Schiaparelli’s The Spring 2023 Haute Couture collection is as captivating as it is whimsical, elegant and macabre.
A moto jacket reimagined as an oversized puffer. Great boleros blown up, yet fitted in all the right places. A simple blazer with an onyx snake that trims the collar and shines as if it were alive or floating.
Below Daniel Roseberrys creative direction, the house has proven to have a penchant for shaping it “extra ordinary” whether in ready-to-wear or haute couture, while exploring some heavy themes. This time Schiaparelli grapples with torment, beauty and bravery, taking inspiration from the still arresting themes of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy” – specifically “Inferno”.
“What appealed to me about ‘Inferno’ wasn’t just the theatrics of Dante’s creation—it was how perfectly it provided a metaphor for the agony that any artist or creative person experiences when we sit in front of the screen or the sketch pad or the dress. form when we have that moment of being shaken by what we don’t know,” Roseberry wrote in the show notes.
In a successful attempt to create Alighieri’s “most sensational images”, the collection features faux taxidermy created entirely by hand. It drives any onlooker into a surreal state: A leopard, lion and she-wolf (worn by none other than Naomi Campbell) compels every viewer to revel in the overwhelming craftsmanship of the Schiaparelli team and encourage a reflection on the duality of beauty and death.
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Don’t waste any time, Kylie Jenner sat front row at the show wearing a custom version of one of those looks: a bustiered black velvet dress with a lion head sculpted from foam, wool and silk faux fur, then hand-painted. Doja cat was also there in his own fearless gaze. Tomato red from head to toe, the singer wore 30,000 Swarovski crystals hand-applied to her face and body, courtesy of Pat McGrath.
Kylie Jenner’s front row look mimicked what was on the runway itself.
Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli
Schiaparelli Spring 2023 Haute Couture is about doubt as creative—”the doubt of creation and the doubt of intention,” Roseberry continued in the show notes. “With this collection I wanted to step away from techniques I was familiar with and understood, choosing instead the dark wood where everything is scary but new, where I wanted to feel my way through a place I didn’t know and knew . do not get it.”
See the entire Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023 collection in the gallery below.
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