If Looks Could Kill
Review of Schiaparelli Spring 2026 Fashion Show
By Mackenzie Richard Zuckerman
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Femme Fatale & Radical Ease
At Schiaparelli this season, Daniel Roseberry returned to sensuality with a sharpened eye –rooted, commanding, and never one-dimensional. These were clothes that recognized feminine desire as layered: at once glamorous, complex, and edged with danger. A sense of nocturnal allure permeated the collection, the kind that shifts power in the room; this was no damsel’s wardrobe but that of the hunter, the vixen, the woman who turns the trap into her stage.
Even the garments themselves carried that tension. Holes punctured silhouettes like deliberate ruptures – flashes of skin that suggested both danger and control. In Roseberry’s hands, absence became presence, turning voids into ornament and layering the collection’s message: sensuality need not be seamless to be powerful; it can be fractured, exposed, and unapologetically complex.
What Roseberry seemed to pursue this season was a closer alignment between Schiaparelli’s celebrated couture and its ready-to-wear. Where past outings have occasionally swerved into theatrical homage or Americana detours, this collection aimed to anchor itself in Parisian elegance and couture-infused gravitas. It was an attempt to remind the audience that Schiaparelli is more than its surrealist signatures or jewelry spectacle – it is a house that can distill fantasy into wearable form without losing its edge.
The palette – anchored in black, cream, and deep red – reinforced this gravity, while luminous jewelry glowed like embers threaded through the darkness. Surrealist motifs, so integral to the house’s mythos, receded into refinement, embedded seamlessly within elevated eveningwear. If last season’s Western ode nodded to Roseberry’s Texan roots, this collection felt firmly Parisian: chic, sensual, and unflinchingly assured. And it raises a timely question—how do houses known for couture grandeur translate that aura into ready-to-wear without diluting either side of the equation?
THE DIRECTION
THE QUOTE
I wanted extreme wearability, yes – but always with the extreme drama that sucks the air out of the room. For me it was about going back to the roots of the house – the sharp shoulder, the nipped waist – and turning those iconic things Elsa mastered into modern form.
THE WRAP UP
This season’s Schiaparelli offered an answer: by closing the distance. Roseberry allowed ready-to-wear to edge closer to the couture dreamworld, without losing its grounding in real life. The risks were clear – pivoting away from Americana so quickly may unsettle those seeking continuity, while a reliance on eveningwear and a restrained palette left less room for breadth. Yet the reward was a collection that carried the gravity of couture and the immediacy of ready-to-wear, meeting at a point of seductive strength.
The takeaway is one of confidence. Schiaparelli is proving that sensuality today can be dangerous and empowered, not ornamental. And if the ideal woman for this collection had quietly dispatched her husband before dinner? Probably not a surprise. That’s the beauty of Roseberry’s vision: danger makes desire unforgettable.
