Schiaparelli and Daniel Roseberry are a match made in heaven. The way the Texas-born designer plays with Elsa Schiaparelli’s codes is so witty and intelligent – and what’s most important, he makes it his and doesn’t try to mimic the maison‘s founder as his predecessors. Spring-summer 2021 couture line-up is his best yet, and truly, it transports the viewer to a wonderland. And since Lady Gaga wore a black fitted jacket, red silk faille ball skirt and a golden dove brooch of his design to sing the national anthem at President Joe Biden’s inauguration last Wednesday, it’s clear more people will pay attention to Roseberry’s magic. “For a house like Schiaparelli,” he told Vogue, “dressing Gaga for the inauguration speaks to capturing the moment. That’s what I’m trying to do with all of our celebrity moments: to nail the zeitgeist.” Daniel’s Schiaparelli is open to big celebrity moments (Kim Kardashian West and Hunter Schafer, for instance), but it also breaks couture conventions and says ‘bye’ to the haute stuffiness once and for all. He’d been pushing the house, which was quite straitlaced before his arrival despite Elsa Schiaparelli’s famous Surrealism, in a new direction. But the eccentricities of his earlier outings were just him warming up. “Ever since I came back from lockdown, there’s been a shift for me mentally here – a focus and confidence that’s come from my relationship to my own process and to the atelier,” he said. Synthesizing his point of view, he added, “it’s just something that’s not as polite as couture typically tends to be.” If there’s one piece that says his incubation period is over, it’s a Madonna and Child breastplate, but there’s no shortage of statement-making bijoux here, from the tooth pearl earrings to the fingernail rings. “It isn’t about being too perfect for me,” Roseberry said, “but it is about shutting the moment down.” On that note, the look book opens with another super-heroine bustier, this one in glossy black finished with a prodigious bow in Schiaparelli’s signature shocking pink. A different dress in the same electric pink hue accentuates not just gym-toned abs, but trapezius muscles and biceps. “If you want to look like a cupcake, you can go somewhere else,” Roseberry said with a laugh before getting serious. “I started thinking, is there something about couture that’s sort of misogynistic, that demands or expects that a woman wants to look hyper-feminine and dainty and ‘Bridgerton’ adjacent?” He clarifies, “It’s not about being a man at all, it’s about being a jacked woman.” A stretch-fabric dress knitted with more than 200,000 Swarovski crystals will appeal to clients whose own well-maintained physiques require no surface-level enhancements. Elsewhere, Roseberry made exuberant use of volume. A black column dress with ample folded sleeves would make a spectacular red carpet dress, but he also designed a couture jean jacket and a couture parka with grand hoods. The contemporary Schiaparelli woman is no longer just an arty party-goer. Now, she’s a goddess, hero, a power-female!

“Live” collage by Edward Kanarecki.