Always dancing on the edge between fashion and art, Maison Schiaparelli once again captivated Paris as it opened the Fall-Winter 2025-2026 Haute Couture Fashion Week with a look that was as poetic as it was unsettling: a red dress worn backwards, paired with a necklace that beats like a human heart.
With a collection entitled Back to the Future, creative director Daniel Roseberry continued to deconstruct silhouettes and expectations, pushing the house’s surrealist heritage toward an eerie, futuristic reinterpretation.
One of the most striking pieces of the show—look number 24—was worn by French model Jeanne Cadieu. Draped in an inverted crimson gown, her back revealed a spectacular piece of wearable art: a heart-shaped necklace entirely encrusted with red rhinestones, animated with a mechanical heartbeat that pulsed in real time.
Simply named Cœur Humain (“Human Heart”), the necklace turns an accessory into a fictive organ, vibrating in sync with the rhythm of the runway. Visually stunning, it pays homage to the house’s history while reimagining haute couture as something almost organic—where garments quite literally come alive.
The living jewel evokes the anatomical explorations of Schiaparelli’s founder, Elsa, who famously collaborated with Salvador Dalí in the 1930s to infuse surrealism into fashion. Think of the lobster dress or the shoe-hat—iconic pieces now part of fashion mythology. In the same spirit, Roseberry offers a chillingly elegant trompe-l’œil that blurs the boundary between the real and the imagined. The heart-necklace was developed with jeweler Carlos Alemany, the artisan behind the animated mechanism.
The pulsating piece serves as a literal and symbolic centerpiece to a collection that revels in contradictions: reversing norms, exposing the body’s mystery, and making couture beat with boundless imagination. Every element of the show added to this visceral, story-driven vision.
In the end, Schiaparelli’s necklace was more than just a fashion statement—it was the beating heart of haute couture itself. In a landscape that often feels creatively saturated, the house proved that fashion can still surprise, disturb, and enchant—all in one breathtaking moment.
