Daniel Roseberry Enters Pre-2007 Tech Into the Schiaparelli Haute Couture Canon for Spring 2024

Ana Colón

January 22, 2024 at 11:16 AM·4 min read

Fashion week is all about newness — the newest collection, the newest trend, the newest color. Still, you can generally go into it knowing what to expect: Certain houses have their codes and their specialties that customers come to them for, so we can expect to see an update or new riff on them among the latest offering. Chanel will have its tweed; Armani will have its suiting.

Daniel Roseberry has risen to a completely different echelon with his work at Schiaparelli because, even working within and honoring an almost-century-old house with an established client base and design language, he always delivers something surprising on the runway.

In past seasons — and especially in his haute couture collections for Schiaparelli — Roseberry usually hones in on a concept, materiality or motif. He'll often build on them from collection to collection, making them a part of his design language for the house. (See: how gold has become his neutral.)

For Haute Couture Spring 2024, he's concerned with shape. It comes across in shoulders and sleeves, which are curved in a cartoonish way. Then, the neck on a black velvet gown stretches upward, obscuring the bottom half of the model's face (very "Dune"-coded — do we think Zendaya slipped Roseberry a screener of the upcoming sequel?), and the midi shiny patent tulip skirt on a gown balloons outward, contrasting against the sheer corset top. Even the straps on a fully embellished gown stand up over the shoulders, as if floating over the body.

Roseberry has scaled back his use of color, employing it sparingly in his collections for maximum impact; here, it works to really emphasize the silhouettes and construction. The talking point of this collection, though, will surely be the pieces fully embellished with pre-2007 technology, transformed in the Schiaparelli atelier into a sort of readymade art piece with crystals and embroidery.

There's a toddler-shaped sculpture (?), carried by a model wearing a comparatively demure look (white tank top, low-rise cargo trousers in a similar creamy hue), and an arguably more palatable long-sleeved mini dress in the same style. According to the show notes, these connect back to the Schiaparelli family's fascination with space and the possibility of what's out there, as well as founder Elsa's record of mixing contradictory elements in search of creating something new. As the keeper of her maison, Roseberry takes on the latter charge by marrying the "old world techniques" of the Schiaparelli atelier with "new world shapes, patterns and references." (He notes that "the technology I grew up with is so antiquated that it's almost as difficult to source as certain vintage fabrics and embellishments.")

The Spring 2024 haute couture offering is also sprinkled with autobiographical references: Beaded bandanas, slick cowboy boots, horse braid dressage knots on oversized jackets and golden buckles add a touch of Texas (Roseberry's home state) to an otherwise Parisian presentation.

See the full Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2024 collection, below.