Nothing got as much attention on social media as the fashion show. Schiaparelli at Haute Couture Fashion Week Spring Summer 2023, presented last week. Motif: animal heads (lion, wolf and leopard) on the right side of fur (synthetic) dresses and coats. In fact, it was the master stroke of the almost century-old French brand created by Elsa Schiaparelli in 1927!
Schiaparelli Spring 2023 Couture @GoRunaway
Schiaparelli Spring 2023 Couture @GoRunaway
Schiaparelli Spring 2023 Couture @GoRunaway
A famous ‘rival’ of Coco Chanel, Schiap was passionate about the Arts, was friends with Surrealists Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali and Man Ray and turned their ideas into incredible and daring fashion creations. Contrasting colors, fish designs, skeletons, turtle, lobster and sailor tattoos were some of her clothing themes.
She was the first to show colorful plastic zippers on dresses, launched the envelope dress (an item that Diane von Fürstenberg ‘appropriated’ with great success in the 1970s), put jackets over party dresses, developed innovative fabrics, like textured rayon crepe and rhodophane, transparent and delicate like glass, which, by the way, gained a new reading in some of the other creations in Paris last week.
He partnered with several artists, such as the Russian writer Elsa Triolet, a long dress with pleats in trompe-l’oeil – the name of the artistic technique that uses tricks of perspective to create optical illusions, with the painter Jean Dunand, and jewelry with the sculptor Alberto Giacometti, among others. But Elsa Schiaparelli’s most famous collaborations are with Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau. Oh! And it was she who created the Pink-Shocking tone!
Take a good look: if, on the one hand, Chanel ‘simplified’ the female wardrobe by seeking elements from the male universe, such as white shirts, black suits, etc., Schiap guaranteed the dream and the daring, because she hated, first of all, the ‘common place’.
So… Appropriating the concepts of its creator, stylist Daniel Roseberry was inspired by the poem ‘Dante’s Inferno’, the first of three parts of the book “Divine Comedy”, written by Dante Aliguieri in 1308.
Everyone commented, criticized, freaked out, shouted, etc. There were people who thought it was in bad taste, bla-bla-bla… However, this is a fashion image! That’s what Haute Couture Week is for! Or rather: it is exactly the reason Haute Couture exists! It is to guarantee the dream, the fantasy, the enchantment and even the estrangement! The conceptual…
Clothes to ‘be worn’, you’ll find them at the Prêt-à-Porter shows or… On the streets of Brás or Bom Retiro! If you understand me…