“I wanted this season to feel much more free, spontaneous, painterly,” Schiaparelli‘s Daniel Roseberry said before the autumn-winter 2023 couture show. “The idea of the last collection was really to suck the air out of the room. It’s what happened. I think the idea was to really try to keep the focus on the collection and go deeper and deeper into the techniques we wanted to show.” The designer went into territory of his own this season, carving and draping sculptural, asymmetrical silhouettes out of black and white materials while experimenting with craftspeople to blur the boundaries between clothing, embroidery, jewelry and collages of textiles. The collection is not only surreal in its look, but also in its richness of textures and vibrant tactility. Roseberry took his conceptual cue sparked by the house of Schiaparelli’s long involvement with artists. It ranged into some exceptional freewheeling artisanal effects. Looking at Lucian Freud’s chaotic paint-dashed studio resulted in a multicolored ‘nude’ dress, made up of an irregular mosaic of paillettes sewn onto chiffon. Thinking about Schiaparelli’s classic gold embroidery led Roseberry to discover that a vibrant Yves Klein blue lies at the opposite end of the color spectrum. Hence the vivid blue that turned up, scrolled into a skating skirt, and continuing into spray-painted body-paint and landing elsewhere in coils of painted wooden jewelry. Roseberry made a smart move in detaching himself from the routine of reiterating too many of the trompe l’oeil body-part house codes he’s been working with since he came to Schiaparelli. Echoes of other couturiers signatures – like Jean Paul Gaultier corsets this season – continue to be a sort of acknowledgement of the haute couture world’s legacy and Roseberry’s great respect for it.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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