Schiaparelli Shines
In less than five years American designer Daniel Roseberry has reinvented the historic house of Schiaparelli with his modern take on surrealism, and buoyed the Diego Della Valle-owned brand's fortunes with Hollywood's help.
Roseberry dressed Dua Lipa in a custom black velvet bustier dress with trompe l'oeil gilded bones inspired by Elsa Schiaparelli's collaboration with Salvador Dali in 1938, and Carey Mulligan donned a strapless black and white gown with bodice ruching evoking a spine, recreating an original Schiaparelli design from fall 1949.
Natasha Lyonne chose a custom bustier dress inspired by the spring 2023 couture collection, fully covered in ecru glass bugle beads and fringe tubes.
“I love the history of Schiaparelli, Elsa Schiaparelli and Surrealism as a movement,” Lyonne told WWD on the carpet. “What could be more surreal than all of these shenanigans we involve ourselves in? It's an honor to wear this outfit. We're in the business of the arts, and wearing this art piece is a special thing.”
The red carpet showing followed Roseberry's trip to Los Angeles last October, where he was feted at a Neiman Marcus cocktail party by Jennifer Lopez, Angela Bassett, Regina King, Lyonne and many more Hollywood friends who have supported the brand.
“You know, we've never paid a single person to wear it. It's just incredible that people have gravitated to it so much. I'm just humbled by that,” Roseberry said at the time. “I think of this as the service industry. So, for me, it's about serving an artist in a moment where they have to be highly performative, highly vulnerable, highly out there. And that's what I love to do. You know, [Alexander] McQueen said one time, ‘I don't go to therapy, because the collections are my therapy.' And you had the sense that sometimes designers are working out their own personal things. I couldn't feel less like that at all. For me it's about the client. It's about the star. It's about serving a moment. And that's what I hope people feel and what I hope they're they re responding to.”