Review of Schiaparelli Fall 2023 Couture Fashion Show
Group Exhibition
By Mark Wittmer
Having staged perhaps the most anticipated shows from couture week over the past few years – and with good reason – Daniel Roseberry’s Schiaparelli continues to be one of the most magnetic embodiments of the tired but true dictum that fashion and art ought to go hand in hand. While last season made a stir with its hyperrealistic animal heads, Fall 2023 sees the designer return to his (and his forebear’s) concern with the anatomically human while diving into artistic legacies both ancient and avant-garde.
The most fantastical Schiaparelli couture show yet, the collection made full use of the house’s artisanal mastery in serving up its eclectic vision of fashion’s spiritually transformative power.
From tight-fitting to boldly structured to outrageously voluminous, the silhouettes encompass a broad spectrum, trading consistency for eclecticism in order to create an unfettered and wide space in which the house’s artisans can play. The corsetry revival rears its head as gowns that sculpturally elongate the silhouette of their wearer like Roman caryatids, sometimes combined with fluid gatherings of sheer or opaque fabric that creates a play of swirling and compact volumes. On the opposite side of the spectrum, cascading cashmere creates an expansive coat that, with a surreal sculpted and beaded wood necklace forming its hands, suggests the stature of a woodland spirit right out of a Miyazaki film.
Other artistic references feel more direct, like the liberal use of Yves Klein’s unmistakable International Klein Blue, which lends its azure presence to the lining and details of garments, but also is applied straight to the torso as body paint – a new development of one of Roseberry’s recurring themes that sees dressing the body as more than just making clothes. Metallic and multicolored tiles recall the details of Gaudí’s playfully surrealist architecture. A liberal use of beading and necklaces looks farther back to folk traditions, while anchoring it all are looks that feel one-hundred percent Elsa Schiaparelli.
Perhaps the references could have been tightened up a bit? It’s difficult to see why French modernism, ancient Roman and modern Spanish architecture, and vague summaries of global folkloric traditions belong together in a contemporary fashion collection.
But then again, maybe that’s just the point: rather than asking why, we can embrace the surrealism of how these disparate elements are united into one artistic experience via a stunning mastery of craft, and simply let it wash over our senses.
Pushing Elsa Schiaparelli’s influential legacy of drawing various artistic vision into her own to its extreme, Roseberry creates an ecstatic celebration of art and craft.
