SCHIAPARELLI HAUTE COUTURE FALL WINTER 2023-2024

...AND THE ARTISTS. After last season, which was about reducing each look to something concise and even sometimes arresting, my instinct here was to build the collection in a different way, for a collection that adventures, explores, and dares. One that feels more organic, more sensual, more impromptu. I found freedom in separates—a white shirt, perfect pants, enormous puffer coats and even knitwear basics like cardigans and tube skirts. I wanted to make an impossible wardrobe—impossible not because it’s not wearable, but because it’s so extraordinary, a Surrealist’s interpretation of a woman’s essential closet. There’s a sense of freedom, of disobedience; these are pieces a woman can assemble however she wants; that feeling of transgression and spontaneity she should experience when she does so is one I felt as well when I was creating them—most of the ‘looks’ you see here were put together in the days leading up to this show, as opposed to head to toe formulas that have been labored over for months. This approach felt like a revelation. Uniting everything is Schiaparelli’s long connection to art and artists - their daring, their color, their process. More than any other Maison, Schiaparelli has always been in conversation with art: one form of art talking to and inspired by another. In this collection, each piece has been somehow inspired by an artist, either one of Elsa’s time, or mid-century, or of our own. We hand-painted a woman’s body with brushwork inspired by Lucia