Honoring The Gilded Roots of Schiaparelli's Past
July 06, 2022
On the same day as the exhibit “Shocking! The Surreal World of Elsa Schiaparelli” opened at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Daniel Roseberry’s FW22/23 couture collection for the Maison graced the runway. The retrospective exhibit honors the musings of Roseberry – Schiaparelli’s current creative director – as well as Elsa Schiaparelli’s own fashion drawings. Both the exhibit and Roseberry’s collection “BORN AGAIN” highlight the influence that Elsa’s relationships with creatives outside the fashion industry had on her reign at Schiap for some two decades – the likes of Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau, to name a couple.
Text by Kaia Carioli
Photos Courtesy of Schiaparelli
Roseberry’s vision flirts with the Schiap archives, but ample room is left for his own artistic inspirations (Carolyne Roehm, for example). Look one begins with a few nods to the iconic old Schiaparelli: embroidered grapes imitating archival Schiaparelli jewelry, a tightly corseted waist, and a skirt that drapes like a royal curtain around the hips. Roseberry exemplifies an expert ability to sculpt such abstract shapes in clothing while still remaining body-obsessed. Billowing taffeta skirts that seem to defy physical laws stand in contrast with satins that hold elegant shapes.
Tendrils of embroidered flowers and beaded fruits cascade down from earrings and scale the boning of corsets. Vibrant sculpted leather bouquets sprouting from sleeves replace metallic botanics later in the collection, and leather birds sit atop the shoulders of models. These heavenly and earthly cornucopious details, feathers, and fowl transform his models into disciples of Mother Nature. Roseberry is clear in his pursuit to stay enchanted with the whimsical beauty of fashion without submitting to the pressure of making a political statement with each collection.
Like Elsa blurred the line between fashion and art, Roseberry in this collection blurs the boundary between fashion and jewelry, featuring garments crafted entirely of stranded baroque pearls and topaz beads. His attention to detail is so explicit, down to the way the tails of ribbons curl. The collection ends with a striking red velvet skirt and asymmetrical corset bejeweled by a capilarious breastplate over the heart, as if to blow a kiss to the type of creating that Elsa championed, and Roseberry is after.
