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A warm “howdy” is becoming more appropriate than a breathy “bonjour” backstage at Paris Fashion Week. On day one, Americans are already the flavour of the autumn/winter 2026 haute couture season at two leading fashion houses, leaving the acquired taste of French designers in short supply.
The week dedicated to clothes for the rich, where gowns can cost anywhere between $77,000 and $1,230,000, began with a collection brimming with historical references from US designer Daniel Roseberry at Schiaparelli.
Who is buying the matador suits and gowns with jutting hips and shoulders? Lauren Sanchez wore a gold corset dress from Schiaparelli as part of her pre-wedding festivities with Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. The dress, with floral hand embroidery, was estimated to have cost $US100,000 ($154,000).
Cardi B accessorising with a crow at the Schiaparelli autumn/winter, 2025/2026 haute couture show in Paris.Credit: Getty Images
Roseberry has risen to the top of the Parisienne ranks by embracing the drama of the label, founded by Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli in 1927, which gained fame for its surrealist touches. In 2023, Roseberry gave us Kylie Jenner wearing a realistic lion’s head in the front row, yesterday it was Cardi B arriving cocooned in a black velvet gown with pearl fringing, an exaggerated U-neckline and a crow on a leash.
Cardi B asked the paparazzi to be quiet, to not scare the bird. Pop singer Dua Lipa, in a white gown with paillettes and a keyhole cut-out endured the photographers screams, arriving without a bird, or even a key.
The highlight of the Schiaparelli show was a dress with a faux décolletage on the back and a beating red diamanté heart. It’s unlikely to inspire any Zara dresses but could turn up at Lauren Sanchez-Bezos’s Valentine’s Day celebrations.
Groundwork for the US invasion began the day before the Schiaparelli show, with Washington DC-born designer Michael Rider debuting as creative director at Celine.
Having worked at the French fashion house in the past, with stints at Balenciaga and Ralph Lauren, Rider’s ready-to-wear show was a confident presentation of early 80s silhouettes with roomy red leather jackets, skinny jeans and suits with broad shoulders and nipped waists.
“We worked on translating them into a way of dressing – that attitude, or attitudes, that we feel describe who we are and what we stand for,” Rider wrote in a letter to the front row. “I’ve always loved the idea of clothing that lives on, that becomes a part of the wearer’s life.”
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The warm response to the American will have made one Frenchman happy. Under Rider’s predecessor Hedi Slimane, Celine was estimated to be the third-largest fashion house in the LVMH empire, owned by French billionaire Bernard Arnault.
“Celine is chic, hip, sexy fashion for young people even if the prices are what they are, and it works,” Arnault said at the LVMH annual general meeting in April 2024. Rider’s show ticked all of Arnault’s boxes.
The locals will have to wait until the ready-to-wear shows in October to make fashion week French again, when Matthieu Blazy makes his debut at Chanel.
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