Schiaparelli opens the dances at Paris Couture Week
The Maison gets close to the sun but does not burn its wings
January 28th, 2025
If Icarus embodies a tragic hero with a fate shortened by boundless pride and disobedience that proves fatal, the Couture Spring 2025 collection by Schiaparelli, titled Icarus, is anything but grim or distressing—in fact, quite the opposite. Proud, yes, and boundless certainly, but dark and sinister? Not at all. Presented yesterday, the collection created by Daniel Roseberry opened this week’s Paris Haute Couture with thirty-three looks that each, in their own way, embody the opulence, richness, and elegance of the 20th century, reviving a baroque aesthetic tinged with modernity. The collection draws inspiration from ribbons from the 1920s and 1930s, serendipitously discovered by the creative director in an antique shop. These are ancient ribbons, hidden and forgotten by history with the arrival of the German occupation in France.
After months of studying the great masters of various eras and their work—Madame Grès, Charles Frederick Worth, Paul Poiret, Yves Saint Laurent, and Azzedine Alaïa—the collection takes shape and becomes tangible in Roseberry's mind and hands. Its silhouettes pay homage to over a century of inspirations and obsessions with their sinuous and fluid forms from the 1920s and 1930s, which the creator has nicknamed "liquid deco". The colors, ranging from butter yellow to peacock green and brown reminiscent of toasted bread, are expressed in noble materials such as silk, fabrics embroidered with Japanese pearls, and mounted on corsets in French toile that sometimes even evoke the corsets of the court of Versailles. Tributes to Elsa Schiaparelli and her work are scattered throughout the collection, with reinterpretations of pre-war broad-shouldered jackets, simplified and elongated, paired with minimalist column skirts in double satin cut on the bias in the style of Madeleine Vionnet from the 1990s. In addition to playing with shapes through arabesques, pleats, conical figures, and more, Roseberry also had fun experimenting with new and ancient techniques in this collection.
From the Schiap blazer, one of the Maison’s great classics, embroidered with silk satin threads, to feathers dipped in glycerin and brushed with keratin, and three-dimensional embroidery enriched with thousands of drops of smoky quartz, the Maison has taken Couture to an even higher level. «In the ateliers,» explains Daniel Roseberry, «we perfected the technique for constructing corsets in toile, layering them with thin wool and cotton, over which stretch silk satin is tightly fitted, creating a flawless effect. Every look was curated with the utmost attention, as if it were a small work of art, including shoes and bags, treated like jewels and decorated with artisanal techniques, from Matador cording to resin rosettes.»
This collection is a homage to the ancient, to history, and all the richness it encompasses, but also to the new. Or rather, to the celebration of the ancient within the new. Tired of seeing modernity always and only associated with simplicity, Daniel Roseberry proposes a rise to ever higher levels of execution and vision. Indeed, «why couldn’t novelty also be elaborate, baroque, sumptuous?» If Icarus burned his wings in the pursuit of perfection, Roseberry at Schiaparelli seems unafraid of drawing ever closer to the sun. And even though each new collection edges dangerously closer, his wings, unlike those of the tragic hero, don’t seem ready to fall apart.