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From contentious foam animal heads to Daniel Roseberry's Dante's Inferno meditation, British Vogue's fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen provides five things to know about Schiaparelli's spring/summer 2023 couture show, which kicked off Couture Fashion Week this season.
The show featured faux animal heads
It was held at the Petit Palais, yet it seemed like a matinée at the theatre. Kylie Jenner arrived wearing a massive lion's head attached to her gown. Doja Cat arrived wearing a red crystal balaclava. The clients were sandwiched in between, their faces adorned in gold finery and their backs reinforced with spinal cord-embellished jackets. Daniel Roseberry's eye-catching creations have converted Schiaparelli into a 24-hour red-carpet photo op, or, in the case of today's haute couture show, possibly an opening night on Broadway. The trophy cabinet of deformed animal heads - a lion, a snow leopard, and a wolf - clearly blurred the barriers between runway and stage, or, as Roseberry phrased it, "the lines between the real and the surreal." That notion resulted in a less cryptic approach to Schiaparelli's signature surrealism than prior approaches, but one that seemed right for his fans and followers.
The collection was inspired by Dante’s Inferno
Roseberry claimed Dante's Inferno as inspiration for the collection in his self-written show notes, likening its protagonist's uncertain voyage into hell to the doubt that falls upon a designer like himself when he sits down to work. "This collection is my ode to skepticism," he explained. "I wanted to move away from tactics I was familiar with and understood, and instead go into that dark wood where everything is scary yet fresh." Unless your image of hell is being locked inside a gigantic faux taxidermy wolf, Midsommar style, the feeling of the inferno appeared more as a spiritual allusion than a direct one. (Naomi Campbell, who received the award, appeared unconcerned.) It represented, along with the lion and the snow leopard, the creatures Dante associates with lust, pride, and avarice. A hammered brass and patina handmade giant's head, a nod to the friendly giants he finds in hell, hit the runway with equal theatrical force.
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There was a shell motif.
Roseberry portrayed the scenery of Dante's The Divine Comedy in techniques inspired by the work's "house of mirrors quality," i.e. surreal, to a Philip Glass soundtrack large enough for a spaceship launch. They appeared in the form of hand-painted velvet dresses, some covered in wooden balls, and some embroidered with sequins fashioned from leather-coated tin. The plastrons - or breastplates - that have become a Roseberry signature first appeared in the form of a massive marquetry shell, a timely motif (The Little Mermaid live action film will be released on May 26), which was 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 tailored silhouette was intimidating.
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 in tailoring looks less likely to go viral on Instagram than animal heads and plastrons, but probably a lot more painstaking to create. It has a toreador feel to it when interpreted in a bolero, but that could be because to the relationship with cut animal heads. The silhouette was explored in evening coats, a jumpsuit, and a sculpted leather garment that resembled 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.
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It was all about Roseberry's inventiveness.
Roseberry's presentation notes ended on a nostalgic note: "Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso," he wrote, referring to The Divine Comedy's three books. "One cannot exist apart from the others. It serves as a reminder that there is no heaven without hell, no joy without grief, and no ecstasy of creativity without the agony of doubt. My wish for myself is that I remember that always - that on my most difficult days, when inspiration is lacking, I remember that no ascent to heaven is possible without first visiting the fires and facing the dread that comes with it. Allow me to accept it at all times." Hakuna matata, as a wise lion once said.
