Revamping a historical fashion house is no mean feat, but, whenever an entrepreneur or a group decides to do so, you wonder what prompted them to launch into such a reckless venture. Well, actually, you usually know why they reboot a house – because they think that a historical dormant fashion house is a potentially profitable sleeping beauty.
Yet there are times when you see the strategy behind its relaunch or its new collections and you wonder if the new owners had some proper plans for it or just wanted to own a fashionable toy. This is at least the conclusion you come to with Schiaparelli's.
Bought in 2006 by Italian entrepreneur and Tod's President Diego Della Valle, the house proudly founded and led by a woman and single mother, saw a variety of men alternating at the helm. Eight years ago Lacroix was called to design a one-off collection (that never went on sale); then Marco Zanini was chosen as creative director and was followed in 2015 by Bertrand Guyon. In April 2019 Daniel Roseberry was named Artistic Director of Schiaparelli.
Roseberry's Haute Couture collections for Schiaparelli are usually launched, they get some positive reviews especially by the American press intent on supporting the Texan designer, and then you may see some designs on the red-carpet or at very special events, donned by celebrities such as Tilda Swinton, Lady Gaga (see Joe Biden’s Inauguration) and Beyoncé (see the 2021 Grammys ceremony).
Then silence returns until the next collection and the next red-carpet, leaving you wondering what was the point of all that. Will it happen also for Schiaparelli’s A/W 21 collection, launched during the latest Haute Couture Week in Paris?
For this collection Roseberry continued his exploration of extreme volumes, oversized jewellery and intricate embroideries: this time, though, he luckily left behind the disturbing prosthesis-meets-funerary mask golden facial masks of the previous collection.
The new collection, entitled "Matador Couture", featured a few bullfighter's jackets, reinvented from Schiap's. Roseberry's designs didn't have much to do with Schiap's cropped and slender jackets, they came indeed with ample curved sleeves and incorporated embroideries inspired by swatches from the '30s discovered at Lesage's.
Besides, the designs integrated three-dimensional elements, ceramic eyes surrounded by embroideries, metallic noses, lips and mismatched breasts. These embellishments were used to recreate in a surreal key the elaborate embroideries made with reflective threads of gold and silver of the bullfighters' "traje de luces" (suit of lights). Montera hats were instead turned into very desirable flamboyant creations by Stephen Jones that at times gave them a sci-fi twist.
There were actually interesting moments inspired by sustainability, in particular a matador jacket made from vintage Levi's jeans and another leather design made with old biker jackets. Besides, Roseberry's also added some denim trousers made with old Levi's, with a very cool label featuring a drawing of Paris' Place Vendôme, the historical location of Schiaparelli's couture salon. Unfortunately, that was the only cool thing as the trousers were built back to front, something conceptually interesting, but practically hideous (can we keep the label and forget the trousers, please?).
In 2013, in his collection for Schiap, also Lacroix turned to matador costumes for inspiration, but, in this case, Roseberry emphasized the gold tones maybe as a reference also to Versailles' gilded plaster moulding, while the anatomical panels the back of the jackets reproducing the bum crack pointed at Mugler's irreverent butt crack dress.
Roseberry tried to come up with his own version of Mugler's bottom dress, with a scoop-front dress matched with a breastplate representing a pair of golden lungs (hopefully the lungs not a reference to Covid and its devastating effects on the bronchi, otherwise this would be in very bad taste, while the dress was lifted from Rudi Gernreich - View this photo), a design that appeared yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival, donned by Bella Hadid.
There were also further anatomical pieces, namely a silver bustier accessorized with a fringed stole made from what looked like strips of VHS tapes (just don't wear the stole near open flames...). The corset was reminiscent of Claude Lalanne's gold sculptures for Yves Saint Laurent's Haute Couture A/W 1969 collection that were reinvented by different modern designers.
The variation of this bustier was a sculpted gold flower body piece by metal worker Michel Carel, worn with a long flowy skirt clinging around the hips (though maybe that was just a pile of taffeta wrapped around the hips...).
Roseberry's obsession with hard six-pack bodices, an idea he used last December for a custom Schiaparelli Christmas gown for Kim Kardashian (that ended up being too reminiscent of a 1979 dress by Mugler, was toned down into a six-pack belt.
Essentially this is a belt with a large six-pack ex voto-like plate. Just remember not to bend while wearing it, a lesson that impenitent fashionistas learnt from the mid-to-late '80s when massive cowboy belt buckles (think El Charro) were extremely popular with Paninari and some of them had an impromptu laparotomy when bending down to lace their shoes.
Talking about shoes, this collection featured boots and stilettos with golden toes for that perfect surreal Magritte-inspired effect.
Unfortunately, we have already seen this trick so many times (Comme des Garçons' iconic oxford shoes complete with nail polish that referenced Pierre Cardin's 1986 men's footwear, in turn inspired by René Magritte's "Le Modèle Rouge", but also think about Alexander McQueen's S/S 2009, Cèline's S/S 13 and Dior's Haute Couture S/S 18 Magritte-inspired shoes, not to mention Vibram's FiveFingers by Suicoke x Midorikawa) that by now it has become rather boring, even when you change the materials for the toes.
For what regards further borrowed and reinvented looks, there was a homage to Schiap's coat made in collaboration with artist Jean Cocteau in 1937 that was turned into a new and more extreme version of this design, a jacket with the sleeves covered with roses, but sadly the optical illusion that Cocteau had cleverly created with the vase of roses tracing the delicate profiles of two faces was lost.
Other garments included black cocktail gowns with bull horns, a voluminous wedding gown and a black column dress with an orange satin bustier vaguely reminiscent of a pair of lips, with a superb matching train.
Couture is a wonderful laboratory of ideas and there were quite a few ideas here, from upcycling materials (definitely not new if you think about Margiela's Artisanal line, but still honourable) such as denim or even original crystals from the '30s for a chandelier jacket. Schiaparelli's problem, though, is the fact that it risks of remaining a laboratory of ideas and nothing else.
Schiap's surrealism had a purpose, first shocking, then making people think and instantly making them smile. In these cases you're shocked by the volumes, visually intrigued by the materials and the extreme jewellery pieces, but then you shrug your shoulders, and, cold and disappointed you wonder, so what next? This mainly happens because there is no story behind these collections that have so far been created for Schiaparelli, but there is just a will to try and adapt elements of her codes and her language for our times, but doing so without wondering who would wear these pieces or designing with an elite consumer in mind.
As stated in a previous post, it is simply shocking that a house that may have been rebuilt on a fragrance and a shocking pink lipstick with a matching nail varnish, lies in this surrealist limbo, completely detached from reality, and destined to briefly live only on the red-carpet.
As for Roseberry, there are wealthy consumers our there who may opt for his irreverent grandeur in a post-pandemic world, but you fear that, in just a matter or months, he will be out of Schiap's revolving doors ready to swallow, chew and spit again the next contemporary designers who will try their hands at being Schiap.
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