While preparing for his latest couture show, Schiaparelli artistic director Daniel Roseberry indulged in a little time travel. Namely, he took a trip into an archive of ribbons from pre-World War II-era France, now slightly faded and housed in an antique shop.
Some of those very same ribbons found their way into Schiaparelli’s collection, shown today in Paris and titled “Icarus.” They also spurred him to look to certain ghosts of couture past, including Madame Grès and Charles Frederick Worth. He was inspired by their quest for perfection, which didn’t hold the same connotations it does today of extreme paring-back.
“I’m so tired of everyone constantly equating modernity with simplicity: Can’t the new also be worked, be baroque, be extravagant?” Roseberry asked in his show notes, which often read more like mini-manifestos. “Has our fixation on what looks or feels modern become a limitation? Has it cost us our imagination?” In the stripped-down, ultra-optimized world of current style (quiet luxury, capsule wardrobes, sleek “investment pieces”), Roseberry is a proud maximalist and proponent of beauty. And an avid student of history, incorporating the Surrealist signatures of Elsa Schiaparelli herself into his collections since he took the post in 2019. (Her monogrammed cigarette case was transformed into a miniaudière this season.)
Those history lessons led to dresses that channeled what he calls “liquid deco,” the curve-hugging silhouettes of the 1920s and ’30s, with looks that clung to the body like a jealous lover. And the ’50s, another pinnacle for couture, sparked creations like a butter-hued bustier gown that looked as though Cinderella’s mice had become petites mains. (It was, in fact, inspired by a Giacometti lamp.)
Couture may be an age-old practice, but its exemplars have always pushed technical boundaries, and this collection was no different. “Every look here has been nurtured and tended to like a baby,” Roseberry said of the intense focus that went into each of the 33 exits. For example, feathers were treated with glycerin and keratin, evocative of both Icarus’ wax wings and a more earthbound inspiration: Ginger Rogers’ monkey fur-trimmed movie costumes. For Roseberry, no special effect is out of reach: “How high can we couturiers go? As high as the sun—and the Gods—allow us.”
Schiaparelli Fall 2025 Couture
Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s Fashion Features Director and the author of the book Dress Code, which was selected as one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year. Her writing has previously appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.