Preamble (yes, I hear you, preambles can be boring, but in some cases they are necessary, so let's get on with this). Dante Alighieri is part of the official curriculum in all Italian high schools. This means that students usually spend three years focusing on cantos from the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise), the three parts forming Dante's most famous work, The Divine Comedy.
The first impact with such work can be traumatic as there are a lot of metaphors and symbolisms to take in. In the first Canto of the Inferno, for example, Dante meets three beasts, an agile an elegant leopard; a statuesque and scary lion and a disquietingly voracious and thin she-wolf.
According to the more conventional interpretation, the leopard represents lust, the lion arrogance and the she-wolf avarice, that is, the most common vices among humanity. Modern commentators state, instead, that the beasts stand for envy, arrogance and greed or for deception, violence and lack of control/moderation (defined by Dante as incontenenza), in accordance with the three categories of sin in Aristotle's ethical theory (used by Dante for his classification of sins in The Divine Comedy). There is even a political interpretation of the beasts, with the leopard standing for Florence, the lion for the French royal house and the she-wolf for the Roman curia of Pope Boniface VIII.
Some students stall at the beasts, finding all the allegories daunting and boring and eventually giving up on Dante around line 54 of the first Canto. But those who endure will find an infernal world that truly stirs the imagination and conjures up potent images - from blood, mutilations and disembowelment, to lasciviousness and cannibalism, just to mention a few. Practically social media without any filters/bans.
Easy to guess then why fashion designers like the late Alexander McQueen were inspired by the Italian poet and writer (think about McQueen's "Dante" collection, A/W 1996) in their creations. Now, with this preamble in mind, let's go back to Monday when the Haute Couture shows kicked off in Paris.
Social media were on fire as soon as the first images of Schiaparelli's runway were published: Shalom Harlow donned a gown that seemed to integrate the head of a leopard on her chest (seen with the tail of your eye, it looked like one of those images produced by a Text-to-Image AI by collaging the body of a woman with a leopard…).
Irina Shayk instead sported a huge lion head on a black velvet gown (Kylie Jenner in the front row opted for the same look) and a wolf’s head stared from Naomi Campbell's coat, a design that echoed in the long hairs of its fur Schiaparelli's late '30s monkey fur jackets and boleros (View this photo; exotic furs and skins were popular in Schiaparelli's times and were used by many luxury fashion houses).
Most social media users couldn't restrain themselves and immediately posted their outrage, as the photorealistic beasts definitely looked like the work of a meticulous taxidermist.
Most people saw in the gowns, animal trophies and glamorous huntresses and called for animal cruelty to stop. It was actually very difficult to dissent; to use one word dear to Schiaparelli, it was "shocking".
Creative Director Daniel Roseberry eventually explained no harm was done to the animals as they were made with foam, resin and faux fur (videos of the making of the three heads were posted on social media) and also mentioned the main inspiration behind the collection – Dante's Inferno.
The Inferno inspiration was also embodied by rapper Doja Cat: she arrived at the fashion show with her head, face, arms and décolletage covered in 30,000 scarlet red Swarovski crystals (yes, I'm like you, in these situations I always wonder: "who the f*ck counted them?"), and wearing a red bustier and a skirt encrusted with lacquered wooden beads that looked like bubbles of blood boiling.
Dubbed "Doja's inferno" by the iconic make up artist Pat McGrath who created it, it took more than five hours to apply. Was Doja Cat the Devil or maybe a modern Dante (considering that he is usually represented in paintings in his trademark red robe)? We weren't told, but it would have been less banal and more relevant if she had been a female version of Dante.
Roseberry went on to explain that the animals were a reference to the first canto of Dante's Inferno, but he wanted to render the beasts in a surrealist way and create a sort of three-dimensional trompe l'oeil motif on the gowns.
According to Roseberry, Hell was also a metaphor for the torture and tribulations creatives go through, hoping to astonish and surprise people with truly unique creations (so, essentially, all the fears, anxiety and doubts you go through before reaching Paradise...).
In the show notes, Roseberry stated: "What appealed to me in the 'Inferno' wasn't just the theatrics of Dante's creation – it was how perfect a metaphor it provided for the torment that every artist or creative person experiences when we sit before the screen or the sketchpad."
After the explanation came in, some critics complained about the reactions on social media, but the problem is that when an inspiration is cleverly incorporated in a collection, it becomes easier to understand the meaning of a design.
In this case the designer just assumed everybody would have got it, but it was a bit difficult for people on social media and, in particular on Instagram, to spot the inspiration as the context wasn't provided, so the lion, the leopard and the wolf didn't give immediate clues about Dante, but had a "Wilma Flintstones Goes to the Oscar" feeling for most social media users.
That said it was somehow difficult to see a coherent "Inferno" path through the collection: aside from the beasts, Roseberry kept on experimenting with silhouettes, coming up with molded and sculpted shapes allegedly inspired by the bottle of Schiap's fragrance, "Shocking!"
