Schiaparelli Haute Couture S/S '21

In an ode to the occult tradition that is Haute Couture, Creative Director Daniel Roseberry has reimagined Schiaparelli’s Spring/Summer 2021 collection, and scuttled the traditional tropes, soft edges, and tulled silhouettes that have historically defined the season. “I want to make an alternative couture house,” Roseberry explains. “Here, the fantasy isn’t princess dresses or polite garments; here, the fantasy is within.”

In a clutch of strange, suggestive shapes, S/S 2021 taps the otherworldliness of couture, and resurrects the abdominal flexed bustiers from Greece’s Archaic Period, or even more recently, from Kim Kardashian West’s Christmas Eve wardrobe. An enigmatically layered roster of overdyed silk faille, gilded embellishment, stone-dry taffeta, and lithe, supple columns of silk jersey were a complete succès fou for the house, seeming neither “princess” nor “polite,” even when swathed in the house pink. Rather, it was something more robust, more brazen, much more Roseberry’s Schiaparelli.

Elsewhere, amidst the standouts, were other breaks in the guiding silhouettes of couture. Those unspoken pillars that once kept the season one of undying insularity, illusiveness, and wonder, Roseberry now interprets with stone-washed silk jeans, elastic waistbands, obtuse embroidery, and unapologetically, a bomber jacket. “These are clothes that make you aware of the fact of your body, that make you think about how you move through the world.” It’s not a hard push against Elsa’s Surrealist metronome, yet rather something more through Roseberry’s lens - his very own collision with the zeitgeist.

And it’s strong womanhood that seems to prevail. On the heels of his golden dove brooches and red silk faille skirts that dressed Lady Gaga to sing the National Anthem at Joe Biden’s Inauguration last Wednesday, where the U.S. aptly welcomed its first woman Vice President, Roseberry continues to anchor the power of femininity in his couture, rather than let it recede to the tulles, trains, veils, and bows of seasons past. In platform boots, and golden breast plates Schiaparelli’s Haute Couture seems less fashion pageant, and far more a declaration of the shape of things to come.