"Our latest Couture collection was born in a brief period of hope: it was April, vaccines were becoming widely available. Travel was possible again. We could finally imagine that this collective nightmare was behind us, or at least on the verge of being.
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Yet now that hope became inseparable from a sense of loss. The loss of our loved ones, the most heartbreaking. But also the loss of our certainties, the loss of our guarantees, and of the very idea of a collective future. There is also the generalized feeling of fatigue that we all share: this whirlwind of red carpet appearances, award ceremonies, and even fashion shows, everything seems irrelevant. Haven't we all had enough? Fashion has continued to claim relevance over the past couple of years, yet I sense that even some of those who practice it are no longer so convinced.
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What does fashion mean and what does it have to say in an age of flux? And to return to our House, what does surrealism mean when reality itself has been redefined? During the 23 rehearsals for this collection, I realized that what might have seemed exciting at the time was something significantly different, something contained. Suddenly, color had no place, and neither did volume. All the tricks designers like me use to convey splendor and artistry, whether it's grand silhouettes, sublime cascades of fabric, or exaggerated volume, well, it all sounded hollow.
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Instead, I wanted to see if I could achieve the same level of intensity and supernaturalness without relying on these devices. All I really needed was black, white and gold, which surprisingly wasn't so much a return to basics as it was a movement toward the elemental.
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After two years of thinking about surrealism, I found myself thinking more about the divine, and about paradise as a place to escape the chaos of our planet, but also as the home of a mythical high priestess, both goddess and alien, who might live among us. I imagined a being whose clothes would defy the laws of gravity: she would wear a perfectly tailored dress with a pinched waist and an oversized dove wing collar ready to take flight. She wore a cream lined short jacket with a platypus collar made of cotton canvas. He wore elegant shorts lined with raw silk faille.
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She wore elegant raw silk faille lined shorts, beige satin belts, tapered bustiers with cream satin belts and cascades of black hair that waved and bounced with her every movement. She wore a long black satin faille tailcoat embroidered with a vintage Schiaparelli motif depicting the Fountain of Apollo at Versailles.
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And finally, after the rigor of the dress and the weariness of a sharper silhouette, she gave in to her inner madness, making room for all sorts of eccentricities: gold fountains, black plumage, spectral beasts in cabochons, and a cocktail dress made of crystal like the inside of a jewelry box.
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This season revolves around a vast redefinition of Schiaparelli gold. We worked for several seasons to perfect this shade that is neither warm nor cool, neither coppery nor pink, and was formulated specifically for the Maison from 24-karat gold leaf.
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We used it in two ways, both of which were done by the extraordinary artisans with whom we collaborate. In the first, we created naive sculptures of the House codes. From there, the eyes and locks, lobster, dove, and a litany of body parts become ready-made molds for the thick leather. The hollowed-out sculptures are then gilded with 24-karat gold leaf and embroidered with vintage cabochons and crystals from the late 1930s. The latter, which can be seen in pieces like the black silk jersey column dress, whose bodice overflows with long strands of flickering metal, as if a corset had imploded, comes from sheets of metal that have been hammered, polished and then left like a jellyfish in the water.
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Designing this collection also allowed me to make something else. There are designers who create because they love clothes. There are those who make clothes clothes out of a passion for craftsmanship and people. There are designers who see their work as a concept or glamour as a business. I, on the other hand, design to make people feel things. When clothes, craftsmanship, hairstyling, music and the wearer come together in perfect harmony, when they join forces to try to communicate a message, then we can remember why we love fashion, why I love fashion.
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It's not for celebrities. It's not for the likes. It's not even for the reviews. It's simply because, when it's done well, fashion has something to tell us, it can help us express something inarticulate within us. It's because it still has the power to move us."
Daniel Roseberry