Launched in 1937, the fragrance came in a bottle shaped like a dressmaker's mannequin inspired by Mae West's torso and designed by Argentine artist Leonor Fini. Roseberry reinterpreted this shape as an exaggerated hourglass silhouette.
The results of this exercise varied, looking at times unconvincing and a bit disturbing (with just a touch of Viktor & Rolf's power silhouettes in some cases like the tuxedo View this photo).
The collection also included designs that pointed at Dior's Bar jacket, inverted cupcake mini-skirts, a tuxedo and a hand-painted pinstriped navy pantsuit that looked cartoonish and an engulfing quilted coat (somebody please deliver us from the duvet/quilt look, we’ve had enough…) that was corseted in the back (a detail that in the other designs pointed at sensuality, but in this case evoked a psychiatric hospital).
Then there were rigid mother-of-pearl or lemon tree wood (inspired by the marquetry on a sideboard designed by Jean-Michel Frank for the original Schiaparelli salon on Place Vendôme) bustiers/breast plates that impaired the view as they reached the eyeline of the models. At times, these designs were matched with chunky broken glass jewelry.
Talking about accessories, the collection featured shoes and bags with a keyhole (the motif was also placed on gowns around the belly-button area) and the molded-toe platforms that have by now become trademark on Schiap's runways.
Yet, rather than in black and gold, for this season they came in patent leather, or black, beige and brown, colours that ended up conforming the shoes to all the other René Magritte's "Le Modèle Rouge"-inspired designs seen on a variety of runways and collections, from Pierre Cardin's 1986 men's footwear to Comme des Garçons, Alexander McQueen (S/S 2009), Cèline (S/S 13) and Dior's Haute Couture (S/S 18) (not to mention Vibram's FiveFingers by Suicoke x Midorikawa).
Literal Dantesque references seemed to be limited to the beasts, as if, just like negligent students, Roseberry had given up at line 54 of the first Canto and locked himself out of an Inferno that may have provided him with even stronger images.
Other offers included ecru gowns with cascades of tin sequins covered in leather (a hint at Purgatory or Paradise maybe?) and bustiers with exaggerated horned necklines, while the copper head bust on a model's shoulders remained a mystery (Beatrice as an iron maiden? Iron Maiden's "Dante's Inferno"? I'm getting confused, I know...).
The collection progressed without any chance of Dante's wonderment, but with grand black velvet column dresses and beige gowns, plus a rather tame beige slip dress matched with a modern interpretation of Schiap's iconic ruffled gloves.
In a way, there wasn't a climax in the runway, no grand statement about emerging to "see the stars again", as Dante states at the end of the Inferno.
Yes, Roseberry wasn't opting here for a literal interpretation of Dante, but it felt reductive to just stop at the beasts or justify them with Dante's journey (besides, the snow leopard bustier dress was based on an archival design from 1938, so why did he have to justify it with Dante?).
It felt even more reductive not to take the opportunity to use the allegories behind the beasts - lust, arrogance and greed - to move a critique to the fashion industry.
It was actually bizarre, but, here and there, the collection had some genuine Wizard of Oz moments, from the lion to the emerald green gown and a black velvet column dress with an explosion of sequins that evoked the consistency of straw (without forgetting a bizarre picture of the front row with Kylie Jenner, Marisa Berenson, the granddaughter of Elsa Schiaparelli, Diane Kruger and Rossy de Palma that felt like an audition for The Wizard of Oz?)
Who knows, maybe the "Dante's Inferno" label was attached to the collection at a later stage, to spin a good story (this is often the case in the industry - see the Aelita-gate at Givenchy in 2012).
As for the safari huntress-meets-trophy wife gowns (that were meant to be Dante's allegories), while they didn't go down well with ordinary people and while fashion-wise the concept is not extremely new as there have been hybrid designs incorporating large animals (remember Venla Elonsalo, a finalist at the 2021 Hyères Festival, that incorporated plush toys in her designs? View this photo), most fashion commentators praised them.
Animal right group PETA was among the ones approving the collection: its president Ingrid Newkirk stated it was innovative and making a statement against trophy hunting (but, funnily enough, in 2011, PETA condemned Super Mario for wearing a tanooki fur in a video game, as much as that may sound preposterous...).
Quite often outlandish couture creations are welcomed and praised as high fashion is considered as a ground for experimenting. That said, Schiaparelli originally produced arty pieces that were surreal, but were also wearable and very ironic.
Nowadays at Schiap there is no irony, but an exaggeration of forms and shapes that is perversely Instagrammable and not even necessarily new when you actually analyse the less elaborate designs. But kudos to Doja Cat for submitting herself to a grueling 5 hour make up session to come up with that effect. We sincerely hope somebody helped her removing all that stuff from her skin afterwards.
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