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The realm of fashion is cacophonous. Every day there seems to be a new brand launched, a new celebrity collaboration, a new face du jour that gets the Internet buzzing. All of it just adds more noise. For Spring/Summer 2023, Daniel Roseberry aims to cut through the noise with his new Schiaparelli collection. He seems sharply aware that the last thing we need is more stuff, so his proposal is for stuff that is so well-made and so intriguing that you invest in it once and wear it forever. 

Schiaparelli has become such a sensation that the house was not able to host its Spring/Summer 2023 presentation/showroom at its Place Vendôme location because it was backed up with orders and shoppers. It was held instead at the adjoining Hotel D'Evreux and attended by the likes of Kylie Jenner and Christine Quinn.

Inside the alluring pied-à-terre-like setting, replete with gilded crown molding and frescoed ceilings, Schiaparelli’s surrealist pieces looked like they had arrived from an alien planet. Yet, surrealism, as a concept, exists outside of time and place and is therefore timeless. Surrealism is a dreamscape, offering a twisted view of reality, ideas that are logical when you’re asleep but bizarre when you examine them upon waking. As strange as it all is, it still seems familiar. With this collection, Roseberry examined the idea of ready-to-wear, saying in the show notes, “For me, it’s the opportunity to offer the house’s admirers pieces that are both everyday and extraordinary.”

The everyday and extraordinary were exhibited through precision-tailored suits adorned with lock and key closures, crisp velvet suit-dresses, sumptuous, elegantly-draped hammered silk gowns with lavish jewelry clasped halters, and nubby, spongey knits transformed into dresses with conical articulated bosoms, peplum ruffles, and ballooning puffs at the wrist. In every corner of every room, something magical met the eye. “The clothes aren’t easy,” Roseberry explained, “not in an age when easiness so often slips into laziness—but they are meant to work hard for the woman wearing them, to adapt to her life and her needs.” However, his couture designs are like living pieces of art, so his ready-to-wear was actually a much more accessible, and dare we say easy, proposition.

Jewelry, whether it was embedded in the clothes as buttons or trim or accessorizing a look, was one of the most consistently fabulous elements of the collection. In hammered, molten gold there were pieces that fit over the jaw, crystal-encrusted spectacles, and buttons rendered into disembodied parts like eyes, torsos, and ears. Eyes also decorated enormous plated earrings and belts, while spiked balls joined with glittering chains to form chokers. Other fantasy-adjacent accessories included the house’s famous ‘Face’ bags, which are huge bestsellers, and towering wedge shoes with articulated gold-plated toes. One model wore them while walking around the venue, and they transformed her into a larger-than-life superhero, well over 200 centimeters tall. It was hard not to gawk at her in all her towering splendor.