Jisoo, Kylie Jenner And Viral Moments From Schiaparelli And Dior At Paris Couture Week

Schiaparelli is all boldness while Dior speaks softly on the first day of Paris Couture's Spring 2023 season.

By Rachel Tashjian - published 25 Jan 2023

Yesterday, I awoke to two text messages sharing the same image, of model Irina Shayk, wearing a black column dress with a lifesize lion head in mid-roar affixed to the bodice in the Schiaparelli Spring 2023 show that opened Paris Couture Week. One text read, “LOVE!!! SLAY!!!” The other? “This is the most”—uh, well, it got somewhat unprintable from there, but let’s just say, it wasn’t pleasant.

The Schiaparelli animal head looks—Shalom Harlow as a snow leopard, Shayk as a lion, and Naomi Campbell in a wolf coat, inspired respectively by their symbolism as lust, pride, and avarice in Dante’s Divine comedy—set off a firestorm online, which my colleague Tara Gonzalez wrote about here. When it became apparent that they were fake—made of resin, wool, silk, and foam—some corners of the internet got even more upset.

Rarely is fashion so divisive; usually everyone either loves a collection, or ignores it. To see something cause such a fracas - one Instagram commenter suggested the house should burn the entire collection in shame, and PETA actually issued a message in support of the looks - is testament to designer Daniel Roseberry’s outrageous creativity.

I suppose they were a little silly. But I could also see the dresses as a gleefully grotesque commentary on our dubious assertion that faux fur is better than real. It’s like the Impossible Burger of couture: is it better to eat a biologically “ethical” mockup of the real thing, or a beautifully prepared vegetable? Or you could see it as commentary on the way the ultra-wealthy hunt for fashion like sport. The pieces lend themselves to bizarre intellectual play, which is a worthy goal for dressmaking at the highest artistic level, don’t you think?

Everyone pines for the outrageous clothes of McQueen, of Mugler, of Dior-era Galliano; and yet they often forget that those clothes, today, would be very controversial. (Or pointless. See: Coperni's spray-on dress.)

Schiap herself used exotic skins and furs in her collections; one of her most famous designs was a monkey fur coat, which she even produced as ready-to-wear. Roseberry’s heads felt like a nod to that, with the added gloss of Schiap’s Surrealist obsession (in the show notes, he wrote about his desire to trick us into thinking they might be real heads). But I don’t think they’re important merely because they’re provocative, in a Jordan Wolfson kind of way. It’s more that Roseberry uses fashion to elicit feelings and thoughts we don’t typically associate with the medium. He reminds us that clothes can be funny, and disturbing, and frightening, and weird. In his show notes, Roseberry called the collection “my homage to doubt.” Not everyone can pull off his clothes, or even wants to, and I love how comfortable he is with that. Lean into the niche! It’s couture, and 2023, after all! If anything, his weird stuff is a refuge for decadents who feel put off by the mainstream of fashion but still feel that urge for something unusual, special, sumptuous. For all the “who’s gonna wear this???” head-shaking that his clothes can elicit, they have a strong and dedicated clientele (his ready-to-wear salon at Bergdorf Goodman is always happily peopled), and celebrities are willing to sit under the hands of Pat McGrath for five hours to get crystals applied to their bodies (as Doja Cat did) in the name of Schiap.

Let’s turn our attention to the rest of the collection, where Roseberry did some other great stuff. (In fact, I sort of wish Roseberry had just done the Shayk tiger look, which was the most interesting and Schiap-esque, like a bored second wife rolled herself up in the library’s tiger head rug and wandered into her husband’s bridge game.) This collection was more refined than season past—simplified and clarified. The opening look was an hourglass white jacket, almost a Bar shape though a bit more curvaceous and Victorian and therefore perverted, made of beads or paper or bundled silk, with a pair of black cropped trousers. Hedonistic, but clean. The other standout looks were Oscar-worthy, which is always a big part of this season of couture: a rounded velvet bodice with a skirt of satin pinched in the front, and a velvet jumpsuit with enormous shoulders and ombre sleeves, and a black column dressing with an enormous spray of hay-gold loopy passementerie down the front.

If Schiaparelli yells, Dior whispers. Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior collection was inspired by Josephine Baker, but with a light hand. I’m intrigued by the way that designers, especially women, seem to be reinterpreting the 1920s, which is the first moment (and many historians would argue, the only period) when fashion was truly modern, invested in newness and technology and keeping pace with the progress and speed of the rest of culture. Emily Adams Bode Aujla explored a similar theme in her womenswear debut this past weekend, but Maria Grazia was even more restrained and less fantastical, concentrating on a beautiful and understated selection of pleating and quilting techniques on silk crepe skirts and separates. Even when she went “J’ai Deux Amours,” which is to saying making more obvious homages to Baker, the clothes looked elemental, almost like the technical skin or foundation beneath the 1920s’ de rigeur slippery silk dress, as in a see-through chainmail-and-bead top and skirt, and a gold and silver-striped tank dress with fringey beads at the hem.

But really, this is a collection to zoooom in on, so you can appreciate the draped neck and the delicate pleating of a black bateau neck shell top and skirt, or the sparkling beadwork of a fringe top and crushed silk skirt. Of course, the most sublime thing about these clothes is that their technique and impact will never be truly obvious to anyone except the woman wearing them. To others, they might look subtle, and it could take a few minutes to appreciate the complex pleating technique of a shell white tennis dress. But talk to women who have worn Chiuri’s clothes and they rave about the fit, the practicality, the durability. Her emphasis on practical daywear in this collection, mixed with gowns that have an artisanal, un-corporate glow, feel like a peek into the beautifully appointed home of a woman fabulous beyond our imagination. Privacy, individuality, secrecy, something made by hand to decorate your body…nothing could be more luxurious right now. It is the opposite, in some ways, of the Schiaparelli approach, which lassos us in with an outrageous zoo. But isn’t it dandy that one day of couture week accommodates both kinds of women?

Read ahead to see all the looks from Dior's Haute Couture Spring Summer 2023 collection.