Schiaparelli Spring & Summer 2024
Written by Sophia Buckholtz
This season, Schiaparelli launched the Spring 2024 Paris Week at the Place Vendôme, a square in the city's center prominent in the art and fashion world. The iconic fashion house made the predicted splash, as characterized by The Associated Press as a “vivid tableau of the house’s 1930’s glory days.” Paris Fashion Week will take place from Feb. 26 to March 5 this year, and is one of the most annually highly anticipated events for art and design.
Creative director Daniel Roseberry presented a parade of expertly crafted denim, leather, gold and fur. Embellishments amplified many pieces, featuring intricate beadwork, sequins and featherwork. A black knotted skirt with a black corset served as the backdrop for a particularly bold piece, a torso-length neckpiece described by Schiaparelli’s website as a “handmade lobster necklace in gilded ceramic.”
Schiaparelli was revived in 2014 with its first runway collection since the house’s bankruptcy in 1954, and since has traded hands from Betrard Guyon to Daniel Roseberry. Roseberry has made history as the first American to lead a French couture house. He aims not to recreate past work but instead diverge from the expectations surrounding Schiaparelli. Roseberry was quoted in a March 2021 Vogue article, “In order to change the conversation, it was important that there were no references. It was more about capturing the spirit and the bravery of Schiaparelli.”
The iconic week of culture is not without its imperfections. Flocking fashion lovers to the cities means serious environmental implications for the host. It also tends to affect consumer behavior, in cases when ready-to-wear collections influence a switch in what is considered “on trend”, and inversely, what’s considered “out-of-fashion.” A New York Times article published in 2023 estimates the combined carbon emissions due to travel during four major fashion seasons reaches “241,000 tons — or equivalent to the energy used to light up the Eiffel Tower for 3,060 years.” Travel is only one of the fashion related issues plaguing the environment. Physical waste from putting on the shows accumulates, and subsequently contributes to landfill. Sustainability efforts are possible during events of this scale, however. Copenhagen Fashion Week participation in the show is contingent on designers’ compliance with 18 sustainability requirements. While the Danish event is smaller than those held in New York or Paris, it serves as an example of what’s possible in the industry.
Edited by Lauren Veum, Alex Speier, Maggie Bond, and Sam Teisch.
