Schiaparelli opened Paris couture week with a collection of silicone and pearls
The bodice was modelled by hand, like a sculpture, and cast in silicone. The lace on the jacket is painted on. And tentacles came down the runway.
Paris couture week is opened by whoever has something to show. This time Schiaparelli went first — and the house answered with a collection easier to describe as an immersion than as a show. The name says it all: “The Abyss”.
Start with the dress whose bodice looks like an anatomical cast. It was not poured into a mould — it was modelled by hand, like a sculpture, and only then cast in silicone and painted sky blue. Daniel Roseberry, who has run the house since 2019, says the team developed techniques and materials that simply did not exist in couture.
Next, a white silicone jacket with lace that is not there: the pattern is painted in trompe l’œil. The device is not new for the house — Elsa Schiaparelli herself turned to it almost a hundred years ago.
The sea shows through the whole collection. Black latex with tentacles. A tulle dress scattered with black silicone dots — scales or a jellyfish, depending on the angle you look from. Alongside them, ultra-tight corsets in synthetics, sheer embroidered skirts and trousers covered entirely in pearls.
In the audience sat the Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh and Bad Bunny, who had played two concerts in Paris over the weekend. The singer came in a pastel-yellow suit with a woven gold tie, and on his lapel were two brooches that are impossible to mistake: a lock and an eye.
The week only gathers pace from here. Dior showed the same day — Jonathan Anderson presented his second couture collection since his appointment; after a January debut of floral references he went back into nature, judging by teasers of plants and rolling thunder. Tuesday brings Chanel and Matthieu Blazy’s second collection. Wednesday brings Balenciaga and Jean Paul Gaultier: both houses recently changed creative directors and skipped last season. Thirty houses in all will show by Thursday.
Couture remains a strictly Parisian affair: the shows take place only here, in January for the summer season and in July for the winter one. Each piece exists as a single example and is made by hand, most often for a specific event or red carpet.