American ingenuity and French savoir-faire can make for a heady combination. Witness Daniel Roseberry, whose imaginative and influential take on Schiaparelli perfectly makes this point.
As the two countries celebrate 250 years of alliance and friendship, the house’s creative director showed his newest haute couture collection at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris inside the Petit Palais on Monday, with an offering of mythical sea creatures-themed fantastical clothes made from unexpected materials.
American visual artist Matthew Barney’s masterpiece, “The Cremaster Cycle,” also served as inspiration.
Roseberry underscored his stateside leanings in more ways. Special guests included Bad Bunny, in a custom butter-yellow suit adapted from a Schiaparelli woman’s suit, arrived with his brother, Bernie Martínez Ocasio, who sported a simple white tank, possibly to beat the Paris heat. American model Karlie Kloss made a surprise runway appearance, straight from the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce wedding extravaganza at Madison Square Garden.
The soundtrack, which featured a voice-over by Roseberry, toyed with the English versions of French phrases and described concepts from “The Matrix.”
Post-show, the designer explained that non-traditional materials were used for the first time in top-tier creations.
“We discovered a studio outside of Paris that makes 3D photorealistic babies for French film productions, as you can’t use children under three months in the productions,” he explained. “We met these incredible young silicone experts who create the most lifelike babies. We poured the silicone they use into sheets, using it as a fabric to reimagine the building blocks of and fabrication for the collection.”
Think silicone, latex, and pools of paints baked and sculpted into clothes, often lit to recall bioluminescent ocean life.
Roseberry described the creative territory of stepping out of his collection process, which he called a ”joyful experience, and at times an emotionally complicated” one in the show notes.
While on the creative journey, the designer revealed he had begun another journey: training for the marathon. “The rigor and discipline of that training I found helped further my work discipline,” he added.
Later that day, Roseberry invited his VIP clients and the industry friends back to the show space for a cocktail to celebrate and view the otherworldly creations up close on mannequins – each the result of risking exploration into an unknown design space, in true American spirit.
