From divisive foam animal heads to Daniel Roseberry’s meditation on Dante’s Inferno, British Vogue’s fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen shares five things to know about Schiaparelli’s spring/summer 2023 couture show, which opened Couture Fashion Week this season.
The show featured faux animal heads
It took place in the Petit Palais, but it felt like a morning at the theatre. Kylie Jenner arrived with a huge lion’s head attached to her dress. Doja Cat came covered in a balaclava of red crystals. In between were the clients, their faces gilded in golden fineries, their backs enforced with spinal cord-embellished coats. The attention-grabbing designs of Daniel Roseberry have turned Schiaparelli into a 24-hour red-carpet photo op, or in the case of today’s haute couture show, perhaps an opening night on Broadway. The trophy room of faux animal heads that mutated from his creations – a lion, a snow leopard, a wolf – certainly blurred the lines between runway and stage, or as Roseberry put it: “The lines between the real and the unreal.” That idea made for an approach to the trademark surrealism of Schiaparelli less obscure than previous proposals, but one that felt right for his fans and followers.
The collection was inspired by Dante’s Inferno
In his self-penned show notes, Roseberry cited Dante’s Inferno as the inspiration behind the collection, likening its protagonist’s uncertain journey into hell to the doubt that falls upon a designer like himself when he sits down to design. “This collection is my homage to doubt,” he wrote. “I wanted to step away from techniques I was comfortable with and understood, to choose instead that dark wood where everything is scary but new.” The feeling of the inferno appeared more as a spiritual reference than a direct one, unless your idea of hell is being trapped inside a massive faux taxidermy wolf, Midsommar style. (Naomi Campbell, who was given the honour, seemed typically unfazed.) Along with the lion and the snow leopard, it represented the animals Dante equates to lust, pride and avarice. A reference to the friendly giants he encounters in hell, a hammered brass and patina handmade giant’s head hit the runway with equal theatrical effect.
There was a shell theme
To a Philip Glass soundtrack grandiose enough for a spaceship launch, Roseberry interpreted the scenery of Dante’s The Divine Comedy in techniques he said were inspired by the “house of mirrors quality” of the work, i.e. surreal. They materialised in things that weren’t as they seemed: hand-painted velvet dresses, others covered in wooden balls, and some embroidered with sequins made from leather-covered tin. The plastrons – or breastplates – that have become a Roseberry signature emerged in the form of a massive marquetry shell, a timely motif (The Little Mermaid live action film comes out on 26 May), echoed in a shell-like cone bra embellished in said leather-covered metal sequins. Another plastron in gold wasn’t a plastron at all, but golden body-paint on a model’s naked torso styled casually with a crepe trouser and an amber necklace.
The tailoring silhouette was formidable
In tailoring looks less likely to do the rounds on Instagram than animal heads and plastrons, but probably a lot more painstaking to create, Roseberry investigated a formidable silhouette cut huge and boxy at the shoulder, sleeve and bust only to nip in at the waist and sculpt angularly along the hip bone. Also interpreted in a bolero, it had a whiff of toreador about it, but maybe it was conjured by the association with severed animal heads. The silhouette was explored in evening jackets, a jumpsuit, and a leather dress so sculpted it virtually morphed into one of Roseberry’s breastplates. More rooted in reality, those shapes paved the way for purified evening dresses imbued with hints of surrealism, like a black satin wool dress with a wonky bustier or a champagne velvet dress shaped like a lampshade, both framed by stoles so rigid they could have been the autonomous cape of Doctor Strange.
It was about Roseberry’s creativity
Roseberry’s show notes finished on a sentimental key: “Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso,” he wrote, referring to the three books that make up The Divine Comedy. “One cannot exist without the others. It is a reminder that there is no such thing as heaven without hell; there is no joy without sorrow; there is no ecstasy of creation without the torture of doubt. My prayer for myself is that I remember that always – that, on my most difficult days, when inspiration just won’t come, I remember that no ascension to heaven is possible without first a trip to the fires, and the fear that comes with it. Let me embrace it always.” As a wise lion once said: Hakuna matata.
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Anders Christian MadsenCredit
Lead image: Filippo Fior via Gorunway.com
