The Schiaparelli designer, Daniel Roseberry, evidently couldn’t get back to Paris because of the pandemic, and decided couture was too collaborative a medium to attempt remotely. So he went to Washington Square Park and sketched, and sketched, and sketched some more. Many of them have a real classic magazine feel, like an old Vogue, or New Yorker. They are fascinating. The ONE miscalculation for me is that he drew a very boxy S logo on some clothes and as earrings, and I jumped out of my skin for a second because it looks like half of a swastika — and obviously it isn’t, nor is it trying to be, but it is evocative enough for me that for a split-second it made my stomach churn and sink. Perhaps I’m just on-edge (and as I noted in the comments, I have a son who loves World War II history and so we’ve been taking a lot about the swastika, and why his tanks poster doesn’t feature it anywhere, etc). I’m curious if you have the same reaction, although now that I’ve primed you, it taints the well.

Roseberry called it “the story of a collection that could have been.” Except apparently it yet will be: His atelier loved the drawings, so they’ll offer them made-to-order and then circulate some sampled in December in the hopes that awards season is happening. Also, as usual per Vogue:

As designers consider what comes next and what women will want post-COVID, when it’s safe to go out shopping again, many, if not most, are risk-averse. They seem to be thinking strategically—reimagining best-sellers in new fabrics or revisiting unused fabrics from previous seasons—and you hear words like “timeless,” “classic,” and “essential.” Roseberry is not one of them. The word he’s using is “disobedient”—he’s got the chaos part of Schiap’s “chaos and hope” equation covered. There are disobedient jewels, like the necklace from which a dress is draped, or the belt from which a skirt is suspended. And there are disobedient volumes, as in an upside-down mermaid dress that has all the volume at the shoulders, not at the hem.

“I hear all those designers who are talking about ‘forever pieces,’” he says. […]”But when it comes to couture and the clients we have, there’s a serious place for a more intimate, more immediate need to express yourself.” That could be on the red carpet or it could be, as the designer posits, entertaining the members of your social pod at home. “The ethos of the brand,” he says, “the idea of surrealism, the inversion of reality—they could not be more relevant than they are right now.”

I am very curious how many clients he has who would buy a couture Schiaparelli to make quarantinis for a pod of three.

[Photos: Imaxtree]