January 27, 2025 |
Can old become new? It can certainly become spectacular in the hands of Daniel Roseberry. Schiaparelli’s American couturier was in an antique shop when he happened upon spools of ribbons, made in Lyon in the 1920s and 1930s. The way they were crafted and their delicate dusty colours (butter, burnt saffron, mink, toast and faded peacock green) came from a different era which fired Roseberry’s imagination. “I wanted to create something that feels new because it’s old,” he said. I’m so tired of everyone constantly equating modernity with simplicity: Can’t the new also be worked, be baroque, be extravagant? Has our fixation on what looks or feels modern become a limitation? Has it cost us our imagination?”
Good question. His answer was an epic up-cycling exercise, transforming those antique ribbons into 21st century couture gowns with techniques passed down through generations. They were looped and draped onto a corseted super structure and caged in contrasting bands of black velvet ribbon.
Roseberry took inspiration from great couturiers of the past: Worth to Madame Gres Saint Laurent, Alaia and of course Schiaparelli. “I wanted to learn from them,” he said, cherry picking then evolved my historic silhouettes as varied as an extreme S-bend corseted redingote to an dramatic empire line gown falling from a clam shell shaped bustier. Couture corsetry skills were on full display, with Roseberry creating what he described as “shockingly sharp” padding on the hips and bust. His also atelier went to town on head-to-toe embellishment, embroidering house motifs – the keyhole, dove anatomy – into almost every look. There were many ingenious looks from a seamless frill-back jumpsuit crafted from one piece of fabric, to a gown dripping in quivering quartz droplets another trimmed with gleaming glycerine dipped feathers, and a dress made from in plisse polyamide (a modern fabric, stronger than silk). No shortage of imagination here.
Photography courtesy of Schiaparelli.
