February 18, 2026

Tony Talks Schiaparelli

In recent months Paul Poiret has entered the news with a major retrospective give in Paris, with hommage to his work by JW Anderson in his first Dior Haute Couture show and with a general feeling that his work has more relevance than just a place in history. This story also has a Poiret connection, Elsa Schiaparelli was a huge fan of his work, and this was at a time well after his heydays, although his work was still heavily featured in La Gazette du Bon Ton, the time was fast approaching when he would be out of fashion. Their friendship began in 1922, but by the time she became a star he was all but forgotten having closed his doors in 1929. When later she wrote her memoir she lovingly tells the story of their first meeting, it is also known that he encouraged her at the very beginning of her fashion career.

In March 2018 they tried to revive Paul Poiret, like many other houses it didn’t work. The idea of reviving a great name in fashion simply by purchasing it, installing a new designer, and believing it will result in success is to be blunt, naïve. The great names of the past don’t always pay for a fresh look, which is why it is fascinating that Schiaparelli’s success is a perfect example of the amount of investment, time, care, and commitment required to succeed at this huge task. to this huge task.

Rome born Schiaparelli had been in Paris since 1922, as a single mother and designing clothes for a short while, she eventually had some tiny attic rooms, both as living accommodation and as her business and workroom, in the rue de la Paix. It still took several years until in 1927 she was introduced to a friend’s Armenian knitter who could, and would, knit to anything to order. Schiaparelli commissioned her to make a slim, fitted black sweater with a big white bow on the front, knitted into design, not appliqué. According to Palmer White in his biography of the designer, it took two attempts to get it right, and then clever Schiaparelli wore it out to lunch at The Ritz, she was always good at P.R., and this resulted in Lord & Taylor New York ordering forty copies. It was the starting point of her fame and success. successful PR forty copies of the sweater for Lord & Taylor in New York.

The American connection is a strong thread throughout the story of both the designer and her house, starting with her move to New York in 1919 with her then husband, and it was also there she had her only child, Gogo.

The moment Schiaparelli was successful and then established in Paris she purchased 21, Place Vendome from Madame Chéruit in 1935, and there she developed many of the couture house elements she’d observed and admired in Poiret. Working with artists, including Surrealists, and having themes to her collections, plundering other cultures, a small accessories boutique, fragrances and always giving a strong shape to her clothes. She lived a glamorous and busy social life, she entertained and she was outspoken, her own best publicist and was never scared of being controversial. Schiap, as she became known to her friends, relished every moment of her enormous success throughout the 1930’s and her rivalry with Coco Chanel is famous. As wore broke out she moved back to New York although during the war years in Paris she left her house to be run by Irene Dara.

Fashion can be cruel, and times and the customers change, when Schiaparelli returned to Paris in 1945 it was clear that the prewar styles, her love of artists, very bold silhouettes and in 1947, the romance of Christian Dior and his New Look were all against her. She struggled on with some beautiful pieces still shown, but as collections she became less and less successful until in 1954 she closed the doors on her couture house. The many fragrances, including “Shocking” and her boutique accessories continued, Schiaparelli had been clever enough to own and form a fragrance division in 1957. She lived on for many years dying in 1973.

During the postwar years we must note that the great couturier Hubert de Givenchy designed for Schiaparelli boutique from 1947 for four years and then this led him to launch his own Maison de Couture in 1951. So much for history, and now to the twenty first century story of The House of Schiaparelli.

The new chapter starts in 2007 when the Italian businessman Diego Della Valle, who owns Tod’s the shoe brand, and Aqua de Parma fragrance, announces he has acquired the company of Schiaparelli, which includes the signature name, part of the building at 21, Place Vendome, and the fragrances. None of this was actually announced until 2013 to everyone’s astonishment and the fashion world woke up to the news Christian Lacroix had been engaged to design a collection to relaunch the house. What was also astonishing was this wasn’t a collection in the conventional sense of the word since it was seen as a debut since there were never any plans to produce the clothes. In the original press release della Valle had also announced Lacroix as the first in a series of “guest” designers. Be that as it may, by the following season, in 2014 Marco Zanini was announced as first designer for the relaunched house, and it was to be only couture. As a heritage house it swiftly became a key player on the official FHCM schedule, but after only a few seasons. In spite of generally good reviews, Zanini left. The following season the collection was created by the studios and then Bertrand Guyon joined the house in 2015. In time he too left, but during his employment he had introduced pret a porter has been introduced, and collections of handbags and jewellery. The collections had been shown in the salons in Place Vendome, whilst Mr della Valle gradually acquired more floors of the building. These seasons of some beautiful clothes firmly placed Schiaparelli in the fashion consciousness and on the schedule.

