Paris Runway Ready goes BACK TO THE FUTURE with Schiaparelli, who opens Haute Couture Week with a pulse. Literally.
Author: Brit Olivia
When listening to Daniel Roseberry speak - we can bring a vision to our minds of the past. We can see ourselves in a different timeline... the past. But the question is... can you bring that timeline into your future? And do you want too? He certainly does and did it all so well today in Paris.
"If last season was about making something baroque look modern, this season is about inverting archives to make them look futuristic," read the show notes from today's Schiaparelli Fall/Winter 2025-26 couture show titled 'Back to the Future' by Daniel Roseberry.
"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?" asks Roseberry this season.
Photos courtesy of Schiaparelli
BACK TO THE FUTURE: Schiaparelli Opens Haute Couture Week with a Pulse
By Paris Runway Official — July 7, 2025 | Paris, France
The Grand Palais may be closed for renovations, but today, the beating heart of Parisian couture found its home at the Petit Palais, where Daniel Roseberry unveiled his Fall/Winter 2025-2026 Haute Couture collection for Schiaparelli... a cinematic, surrealist triumph titled “Back to the Future.”
Gone were the headline-grabbing theatrics of seasons past... no life-size lion heads, no runway shock-jobs designed for virality. In their place: precision, emotion, and the kind of technical wizardry only haute couture can truly deliver. And yet, amid the quieter elegance and sculptural restraint, Roseberry still gave us a literal beating heart. A gem-studded anatomical wonder pulsating on the back of a model like a Dali dream come alive.
This season, Daniel Roseberry leaned into introspection. Drawing from the house archives and Elsa Schiaparelli’s surrealist legacy, he reimagined the year 1940 when Elsa herself fled Paris during Nazi occupation, while fashion persisted as a form of rebellion, expression, and art. That duality, resistance and refinement defined the mood.
Here is what is found on the Schiaparelli website:
BACK TO THE FUTURE
HAUTE COUTURE FALL/WINTER 2025-2026
In June of 1940, Elsa Schiaparelli left Paris, a city she loved and had grown to call home, and boarded a ship for New York. It marked the end of a decade, but also the end of a revolutionary period in fashion.
Photos courtesy of Schiaparelli
A Tale of Two Times: Then and Now
While titled Back to the Future, the show was firmly rooted in the past. Roseberry honored the final moments of Paris pre-WWII, a time of political turbulence and artistic innovation. In doing so, he delivered a message as timely as it was stylish: art is not escapism, but defiance.
Sharp 1940s tailoring such as nipped waists, sculpted shoulders, flared hips was modernized with anatomical quirks: ceramic buttons shaped like ribs, a molded body reversed on the torso, and sheer, subversive construction that blurred the line between exposure and elegance.
One gown, dubbed “the cigarette dress,” smoked in silence... sleek, seductive, and entirely wordless. Another, splashed with hand-painted eyeballs, blinked back at the audience with metallic embroidered lashes.
Photos courtesy of Schiaparelli
Craft as Protest, Couture as Power
There’s embroidery, and then there’s Schiaparelli embroidery. This season’s details were museum-worthy, from the jeweled polka-dot shifts to an updated Apollo cape flipped forward and rimmed in fringe. Each look whispered surrealism, not shouted it.
The collection’s star: the pulsating heart, set in crystals, symbolizing both vulnerability and vitality. A wink to Elsa’s friendship with Salvador Dalí, it anchored the show’s emotional pulse and literalized its theme. The body is a canvas. Art is alive.
Photos courtesy of Schiaparelli
Who Was There
The front row glittered with fashion's modern royalty: Dua Lipa, Cardi B, Karol G, Leonie Hanne and Hunter Schafer sat alongside editors and insiders who understood that this was not just a show—it was a statement. With production by Villa Eugénie, styling by Marie Chaix, and makeup by Pat McGrath, every detail reinforced Schiaparelli’s position at the intersection of intellect and indulgence.
Photos courtesy of Schiaparelli
Final Thoughts
Schiaparelli’s Fall/Winter 2025-26 couture collection didn’t just open fashion week... it elevated it. Roseberry delivered a study in contrasts: bold yet elegant, historical yet futuristic, quiet yet impossibly loud in meaning.
As fascism once again rears its head globally, “Back to the Future” reminds us: couture isn’t just about fantasy. It’s about memory, resistance, and the radical power of beauty.
It also reminds us of just how ALIVE art is. The heart. Where the art lives within all of us can transpire into something physical, into something lovely if we allow it to come out into the physical. Today, Daniel showed us the heart certainly holds memories and those memories can be used to bring us directly into the future.
Photos courtesy of Schiaparelli