Fall 2021 Haute Couture: Schiaparelli's The Matador Collection

“The Matador” collection honors Elsa Schiaparelli's vision without being in thall to it. “If last season was about deconstruction, about pushing past the boundaries of what couture was, about trying to upend all its unspoken rules, about doing things we weren't "supposed" to do, this season, I felt the freedom to make something fiercely, undeniably, unapologetically pretty—because sometimes you have to rebel against beauty in order to return to it,” says designer Daniel Roseberry.

This collection was conceived in three parts. The first pays tribute to Schiaparelli jackets of the past: you see references to the Maison’s earlier, iconic shapes in the white denim matador-inspired cropped jacket embellished with embroidered barrel sleeves and black silk tassels, worn over a structured tulle skirt. You see it in the black wool crepe curved-sleeve one, heavily embroidered with dozens of shell-pink silk roses - a direct homage to the Jean Cocteau x Schiaparelli masterpiece from 1937.

The second part of the collection focuses on the body and bijoux, a key element of the house’s visual vocabulary. Here you have dialogs between hard and soft, machine and human, metal and fabric. Here is a delicate pair of human lungs, seemingly crafted from a web of capillaries dipped in gold, worn atop severe black crepe gown. Here are moldings of the torso paired with a stole made of black shredded trash bags that are knit together in pure silk. Also bijoux becomes embroidery: the nose, the stomach, endless pairs of lips and ceramic eyes, hand-patinaed in the house’s signature Giacometti-inspired gold, and set in rococo frames.

Finally, there’s a celebration of color, a black stretch velvet dress, perfectly fitted, with a gigantic shocking-pink silk faille rose at its center; a silk velvet dress with soft, semi-conical breasts and, in the back, a crisp fan of Renaissance-blue peau de soie. Everything here feels both over-the-top and intentional: the colors—cornflower blues, salmony pinks, terracotta oranges—are as flamboyant and joyous as the shapes themselves.