Everyone’s Talking About Schiaparelli’s Fall 2025 Beating Heart Dress

Schiaparelli’s Fall 2025 Haute Couture show delivered a moment the fashion world won’t forget anytime soon. Among a sea of black and white creations, one dress emerged with arresting intensity; a crimson satin gown complete with a pulsating, rhinestone-encrusted heart placed prominently on the chest. 

Designed by creative director Daniel Roseberry, the heart beating dress is an optical illusion, an anatomical exploration, and a surrealist statement that forces us to confront our understanding of beauty and the human body.

The piece was a direct nod to Salvador Dalí’s 1953 sculpture The Royal Heart, a ruby-studded heart-shaped ornament that physically beats like a real organ. Roseberry brought that vision to life on the runway. His version of the heart, adorned with shimmering red rhinestones, rests on a faux décolletage and contracts mechanically, mimicking the natural rhythm of a human heartbeat. 

The moment the heart starts to beat, the dress transforms from an artistic creation into something eerily lifelike. It doesn’t just look like a body, it breathes like one.

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This beating heart is not just a shock factor; it ties into a long-standing legacy. Elsa Schiaparelli, the house’s founder, was known for embracing surrealism and challenging traditional ideas about fashion. Roseberry, since joining the brand, has remained faithful to those roots. 

The Schiaparelli’s Creative director’s fascination with anatomy has been evident in past collections through disembodied facial features like eyes and noses embroidered onto garments. But this time, the anatomy is not symbolic, it’s literal, exposed, and commanding attention.

What makes the Schiaparelli heart beating dress particularly haunting is not just the heart itself but the way the entire garment engages with the viewer’s sense of perception. While the front hosts the beating heart, the back of the dress is equally unnerving. Roseberry sculpted a torso from red satin, complete with breasts, stomach, and nipples, and attached it to the reverse side of the gown. 

The illusion makes it appear as though the model’s body has been turned inside out or that her head is on backwards. The effect is as disorienting as it is captivating. There’s a softness to the satin and a rough, rugged texture to the rhinestones that further enhances the contradiction within the design.

The emotional impact of the dress lies not only in its physical design but in its symbolism. The heart is the center of life, yet it’s usually hidden beneath layers of skin, bone, and muscle. Roseberry brings it forward, exposes it, and makes it beautiful. It’s a poetic gesture; vulnerable yet bold, delicate yet mechanical. It makes the viewer consider what lies beneath the surface, both physically and emotionally.

Critics and fans alike have noted that the dress feels like something out of a dream or perhaps a nightmare. And that’s exactly what makes it effective. It toes the line between familiar and strange, elegance and grotesque. It holds a mirror to the body and forces us to look, really look, at ourselves. Fashion is often about escape, fantasy, and aspiration. But sometimes, it’s about confronting the truth; about what we are made of, how we function, and what it means to be alive.

This single piece has already earned its place in couture history, not just for its craftsmanship but for the conversation it’s sparked. In an industry that often focuses on aesthetics and trend cycles, Roseberry reminds us that fashion can also be visceral, intellectual, and deeply human. By placing a beating heart on the outside, he turns the inside out literally and metaphorically. He makes vulnerability visible. And in doing so, he redefines what it means for a dress to be powerful.

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While the Schiaparelli Beating Heart dress has captured headlines, it’s also emblematic of a broader shift within the Fall 2025 collection. The rest of the collection, while less literal, carried the same emotional weight. Daniel Roseberry stepped away from his previously dramatic use of corsetry and waist-cinching, instead favoring more natural silhouettes. He let fabric speak for itself, cutting on the bias to follow the body’s curves and allowing movement to enhance structure. This change signaled a softer approach to power dressing, one that celebrated the body rather than reshaping it.

The Fall 2025 collection reflects Elsa Schiaparelli’s own questions about the purpose of fashion. Is it merely utilitarian, or can it be considered a form of art? Roseberry’s answer seems clear. In the show notes, he expressed a desire to blend life and art, to use fashion as a medium that transcends wearability.

The human body, as the vessel of life, becomes both the inspiration and the canvas. In showcasing it so literally, through heartbeats, satin torsos, and backward illusions, he’s not just designing clothes. He’s crafting living sculptures.

See Schiaparelli’s Fall 2025 collection below:

Photo: Schiaparelli