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The Agony and the Ecstasy, Daniel Roseberry’s latest vision of sacred spectacle and surreal power
Schiaparelli’s latest haute couture show, titled The Agony and the Ecstasy, felt like a collision between cathedral scale awe and the house’s signature surreal bite. Inspired by Daniel Roseberry’s encounter with Rome and the Sistine Chapel, the collection translated spiritual grandeur into couture that was both reverent and disruptive, turning the runway into a procession of modern myths.
The silhouettes were the main message: sharply controlled waists, sculpted shoulders, and elongated lines that read classical from the front, then shifted into something uncanny in profile through engineered curves, protrusions, and deliberate exaggeration. Nothing looked accidental. Each look felt built, almost carved, with couture technique doing the heavy lifting rather than hiding in the background.
Materials and craft amplified that tension between ecstasy and ordeal. Dense embellishment, trompe l’oeil effects, and jewellery like structure delivered the seductive spectacle Schiaparelli is known for, while corseted frameworks and disciplined tailoring gave the collection a sense of pressure and control, as if beauty required endurance. Several of the most memorable moments leaned into the show’s sharper instincts: creature-like motifs, scorpion references and tail-like extensions, and silhouettes that hinted at wings or transformation. These details were not just there to go viral. They reinforced the collection’s core idea that the body can be both icon and battleground, divine and vulnerable at once.
In a fashion moment where understatement often signals caution, Schiaparelli continues to argue for ambition. Roseberry’s couture suggests that beauty is not only comfort or luxury, it can be confrontation, theatre, and a kind of charged symbolism you feel before you fully understand it. The result was a show that reached for the transcendent while keeping its edge intact, proof that couture can still aim for the sublime and still leave a mark.
