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The Garden of Earthly Delıghts ın the Schıaparellı Haute Couture FW22 Collectıon

Shocking! The Surreal World of Elsa Schiaparelli, the high-impact exhibition opening this week at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, includes pieces that fellow designers created in homage to the house’s founding genius, among them Yves Saint Laurent, Jean Paul Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa, and Christian Lacroix. For this season’s Schiaparelli haute couture collection, Daniel Roseberry, the house’s brilliant artistic director, took this idea of “being in conversation with the people who had been so inspired by her.”

Schiaparelli artistic director Daniel Roseberry has come closer to the house heritage over time. His general approach has been to “épater la bourgeoisie”—“It’s just something that’s not as polite as couture typically tends to be,” is how he put it. This seems to be in keeping with the ethos of the iconoclastic brand founded in 1927 by an artistic and aristocratic Roman, who was driven by the shock of the new.

With couture coinciding with the opening of a major Schiaparelli exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, there’s never been a better time for* Roseberry to deep dive into the archives. The show notes indicate some of Roseberry’s more direct homages. Others seem less literal; I for one, can’t look at the flowered series without thinking of the story Schiaparelli recounts in her memoirs. As a child, seeking a remedy for what she deemed her unattractiveness, the nascent designer covered her face in seeds, willing them to bloom into beautiful flowers.