It’s a good moment to be Daniel Roseberry. Fashion has decided to swap the bland sameness of quiet luxury and the banality of algorithms for a mood that’s more eccentric. And eccentric fashion is something Roseberry excels at, as he’s proven over and over again at his couture shows for Schiaparelli. Ready-to-wear is a newer project chez Schiap and he’s been tinkering with the formula the last few seasons, but even if he dialed down the surrealist touches that founder Elsa Schiaparelli was famous for and that he embraced with such gusto at the beginning of his tenure here, he’s definitely making fashion for extroverts.
Consider Kendall Jenner’s blue jeans, whose waistband did a U-shaped dip in the front and back, further accentuating the nipped silhouette of her ivory jersey bodysuit with stretch corset inside. Not your basic five-pocket style denim. That hourglass shape was a recurring theme, whether on a zip-front denim day dress or a fancier halter dress in black compact jersey with off-white jersey draping below the hips.
But Roseberry’s mission here was to hit a lot of different beats, so this wasn’t a collection about themes or trends; it was more like dipping into the idiosyncratic closet of a life-of-the-party type—one who wears zebra stripes, believes in the power of shoulder pads, and only wears florals if they’re embroidered with hand-painted sequins—and trying on all the highlights.
At a preview, Roseberry made a point of saying how few embroideries he used this season. Instead, he created texture and surface interest in other ways: By gathering the blue mesh jersey of a bodycon dress into a series of knots which formed a long braid that the model held coiled in her hand like a whip. Or by stitching strips of suede to a knit dress then shellacking the ends for a touch of shine. “It’s all about taking that oomph that people love from the couture and making it just super-effortless,” he said. That rule also applied to the season’s new shoes. Roseberry has garnered a lot of attention for Schiap’s golden trompe l’oeil toe sneakers. Tweaking that idea, he added a golden toe ring to the trompe l’oeil toes of leather babouche slides—unconventional and fun.
