![]() They flipped along in their short, flared suits with the odd top hat and bow tie, shod in little white cross-laced boots with Chanel’s signature black-tipped toes. Hey presto! A playful idea that got Viard into the swing of a theme-a parade of something between cute Chanel drum majorettes, or perhaps, circus ringmasters. Virginie Viard held a tete-a-tete with the artist Xavier Veilhan to come up with a set idea for the spring couture show in said apartment and-you can picture it-they must’ve looked around and said to each other “let’s do the animals!” ![]() What swiftly comes up are photos of Chanel at home in the Rue Cambon, with a model of a camel on a side-table, large bronzes of deer clustered around her fireplace, and lion effigies here, there, and everywhere. Roseberry addressed these with a plethora of black evening gowns, and hourglass jackets that were laced down the back, corset-style.What could a conceptual camel be doing at Chanel couture? This puzzle-the first sight to greet the audience as they walked in-can easily be solved by googling Coco Chanel’s apartment. “Above all, I want people to feel that there are risks being taken, that we take the biggest swings possible and that they don’t know what they’re gonna see,” he said, although it’s safe to assume he didn’t anticipate the magnitude of public reaction to the show.īehind the headline-grabbing runway looks, Schiaparelli has a real - and thriving - couture business that caters to women with practical needs. The outlandish looks reflected his conception of couture as a space for experimentation and awe. “This man who can make this has never made a garment.” “Part of the joy of couture is working with artisans who are of a certain age, who are the masters, and then giving them a challenge,” Roseberry noted. The latter was inspired by the marquetry on a sideboard designed by Jean-Michel Frank for the original Schiaparelli salon on Place Vendôme and required the help of another expert. Most impressive of all were the breast plates, as elaborate as screens, made of rigid materials like mother-of-pearl or lemontree wood. A strap dress shimmied with sequins made of tin covered in leather, while a bustier with a dramatically horned neckline quivered with ecru glass bugle beads. His solution? To plunge into the challenge with creations that pushed the technical capacity of his atelier to the brink. His streak of red carpet successes continues unabated, with recent appearances including Julia Roberts at the Critics’ Choice Awards and Rihanna at the Golden Globes.Ĭhurning out a full collection is another matter. That Roseberry should feel blank page anxiety is understandable, after a banner year that saw his creations displayed at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs as part of a Schiaparelli retrospective. ![]() But the point was really Dante himself and this story about trial, tribulation, doubt, and that you have to experience all of that in order to get to paradise,” the designer explained, likening it to his creative process. “I didn’t want it to be literal at all: we’re not going into the nine circles of hell and meeting Satan at the end. The creatures were a reference to Dante’s “Inferno,” which provided the broad inspiration for the spring collection. “We’ve worked with an artist based in Israel who has sculpted these creatures by hand out of foam and resin and then covered them with embroidered faux fur, basically, and then it’s all hand painted.” “In 2023, the Surrealism is actually in the photorealistic quality,” he said. Speaking ahead of the show, creative director Daniel Roseberry noted that while the house’s founder, Elsa Schiaparelli, worked with Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí, trompe-l’oeil is more literal in the age of social media. While some online commenters praised the artistry of the reproductions, others accused the house of glamorizing trophy hunting. On the runway, Shalom Harlow wore the snow leopard bustier dress, based on an archival design from 1938, while Irina Shayk sported the lion gown and Naomi Campbell the wolf coat. Kylie Jenner sent photographers into a frenzy by arriving in a customized version of the lion head gown, which had other front-row guests doing a double take. Schiaparelli kicked off Paris Fashion Week with a spectacular display of its Surrealist aesthetic that had the internet in a meltdown - and not just because Doja Cat showed up covered in 30,000 scarlet Swarovski crystals.Īt the center of the firestorm were three outfits incorporating eerily realistic replicas of animal heads: a snow leopard, a lion and a wolf.
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