Paris couture opens with Schiaparelli

Paris haute couture season opened Monday morning with the Schiaparelli show, as stretch limos and white Rolls Royces ferried Serena Williams, Kelly Rutherford, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu to this surrealist show.

A technically brilliant display whose opening look was a phoenix gown, where two 3D chrome trompe l’oeil feathered wings gently wrapped around a stunning black mode, attired with silver eggshell earrings.
 
A show entitled The Phoenix, referencing a moment when founder Elsa Schiaparelli dressed in a coq feather stole in homage to the great ballerina Anna Pavlova, who was something of a doppelganger. Though, where Anna was always linked to her performances in The Dying Swan, Elsa was the phoenix, permanently reinventing herself.

A leitmotif of the whole collection, where washed silk gowns or wool crepe bustier dresses had Phoenix-wing shoulders, often with plunging necklines.

Staged immaculately in the basement of the Hotel Solomon de Rothschild, turned into a black box, with thick pile carpet and just three huge chandeliers as decor.
 
The cast marching right up to the front-row, all lit from below with small beams of light, “to get the Degas lighting,” Schiaparelli’s creative director Daniel Roseberry noted post show.
 
Each model’s head wrapped in transparent crepe, all of them very pointedly looking the guests right in the eye. Demanding social media attention via the iPhone wielding editors and fans. One of those great shows where models feel so obviously empowered they practically smolder.

Most dresses finished corset style at the back including a remarkable bustier dress in a mille feuille of hundreds of moving circles that undulated all the way around the set. 
 
An almost hallucinatory fashion moment, that included a cocoon shaped jumpsuit of faux horsehair and sequins that recreated a zebra skin, and a bird of paradise fantasy jacket in trompe l’oeil feathers.
 
Backed up with a mournful soundtrack of ballads, including Nina Simone singing Plain Gold Ring.
 
“I wanted it to feel like a surrealist, hyper sensualist ballet,” explained an almost hoarse Roseberry, post show in the mansion’s courtyard. “I didn’t want to feel nostalgic. I was afraid of a homage. So, I wanted it to feel old, but young and twisted at the same time,” he concluded.