Schiaparelli’s Impossible Wardrobe

Couture is often compared to art, more so than any other genre of fashion—but Schiaparelli took that concept and pushed it even one step further at its fall 2023 couture show today.

On the runway, creative director Daniel Roseberry released a collection ripe with references to fine art, from Lucien Freud to Yves Klein and many more. Klein’s signature cobalt blue was painted across models’ necks and torsos and splashed over rippled mini skirts; wooden beaded arms and necklaces were part artist’s mannequin, part Alberto Giacometti. Cardi B sat front row wearing a raven-hued hourglass dress topped with a chunky bolero and extremely tubular mohair fringe—which matched a white coat using the same technique in the collection. Animalistic it was, but it was also far from last season’s viral mammal heads that drew comparisons to trophy hunting. Still, there was a primal feeling throughout many of the pieces for couture fall 2023.

Roseberry’s exercise in the arts was also a stark contrast from his past work reinterpreting Schiaparelli’s surrealist codes. The theme also harkened back to the designer’s intrinsically maximalist approach, after a few seasons of drilling down into a more streamlined aesthetic.

“The last season was so reduced, I really wanted the focus to be on techniques, color, and the privilege of being able to create couture,” he said backstage after the show. “Schiaparelli and the artist, it’s not something I’ve really been inspired by yet. So it’s been about going to artists that she collaborated with, but also artists that I’ve been inspired by—there’s a whole cacophony of references in there.”

Roseberry previously toyed with Schiaparelli gold—the explicit play on Yves Klein blue felt like a parallel. Elsewhere, the bodycon piece draped in an interpretation of Lucien Freud’s brushwork spoke to the creative director’s extended execution of painterly depictions, both physical and abstract. Nods to Jack Whitten, Sarah Lucas, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Matisse were all there—but the collection felt more like a retrospective of Schiaparelli’s place in the art world.

Fall 2023 couture was punctuated by freedom and form; the show notes called it “an impossible wardrobe.” “There’s a sense of disobedience; these are pieces a woman can assemble however she wants,” Roseberry wrote in the show notes. “Most of the ‘looks’ you see here were put together in the days leading up to this show, as opposed to head-to-toe formulas that have been labored over for months. This approach felt like a revelation.”