Schiaparelli Haute Couture AW26: Roseberry Revives the Macabre

Daniel Roseberry's Autumn/Winter 2026 Schiaparelli haute couture show at the Victoria and Albert Museum's ongoing Schiaparelli retrospective channels the house's founder Elsa Schiaparelli's signature shock value. The collection evokes the Skeleton dress (1938), a collaboration with Salvador Dalí, through corporeal details: silicone flanges resembling loose tissue, flaps and labia, prosthetics adding gyres of skin to models' ears and navels, and dresses with sections carved out like removed organs. Roseberry cited Antoni Gaudí and the transformation of 'the ordinary into the extraordinary' as influences, but the palette of pink, blue, and purple also suggests viscera. The designer noted that naming things strips them of power and magic, leaving exhilaration in terror. The show included sea-themed elements: latex tentacles, a Thermidor pink dress with faux coral, finale dresses lit like anglerfish, and earrings shaped like sea anemones. Roseberry expressed interest in testing how shocking Schiaparelli's original creations remain to a modern audience. The collection oscillates between sweet pastels and sinister macabre, retaining the house's trademark unsettling elegance.