Designer Daniel Roseberry for Schiaparelli Is Leading A Surreal Life
Inside the Paris studio of the creative genius who is bringing back the joy of the bizarre in fashion
If there was a recipe for Daniel Roseberry's creations, it would be to season luxury with surrealism. A few years ago, while the pastor's son from Plano, Texas, was working at Thom Browne and vying for the position as artistic director of Schiaparelli house, he observed what was transpiring on the runway and also the red carpet. It was "all wonderful," he says today, but "far too tasteful." Where was the high-level discussion a la Elsa Schiaparelli, the creator of the company who created the first wraparound gowns and power suits and collaborated with Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau to create bizarre wearables? He claims that Schiap, as Elsa was known, was more interested in asking, "What's beyond beautiful?"
On the Place Vendôme, Roseberry is seated behind his gleaming white desk and exudes his ever-present Southern warmth while donning a thin gray sweater. The traditional drafting board is situated to his left, against a wall that is hidden by a potted tree. Each prepared and couture collection starts there, first as a manifesto. He says, "I get pretty verbal.
Recoding Schiaparelli's visual language has been the bigger undertaking of his tenure. He gave the company a baroque anatomical iconography, which he defines as a "glorification of physicality," complete with disembodied gold eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. The skeleton outfit was the entrance through which we were moving, he continues.
The modern equivalent of the outfit, a long-sleeved black dress from the 1930s with figural boning, is Kim Kardashian's sleeveless green dress with chiseled abs. Elsa never wore nose rings or nipple buttons, although once creating pockets out of her lip and mittens with polished-red fingernails.
Talking of nipples, Roseberry hands me an areola from across the white desk. At first glance, I believe this comes from the atelier. It appears to be a model made of plaster for the nipple buttons or perhaps for the golden pasties Doja Cat wore at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards. The breast detail, however, was handcrafted by nature. Roseberry explains, "It's a seashell," beaming at the ocean's clever maneuver.
He was in Austin on his sister Liz's wedding just two weeks before. He adorned her with a custom bustier gown that featured bone motifs among stitching. This was another great technique since the bone motifs looked as though they were made of mother of pearls and real shells. The bride passed around the elaborate glasses all night for visitors to put on and snap pictures in. They "cried" rivers of crystals & pearls (like tears of joy). He also had given her a pair of exquisite sunglasses. When the outfits went semi-viral on TikTok, Roseberry had no idea his sister was still so skilled there: "I received that many people to reach out to me about it as I do this when we dressed a global icon," he says.
Roseberry has grown more confident in his home voice. Now that he has "license," he feels as though he can periodically riff here on past, like he done for fall. There is a cardigan with trompe l'oeil bows that serves as Schiap's starting point, as well as a version of her wool evening coat with porcelain vases in the pockets.
Overall, the collection features stretchy velvet, denim, and leather recut as kinky streetwear. Hats remind me of black holes. In some looks, there is a horn; in others, there are stark appendages from the buttocks and breasts. whereas the former may think of the points on Batman's ears in the well-known painting by Herb Ritts, Roseberry was thinking of the beak of a hummingbird. He explains why his modernized evening coat looks stylish its wearer's fingers with dressmaker's shears by saying that "Edward Scissorhands was a sort of thing." Additionally, there are black opera glove with incredibly long fingers that provide an answer to the query of what is truly attractive. According to Roseberry, it appeals to our "inner kid" and is the reason why "so a lot of us are loving fashion today." It is the area between reality and imagination.
At Schiaparelli, they often ponder the following: "If a child were to stroll or be carried through salons, what might that youngster be reaching outside to touch?"
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