Schiaparelli: Guest of the nation

A real sense of event at Schiaparelli as the brand staged its latest collection on Thursday night inside the beautiful Italian embassy on rue de Varenne in Paris.

 
Guests posing pre-show before a large kissing pink backdrop with golden lock, as they milled about the courtyard of the Hotel de Boisgelin, an elegant mansion packed with marble busts and rare oil paintings. Fans going wild outside as the VIPs arrived – Kylie Jenner, Jared Leto, Michelle Yeoh, Sabine Getty and Rosalia.
 
In contrast to the Renaissance oils, Schiaparelli’s creative director Daniel Roseberry opened with a trio of black outfits; a superbly cut hourglass jacket with power shoulders; a pair of pants topped by a spiky collar so large it was the size of a cape and a cropped spencer with Georgian style gold embroidery.

His tailoring display immediately followed by the key element of Roseberry’s reign – body party jewelry over everything: copper eye earrings; ear-shaped buckles; metallic breasts, abstract teardrops and various anatomical parts. Every button in the show, an individual bijoux.
 
Much of it felt more like couture or red carpet fantasy, but every so often Roseberry blended in haute-gamme ready-to-wear like chalk-stripe pants suits, one lapel finished his signature measuring tape.
 
His starting point for this spring/summer 2024 collection was a description by Marisa Berenson of one of her grandmother Elsa’s first successes. A workday sweater she requested be made to look like a primitive drawing of a child in prehistoric times.
 

“That piece with its deliberately imperfect trompe l’oeil and its surrealist, offbeat humor was an immediate sensation and Elsa’s first signature hit,” recalled Roseberry in his show program.
 
While his brand-new trapunto leather Schiap bag, made in ribbed measuring tapes, and completed with a hammered gold brass padlock will surely be a hit too.
 
But Daniel’s smartest new idea were his golden metallic toed high-top sneakers, which, again, felt like cult best-sellers destined to win thousands of fans.
 
Born in Rome in 1890, Elsa Schiaparelli spent most of her creative life in Paris, and only started her fashion career aged 37.
 
But when someone suggested to Diego della Valle that this embassy show was Schiaparelli symbolically returning home, he diplomatically responded with a smile: “No, her home is in Place Vendôme, here she is a guest.”