Spring 2022 Haute Couture: Schiaparelli's Age of Discipline

“Designing this collection also made me realize something else. There are designers who design because they love clothes. There are designers who make clothes because they love the craft, because they love people. There are designers whose work is indebted to fashion as a concept, or to glamour as a business. But I design in order to make people feel something. When clothes and craft and hair and music and the wearer are in harmony together, when they are all trying to communicate something, we can be reminded why we love fashion — why I love fashion. It isn’t for the celebrities. It isn’t for the likes. It isn’t for the reviews. It’s because, when it’s done right, when it has something to tell us, it can help us feel the inarticulable. It’s because it still has the power to move us.” —-Daniel Roseberry

“Throughout the 23 fittings for this collection, I realized that what felt exciting in this moment was something different, something restrained. Suddenly, color felt wrong to me. So, did volume. All of the tricks that couture designers (including me) use to communicate grandeur and craftsmanship—big silhouettes, glorious poufs of fabric, huge volume—felt hollow.

“Instead, I wanted to see if we could achieve the same kind of drama and otherworldliness without relying on those tropes. All we needed, I realized, was black, white, and gold—yet it wasn’t so much a return to basics as it was a move towards the elemental.

“This season orbits around an expansive redefinition of Schiaparelli gold. We have worked for seasons to perfect the shade—neither warm nor cool, neither brassy nor rose, this gold has been specifically formulated for the house, and includes pieces of 24k gold leaf. We’ve executed it in two ways, both engineered by the extraordinary artisans we collaborate with. In the first treatment, we created naive sculptures representing the codes of the Maison, in clay and foam. From here, the eyes and padlocks, the Lobster, the Dove, and a litany of bodyparts, become molds for tissue weight leather.

“The weightless sculptures are then gilded in 24K gold leaf and embroidered with vintage cabochons and crystals sourced from the late 1930’s. The effect is childlike and a little raw. The second you see in pieces like a columnar black silk jersey dress, its bodice overspilling with long, shivering strands of metal, as if a corset had overspilled its confines, comes from metal sheets and has been hammered, polished, and left to swoosh about like a jellyfish in water.”