From left: Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 24; Giambattista Valli Haute Couture Spring 24. Photographs courtesy of the brands. It began, funnily enough, with Natasha Lyonne on the 2024 Golden Globes red carpet. Known for her boundary-pushing approach to personal style, Lyonne arrived in a white sculptural gown from Schiaperelli’s Couture 22 collection. Covered in vertical tassles, the dress’ structural bodice featured two elongated points that framed her décolletage, extending high above her earrings, coming to rest around Lyonne’s eye level.
The gown inadvertently primed our palates for the designer Daniel Roseberry’s sci-fi inspired Couture Spring 24 collection for Schiaperelli, “Schiaperalien”, hosted earlier this week at the Petit Palais. The height that defined Lyonne’s award season ensemble was writ large on Roseberry’s runway, with models slinking down the off-white catwalk in sky-high bodices. Some fully fringed, some lightly tasselled, some laced like angel wings and some beaded.
If there was a takeaway from the 32-look collection – other than Roseberry’s love of the “Alien” film series – it was that the higher your outfit is, the closer you are to… life on Mars? Fashion nirvana?
On the other side of spectrum (or body), Giambattista Valli’s floral inspired couture offering advocated for floor grazing volume. From the high to the low, Valli’s muses drew eye gazes south with streamlined bodices that opened into sumptuous, ballooned hemlines, rendered in blossom printed taffeta and pillar box red.
While the industry’s fascination with quiet luxury has lead to a minimalist approach to collections in recent years, couture’s function has always included challenging traditional proportions and silhouettes. In Roseberry’s pursuit of height and Valli’s reverence for depth, we’re reminded of the joy of sartorial surrealism. “What could be more surreal than all of these shenanigans we involve ourselves in,” Lyonne told “Women’s Wear Daily” of her Golden Globes look. “It’s an honour to wear this outfit. We’re in the business of the arts, and wearing this art piece is a special thing.”
