Taking Flight: Fall/Winter 2025-26 Haute Couture’s Top Trend & PICCHIOTTI’s Bird Brooches

Taking Flight: Fall/Winter 2025-26 Haute Couture’s Top Trend & PICCHIOTTI’s Bird Brooches

The Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2025-26 runways featured a lively flock of exotic bird inspirations. Fancy feathers adorned sweaters, overcoats, and dresses at Chanel, while Viktor & Rolf wowed the audience with three-dimensional oversized headdressings, and Schiaparelli added wings to shoulders and peacock patterns to form-fitting silhouettes. Fashion’s aviary of delight brings to mind the exquisite wingèd objets d’art and brooches handcrafted by PICCHIOTTI over the years.  

Giuseppe Picchiotti has long held a fascination surrounding birds. Across several decades, he has created a spectacular paradise of PICCHIOTTI birds, conceiving, designing, and crafting a new bird each year in the 1980s, ‘90s, and early 2000s. From the simplicity of a diamond dove to the colorful parrot or the enchanting detail of a colorful large-billed toucan, each bird is more beautiful than its predecessor, and each is a treasured collector’s item.  

“My fascination with birds started as a young boy. I find the colors of their wings and their extraordinary silhouettes very alluring,” says Giuseppe Picchiotti, founder of PICCHIOTTI. “In some ways, my bird brooches define the era in which they were created – the opulent, care-free attitude of their time. They truly reflect our craftsmen’s mastery in creating exclusive, one-of-a-kind, wearable sculptures. I hope they continue to inspire whoever wears them as much as the birds themselves inspired me.” 

According to jewelry historian Vivienne Becker in her 2017 book about PICCHIOTTI’s 50th Anniversary, “the bird, symbol of enlightenment and messenger of love, has been an essential part of PICCHIOTTI’s iconography since 1967. … As the brand’s style has evolved, becoming ever more refined, so the birds have become more adventurous in their exoticism, use of materials, combinations of gems, in their three-dimensionality and movement, and perhaps especially in their characterization.” Here, we will look back at some of Giuseppe’s most beloved birds, each of which feels incredibly relevant today with the plethora of bird looks on the Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2025-26 runways. 

Posh Plumage 

Both Schiaparelli and Viktor & Rolf augmented their winter Haute Couture offerings with wildly colorful plumage protruding from headgear or making up the bodices of the gowns. Reminiscent of male peacocks and their beloved mating rituals, the posh plumes gracefully dance as the models strut the runway, similar to how a peacock’s feathers sway as it parades. Giuseppe Picchiotti attempted to capture the peacock’s train with pear shaped emeralds and round diamonds. The PICCHIOTTI Masterpieces Emeralds brooch features a peacock in full stride with its train spreading brilliance for all to admire. The undulating patterns of both the feathers and the body of the peacock evoke the famous strut and capture the light in thrilling sparkle. The beak is carefully crafted in hematite, and the eye is a perfectly round emerald. Above its head, the peacock’s crest is composed of four graduated pear-shaped yellow diamonds.  If your wardrobe cannot easily accommodate an avian gown, consider the emerald brooch as a refreshing alternative. It can be worn for special occasions or to spruce up the lapel of blazers and outerwear. Giuseppe would also love to see this refined creature in an elegant up-do. 

Feathers in Flight

Fluffed up feathers also strutted the Couture runways, luxuriating behind the gowns at Iris Van Herpen or giving flight to shoulder pads at Schiaparelli. The fanciful colors and shapes spread out in full flight formation creating bold silhouettes of statement-making style. Like the fashion designers, Giuseppe Picchiotti has often embraced the challenge of capturing birds in flight. Both doves and eagles have been crafted with outstretched wings either in flight or on the hunt.  

Color plays a central role in these designs. According to Becker, “In 1985, an awe-inspiringly predatory eagle, alighted on a lavish necklace of draped ruby and sapphire beads. Today, the same eagle is reprised, refined and perfected, demonstrating extraordinary modelling skills, as it swoops down, wings still lifted ready to escape again, with its prize of a monumental emerald cut aquamarine seized in its pink gold talons.” 

Poised and Perched

Some couture designers took a more refined approached. Chanel offered feathers in sleek silhouettes, either adorning outerwear or adding volume to the shoulders of a gown. Maison Margiela utilized a flock of bird feathers in a neutral palette in remarkably chic skirts or hand-painted fabrics featuring sprawling wings. Zuhair Murad also offered patterns of wings using three-dimensional beading to draw attention to the luxurious wispy designs. 

PICCHIOTTI also offers a simplified pin for more tailored fashion personalities. The poised and perched Peacock brooch is an excellent example. More subdued in both shape and style, this elegant creature sits atop a burnished gold tree limb and sports a single large oval emerald at its core. Its charm is undeniable and offers a quiet luxury approach for exotic bird fans.  

For those who enjoy less literal interpretations, like the Chanel Haute Couture looks, PICCHIOTTI has a beautifully refined single feather brooch. Crafted in 18K white gold, this sizable feather furls in white diamonds with a beautiful center vein of perfectly re-cut baguette sapphires.  It is breathtaking in its simplicity and will last a lifetime and beyond. 

Beaks & Bills 

Another bird element imbuing inspiration on the Couture Fall/Winter runways was the element of the beak. Conceived in feather form by Viktor & Rolf, the flamboyant beaks spilled forth in large pink feathers or as long and vertical shapes jutting out from the forehead. Giuseppe also channeled the beaks of large-billed birds like toucans and parrots.  

“By the 1980s, the Toucan had appeared,” says Becker, “…highly stylized, with its huge, arched gold beak, a diamond head and carved onyx body, and folded wings of shaded, carved coral and tail feathers of tapered diamond baguettes. This charismatic character, with its echoes of the 1940s cocktail style of jewelry, was to become a favorite in the Picchiotti aviary.”  Another version of the Toucan brooch was later fashioned with a large coral beak and diamond body but ruby baguette tail feathers. 

These bold and colorful looks beckon good times and Caribbean flair, perfect for lifting the mood or celebrating milestones. Whether worn or simply admired as objets d’art, these birds leave a memorable impression that always brings delight. 

Other birds in the PICCHIOTTI collection include the dove, the parrot, and the duck. Giuseppe’s bejeweled birds have become an integral part of the brand’s DNA. So much so that Giuseppe was commissioned back in 1993 to create a series of ten bird brooches in celebration of PICCHIOTTI’s 25th anniversary in the Japanese market, some of which you can see above. The birds created some buzz and helped PICCHIOTTI to become more well known to the general public in Japan and beyond.  

Whether you embrace the exotic and colorful or the more refined looks, PICCHIOTTI, no doubt, has a bird to appeal to your inner birder.  With the brooch’s return to fashion (on runways and red carpets alike), now is the time to strut with swagger sporting some feathers of your own to add to the fashion dialogue of the day. Explore more PICCHIOTTI brooches and charming creatures on Pinterest. 

 

Feature image at top – Clockwise from upper left – Sarah Jessica Parker in Iris Van Harpen haute couture at NYC Ballet gala (Oct 2025, Getty), Cate Blanchette in Zuhair Murad at Cannes Film Festival 2025, PICCHIOTTI Toucan brooch, PICCHIOTTI Parrot brooch, Viktor & Rolf, PICCHIOTTI Bird of Paradise brooch – all fashion images are Haute Couture F/W 2025-26 from Spotlight Launchmetrics  

 

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