Monday’s Schiaparelli show in Paris may well have marked the first time that the soundtrack of “Top Gun” was used for an haute couture show.
Creative director Daniel Roseberry, a self-described film buff, has been binge-watching movies and opened the show with the 20th Century Fox fanfare. Excerpts from the “Alien” and “Oppenheimer” soundtracks, as well as Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter” movement from “The Planets,” also peppered a collection marked with strong references to Roseberry’s native Texas.
Coming less than a week after Pharrell Williams’ western-inspired menswear collection for Louis Vuitton, the show trumpeted the cultural influence of the U.S. designers helming some of France’s most prestigious luxury houses.
“Being an American in Paris, I feel like I’m digging my heels in and feeling my American-ness even more,” Roseberry said after the show. “I feel so much freedom inside the codes of the house too.”
It was founder Elsa Schiaparelli’s fondness for unlikely marriages that formed the basis of the collection. It opened with a series of black outfits in otherworldly shapes, including a glossy black vinyl jacket with inflated sleeves, worn with cropped black pants lined with dense rows of cowboy-inspired silver buckles. (Think “Matrix” meets “Westworld.”)
Channeling “Alien” heroine Ellen Ripley, model Maggie Maurer cradled a doll embroidered with Swarovski crystals and electronic chips, an homage to the era before iPhones. The pileup of electronic waste also appeared on a silver “robot” dress.
“That’s all pre-2007, which is now basically prehistoric technology, things like the flip phones, the CDs, the calculators and things like that,” Roseberry said. “A lot of people on TikTok have been taking AI and turning my collections into digital collections and seeing who wore it best, so I was thinking, the only card I have to play now is really my memories.”
He combined his pop culture references with his lifelong passion for haute couture, from the hourglass waistlines of Charles James, which informed a nude satin bustier gown with a jutting bow at the neckline, to the sculptural constructions of Cristóbal Balenciaga.
Roseberry said he was inspired by a show of Azzedine Alaïa’s private collection of vintage haute couture garments, which just ended its four-month run at the Palais Galliera fashion museum, especially for his choice of a mostly neutral color palette.
Alongside his usually showstoppers, which this season included a number of dresses that dramatically screened the face, there were traditional red carpet gowns, such as a draped and knotted tank dress embroidered with a cheeky trompe-l’oeil outline of men’s underwear.
A puffball gown made of pink satin, topped with an asymmetrical sweep of black jersey, read like a wink to René Gruau’s famous illustration for Rouge Baiser lipstick. Roseberry also wanted to pay tribute to the couture technique of grand flou, or draping, since several key members of the Schiaparelli couture team are leaving after this season.
“It was a meaningful collection for all of us,” he told Jennifer Lopez as she came to congratulate him backstage.
The singer was a headline guest at party that Schiaparelli threw with Neiman Marcus in Los Angeles in October, and Roseberry is evidently keen to maintain his reputation as the king of the red carpet now that the actors’ strike is over. In recent weeks he has dressed the likes of Julia Roberts, Carey Mulligan and Natalie Portman.
“We’re in the middle of award season. Hollywood’s back and they’re hungry,” he declared.
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