For Spring 2026, Schiaparelli Couture Takes to the Skies

To kick off the spring 2026 couture shows in Paris on Monday, January 26, Schiaparelli creative director Daniel Roseberry took peacocking to new heights, with a celestial, mythical collection that rivaled the ornateness of the Sistine Chapel.

The label’s usual Petit Palais venue was transformed into a cavernous, dark vision in honor of the show, dubbed “The Agony and Ecstasy,” inspired by Roseberry’s trip to Rome last October, where he made a last-minute visit to the Sistine Chapel and was inspired for this season’s collection. Guests received an invitation in the form of a golden pendant shaped like a snake head with a feathered wing—just a hint of what was to come.

There were densely feathered necklines, horned bodices, spiked shoulders, scorpion tail-accented backs(!). To put it simply: this was couture built for the bold. Black wool dresses with explosions of tulle bustles came with unusual surprises, like textural trompe l’oeil crocodile tails embroidered down the front. Roseberry carefully built up a level of new extremes here, reaching the crescendo midway through the show with a duo of looks dubbed “The Scorpion Sisters.” Hulking 3-D embroidered scorpion tails covered in flower appliqués burst out of the backs of jackets and bustiers, gently swaying and tipping forward as the models walked down the runway.

“Here is agony and ecstasy commingled, terrible and exquisite,” Roseberry wrote in the show notes of Michelangelo’s work, which caused such a lightbulb moment for the designer. “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. I stopped thinking for the first time in years of how something should look, but instead about how I feel when creating it.”

Roseberry has a history of creating unexpected, surreal work at Schiaparelli. But this collection may have been his most awe-inspiring yet, transcending the confines of fashion and heading more into the category of fine art. Other highlights included feathered jackets, hand-painted and adorned with hand-sculpted beaks. (Exaggerated rhinestone crowns finished the look.) A bustier gown was crafted from crystal-tipped peacock feathers. Tulle explosions were designed to mirror birds in flight, while heels came covered in black rooster feathers with pink crystals. All of the feathers in the collection were made from silk, while the beaks were crafted from resin—even the realistic-looking eyes were really just pearls.

If the last few sculpted feather jackets that appeared on the runway recalled designs of the golden age of French fashion–Alexander McQueen at Givenchy, Thierry Mugler, Jean Paul Gaultier—it may have been Roseberry’s subtle way of paying tribute to the names he was inspired by growing up. “Couture allows me to connect with the hopeful adolescent I once was, the one who decided to not go into medicine or finance or law, but to chase that singular fantasy that fashion can still provide,” he wrote in the show notes. “Couture is an invitation. Stop thinking, it tells you. It’s time to feel. You only have to look up.”