A SURREALIST COOKBOOK

Daniel Roseberry’s Schiaparelli takes the familiar to new heights of fantasy

Photography by Daniel RoseberryText by Caroline Issa

Since 1927, the name Schiaparelli has immediately signified daring, inventiveness and originality. Elsa Schiaparelli forged a heritage for the French fashion house she founded based on a creativity fuelled by the heady devil-may-care approach of her community of Surrealist and Dadaist collaborators and a sense of bringing art to fabric and draping.

Fast-forward 80 years to 2006. The Schiaparelli house was bought by an Italian fashion magnate who wished to revive a moribund brand with a lauded history, given the success that Lanvin and Rochas were having at the time. In 2013, Christian Lacroix designed a one-off tribute collection, before the house returned to the catwalk the following year with design stints from Marco Zanini and Bertrand Guyon. In 2019, Daniel Roseberry, a Texan who had spent the last several years working as design director at Thom Browne, was appointed Schiaparelli’s new artistic director.

His first show debuted during Haute Couture Week in Paris in July 2019 and placed him physically at the centre of his catwalk, models walking around him in his larger-than-life creations, while he sketched, head down and earphones on, at an overlit table. Since that show, Roseberry has continued to daydream, sketch and produce collections that have brought editors and journalists to tears through their sheer beauty and heart. Perhaps it is our current fragile state, the dearth of extravagance or a better understanding of how wasteful the fashion industry can be, but this feels like a Schiaparelli moment, thanks to the grandeur of what Roseberry and his team are bringing back to fashion.

“I don’t remember Schiaparelli coming onto my radar until my freshman year at [the Fashion Institute of Technology], because I hadn't studied fashion until then,” Roseberry tells us on a call a few days after his most recent couture collection in July. “You have to have these big, big, big dreams entering this industry and I always had Karl [Lagerfeld] as a goal and as a hero. I looked at people like Lee McQueen, whose work I was absolutely obsessed with, but that sort of tortured soul was not something I wanted for myself, and I really liked that there was a lightness about Karl and a constructiveness to the way that he was living his life. It was about the work, and that’s another reason why for me. When I think about Lee McQueen and even Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy, it was so beautiful and so macabre at times, but it was really dark – and I’ve always wanted to open the windows and let the light in. Fashion rewards and loves that darkness, and you run the risk of people not taking you as seriously if you’re not fronting a tortured soul.”

Roseberry is the first American to lead a French couture house, his fantasy aesthetic an outlier in a fashion moment of ugly sneakers, Lycra bicycle shorts and sweat pants. Just look at his ready-to-wear collections, with the Schiaparelli denim onesie and its backbone of buttons made in the shapes of eyes and ears, or the clean, black corset adorned with metal breasts. “I really like inspiring people more than challenging them,” he says. “I have not been that interested in reimagining the shapes themselves. At these price points and at this level of luxury, I’ve wanted to keep the shapes quite immediate, almost like old friends. Then when you try these pieces on, it’s a quality of suede that you’ve never touched before, it’s the buttons and the bijoux, and the lining and the finishing, which are just so intoxicating that you can’t turn away. I’ve really tried to stay in a place where we’re sort of under-designing the actual pieces, but investing all of our energy into their fabrication and adornment.”

Roseberry feels that Schiaparelli’s surrealist tradition is perfect for today. “Is there anything more surreal than the times we’re living in? The surrealism has really come in from the world around us. So much of being successful is anticipating what people need to see and feel, and knowing your audience. I have just clung to the immediacy of the human body – anatomy as people see their own features, their own nipples, their own body parts – reflected back at them and almost fetishised and gilded.” An idea that came beautifully to life in the “golden lungs” dress that Bella Hadid recently wore on the Cannes red carpet. “People have a visceral reaction to it, and to do that in a way that’s not macabre, in a way that’s not dark, or therapeutic in a way, that still keeps something that feels joyful – that was the goal this season.”

Working at a couture house is perhaps every designer’s dream – a place where commerce may not necessarily rule, nor where short-term financial targets are chased. On top of this, the 18 months of lockdowns has afforded Roseberry another luxury, that of time, to develop his full take on the Schiaparelli house. “There needs to be a structure and a rigour in order, so it doesn’t look like a total shit-show,” he says, “especially with some of those looks that really, really walked the line. Thom Browne gave me a structure when I was 23 that allowed me to grow as it was so specific and rigorous. Now I’m in Thom’s position and having to give myself that structure, and I’m always looking for ways to kind of impose that. You kind of harness the references and the madness and then go even crazier. That was really something I was given space to do during confinement, plus all the things we gave up like dinners, and the intrusions and opinions. It was a great time to just work and build the language.”