Schiaparelli Fall 2026 Couture: Squid Game

by · WWD
Schiaparelli Fall 2026 Couture Collection at Paris Fashion WeekCourtesy of Schiaparelli

Could AI ever design an haute couture collection?

Schiaparelli creative director Daniel Roseberry kicked off Paris Couture Week with a collection intent on proving that anything computer intelligence can do, he can do better. A plunge into the abyss, it featured runway experiments that included a latex jacket with inflatable tentacles, jelly-like molded silicone bustiers and gowns that pulsed with light.

Roseberry is a purist — one of those rare designers who still sketches every look — but he’s feeling the winds of change.

“I did a visit to a university recently, and I found a lot of AI in the senior projects in the portfolios, and it’s hard to know what to do with that because you don’t feel like you’re getting a reflection of the person that you would be considering for a job,” he said backstage.

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Roseberry is clearly ambivalent about computer-assisted design, but he’s never been afraid to take risks. This season, he embraced the paradox of creating made-to-measure clothes in the digital age by pairing haute couture techniques with unexpected materials ranging from latex and silicone to dried flowers, seashells and fish scales.

“It’s really been a story of surrendering to what’s happening today, surrendering to this unknown. The digital part, the hand part: it’s this collision that happens in couture right now, which is really fascinating,” he explained.

With its extreme shapes, gelatinous textures and freaky mutations — flesh-colored silicone back gills, anyone? — his lineup spoke to an era of fake images, body transformation and extreme red carpet dressing.

Glossy molded jackets and corsets were as stiff and pneumatic as the Allen Jones breastplate that Kim Kardashian wore to the Met Gala. Rubbery dresses quivered and clung from every curve. There was a faint menace to even the prettiest looks, like the putty pink pearl-embroidered prom dress worn by Amelia Gray.

Admittedly, Roseberry’s inspirations verged on creepy. His color palette was derived from the unsettling imagery of artist Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster Cycle,” while the techniques were developed with a workshop in Paris that specializes in making photorealistic silicone babies for the film industry.

The designer traced his unconventional approach back to Elsa Schiaparelli herself.

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“I love the extreme. I mean, it’s couture,” he reasoned. “It can never be a one-dimensional beauty here. There’s always a subversion, there’s always an edge, whether that’s coming from animalia or the body, or this reference to silicone and latex — and that’s the kind of beauty that inspires me.”

A walk through the “Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” exhibition, currently on show at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, provides a timely reminder that the Surrealists didn’t need an algorithm to produce mind-bending imagery.

And Roseberry was confident the Schiaparelli faithful, who turned out at 10 a.m. in full gilded anatomic regalia, can handle it. “This is a mood board for the clients, so this is a playground for them,” he said. “It’s just a jumping-off point.”