How the Louvre’s Stolen Jewels Turned Up at Paris Couture Week, Courtesy of Schiaparelli

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“It’s like what an eight year old would imagine,” Daniel Roseberry says, contemplating one of his Schiaparelli creations at the maison’s atelier overlooking Place Vendôme in Paris. The Texan designer has invited Vanity Fair to join him at a dress fitting ahead of his latest haute couture show in Paris, which took place Monday morning at the Petit Palais. He’s speaking of an ensemble consisting of a black pencil skirt and a light skin-toned top with appliqué flowers, calling it the Infanta Terrible, because it feels both like a painting of a Spanish princess and a mischievous character. It all sounds straightforward enough, couture enough, except that the bustier has a protruding scorpion-like tail that curves upwards from the model’s lower waist to hang over her head. The flowers, hand cut from Spanish cotton lace, appear to float over the crinoline enveloping the tail. They have been placed one by one atop dressmaker pins, piercing the appendage all over. The finished outfit is a sight to behold, something out of a surrealist painting or, yes, out of an eight year old’s imagination. Except that it also represents hundreds of years of couture savoir-faire.

As he rearranges his boards to display photos and the season’s moodboard, which shows more technique examples than any specific references, Roseberry explains that this season he wanted to answer two questions with his collection: First, “what does anger look like when it’s used for beauty?” And second, “What does joy look like, where does the joy come from?” “Anger is so much of it, but I wanted to turn it into something inspiring,” he says.

There is so much to be angry about today, just a glance at the news will do it. Roseberry has the right instinct in looking to express that while aiming to find slivers of joy, too.

“Finding the play in the rigor of couture felt like a huge challenge, and it’s something that the team felt too,” Roseberry says, this time kneeling and adjusting the skirt. “We wanted to make it almost as classic as possible, and then make it as poisonous as possible as well,” he laughs, pointing at the tail. This is a collection full of serious couture, but it’s also playful and imaginative. “There is rigor at the top of the collection and then it gets freer,” he says. “The reptiles become birds, the black and white become more colorful.”

Roseberry says that this is the most fun he and his team has had while making a collection. “That feels like a reward in and of itself too,” he adds, this time considering the season’s footwear, which he says was, in a way, his starting point this time around. The toe caps of these shoes were fashioned to look like snakes and birds. “The animals at the toe is something that I wanted to do for a long time, I don’t know why, but it sort of kicked off the entire collection,” he says. “We started with the reptiles and had the scales become feathers in the collection.” Then, as if swiftly recalling that moment back in 2022, he adds: “They’re made of resin, foam, and molded leather, and they’re handpainted and airbrushed,” he explains. “There is no realness, it’s all trompe l’oeil.” Looking back at Mila, he asks her about her shoes. “Are they okay?” he asks, “you deserve good shoes!”

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