woollen iterations. Bias-cut gowns introduced a new vision of eveningwear — sensual, sculptural, and free from corsetry and constraint.

And then, of course, there were the fantasy pieces. Schiaparelli’s iconic “Apollo” cape was reimagined as an explosive spray of diamanté bijoux, layered in starbursts of black, gunmetal, and satin silver. A tulle “Squiggles and Wiggles” dress — festooned with shell-like 3D embroideries — floated in a cloud of white silk organdie, parasol in hand. Baroque pearls, metallic leopard spots, and black jet beads encrusted matador-style coats in the unmistakable codes of the maison.

And to close? A showstopping “Eyes Wide Open” embroidery dress: a hand-painted iris, encased in resin cabochons, framed by lashes of metallic thread, and finished with a sweeping cascade of silk tulle down the back — haunting, poetic, unforgettable.

Courtesy: Schiaparelli 

Text: Lidia Ageeva