Everything started to change, and fairly dramatically with the arrival in 2019 of Daniel Roseberry an American designer, born in 1985, who had been over a decade at Thom Browne. His announcement as designer was a surprise as his name wasn’t out there as a player, he wasn’t acknowledged as the designer at the house he was leaving so outside his own clique, he was unknown.

There is no doubt now that Roseberry knew it was make or break for him with such a high profile and prestigious role at the highest level of fashion. He seized the opportunity and returned the confidence Diego della Valle had placed upon him. At the first show Roseberry sat at a desk in a track suit drawing and recalling his days in a freezing New York apartment dreaming, whilst the models paraded under spotlights in a vast black space, it was immediately obvious this was the story teller that was in harmony with. Elsa Schiaparellis’ original vision. The great gift he showed from season one was to remain true to his own vision as a twenty first century creator but also to waft the magic of the house throughout his collections. In lockdown he was filmed seated sketching in Central Park longing to be in his ateliers in Place Vendome. Roseberry can draw, do fittings, is articulate in interviews, and has both a respect for the history of the house, as shown in the stitch for stitch remake of a Schiaparelli ball gown for Carey Mulliganat the Golden Globes in 2024 which he didn’t tamper with at all, but also a desire to move it forward. Diego della Valle now owns the entire building, as it was in its heyday, a gradual acquisition from 2007, when it was only part owned. Boutiques have opened in Harrods and the ever first class Bergdorf Goodman, yet another American and New York connection, selling the pret a porter collections. The house signatures, the house style and the entire history is in the air at Place Vendome, but Roseberry creates his own collections strong enough to dominate the archival Vertes drawings, the golden locks, and the ghosts. As a designer Monsieur Roseberry uses the past, but places his own imprint on it, transforms it, and makes us gasp.

It is also important to note that from the very beginning women like Farida Khelfa, Carla Bruni, Ines de la Fressange and Marisa Berenson, who is in fact the granddaughter of Schiaparelli, and other chic French women have been associated with the house. Schiaparelli was known for a certain edge to her chic, famously of course American born HRH The Duchess of Windsor was a client, and to instil this same stylish ambiance through the friends of the maison is brilliant. It’s all part of the establishment of the Schiaparelli name as a key player in fashion and today people like Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga or Emily Blunt, and dozens of others find Daniel Roseberry for Schiaparelli is the answer to looking great, from Red Carpet to glossy magazine shoots. All this is evidence that Diego della Valle’s patience and care has handsomely paid off.

So, now to January 2026 and the Schiaparelli collection which opened the couture season, as it seems is now traditional. The opening pieces in the show were all about fragile delicacy with tiny flowers on transparency, the lightest of tulle and Chantilly lace, of tinted transparent colour, like washes added to the pieces. A pale apricot blush across the shoulders, a white silk organza shirt with a blue collar. Slender pieces with longer lengths, or fans of full skirts only at the front, peplums curbing and arcing around the body. The first look was an ivory white silk taffeta jacket with feathered wings soaring from the neckline, indeed flight and the idea of weightless and being airborne was a thread throughout the collection. A slender black dress had a cloud of tulle, point d’esprit and veiling, fluttering as though a breeze was passing through it. Feathered jackets with quills extending skywards, a black ballgown with huge wings at the back, a huge rippling ballerina ballgown embroidered with peacock feathers, or a dress whose double flounces of black and red feathers appeared to literally be shaking its plumage all showed not just the fertile imagination of the designer but also the extraordinary skills and artistry of the Schiaparelli petits mains, ateliers and workrooms. Each piece delivers impact, and in the darkened space with footlights drama was implicit in the show, the heritage of Schiaparelli and her love of the bold and the challenging is clearly present in the minds of all who work there. Wings, tusks, horns, and phantasmagorical extensions quivered amongst the gowns and other pieces, silhouettes were distorted and extended to challenge our expectations, we were dazzled, exactly as back in the day Elsa Schiaparelli dazzled her clients with jackets whose epaulettes were feathers extending into the air.

At the go-see when the running order of the show is no longer followed and one may walk all round each piece, the couture attention to the 360 degree views is lovingly preserved. Up close the layering of much of the work is extraordinary, and the contrast between the harder lines of say a jacket and the soft fullness of a skirt demonstrates how each technical solution is matched to the requirements of the design. The glittering looped beaded fringe vibrated under the salon lights, as it had swayed in the show. The ombré effects in overlapping layers of tulle or the inspiration of eighteenth century tremblent diamond settings for flower embroidery must be seen close up. As an American in Paris Daniel Roseberry is not a million miles away from the Gene Kelly character in the musical, it is about art in that storyline, and it is about the art of couture in this storyline. Monsieur Roseberry relishes the opportunities the Schiaparelli ateliers offer, he uses them to maximum effect, and in the words of the great Sergei Diaghilev, he astonishes us.