At Schiaparelli, the Search for a Clear Identity

So far, Paris designers are serving up their spring collections more overcooked than raw. They’ve removed the vital flavoring by too much stewing in the studio or killed their aesthetic by offering multiple fancy courses. Either way, you feel stuffed rather than nourished. Delight is off the table.

Let’s dig into Rick Owens. On Thursday evening, on the vast plaza of the Palais de Tokyo, the skies suddenly brightened after several days of rain, a change that some guests quickly put in biblical terms: “Only for Rick.” The genius from the American West, who at the last collections invoked feelings about his childhood in Porterville, California, and the importance to his craft and sanity of leaving home, took us on the next phase of that self-discovery journey — to Hollywood Boulevard, where (he said) as a young man he found a real home among “the weirdoes and freaks.” He also felt that his previous show was “an act of exclusion,” since he held it at home, on the Left Bank, and space was limited for guests.

Rick Owens
Photo: Cathy Horyn

So, just as he’d done for his June men’s show, he invited students and teachers from French schools to walk, along with artists, members of the trans community, and employees of his company, a cast that numbered more than 100. In June, the Owens shrouds and puffers were mystically white; for the women’s show, they were predominantly black and gray. However, the accessories — thickly padded leather boots that looked deflated, crowns — were the same and, presumably, too, were many of the materials and craft techniques.

And Owens indulged his love of cinema, in particular the orgiastic splendor of Cecil B. DeMille (“Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra has always been my favorite idiosyncrasy,” Owens said recently) to the orgy in Jack Smith’s 1963 underground film Flaming Creatures.

Rick Owens
Photo: Cathy Horyn

The pomp and freak parade continued on Thursday, with Owens’s ritual smoke puffing out of machines and staff clad in black robes tossing white rose petals from adjacent roofs. As the first block of models — they all came out in small groups, according to a clothing style — descended the main steps and began their solemn trek round the plaza, I turned to my seatmate.

“I feel like they’re a cult coming for us,” I said.

“Fine with me,” he said.

It would be a hit if Owens’s show was judged solely on inclusivity and its rhetoric. But while there were some plainly interesting looks here, like stringy knit goddess gowns and denim cutoffs whose trashed texture resembled candle drippings, Owens sacrificed his creative edge and autonomy for a people-pleaser that was a diversified darker shading of a TCM Classic Cruise.

Like an Owens show, Schiaparelli brings out the converts in full-brand battle dress, with big hair and makeup to match. Before the start of Daniel Roseberry’s latest ready-to-wear collection, as Kylie Jenner posed and pursed her lips for photographers, clients took selfies in their Schiap drag. One woman came with her face partially gold-leafed.

Schiaparelli
Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli

Roseberry has become a dependable instigator in haute couture, as he proved again this past summer, with boldness and assured judgment. But despite bringing a contemporary vision to the legendary house, founded in 1927 by Elsa Schiaparelli amid artists and daring new ideas, he has struggled to give its ready-to-wear a clear identity. Part of the difficulty is its tiny distribution — just four retail outlets, including a third-floor shop in the Place Vendôme headquarters and at Bergdorf Goodman.

Schiaparelli
Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli

In other words, Schiaparelli doesn’t have the means, like most well-known brands, to produce a second commercial collection for wide distribution. What Roseberry puts on his runway must entice customers and sell. He has one shot every season and, at the same time, he must flavor the designs with novel and blingy elements from the couture — because that’s what attracts women to Schiaparelli.

As he told me before the show, “The ready-to-wear is clicking, but it has to leap forward.”

Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli

That’s why this collection felt like it was being pushed, with more gaudiness and dressy sex appeal than in his last, more laid-back ready-to-wear outing. Yet, in a lot of ways, the aesthetics — the corseted bodies, the ultrawide lapels, the smooth chignons and zebra stripes — skipped backward, to the glam, eclectic ready-to-wear of Christian Lacroix and, say, Jean-Louis Scherrer. There was something stereotypically feminine about the clothes — opaque dresses and knitwear with integrated stretch corsets, the sleek white cowgirl tank top worn by Kendall Jenner with jeans that scooped low in the back and front, and a snug little black jacket/shirt with fat puffed sleeves shown with trim matching shorts and chain belts.

I expect to see Kendall’s pants at the next couture show in January. Roseberry is obviously giving customers what they want, but it does seem like a Happy Meal for the overly indulged and noncritical.

On Thursday morning, Chemena Kamali put on an excellent show for Chloé, her second for the brand and before an audience that included Sienna Miller and many modeling legends like Liya Kebede and Karlie Kloss. Their presence, and a greenery-filled Tennis Club de Paris, added to the upbeat vibe.

Chloe
Photo: Getty Images

People expect Kamali to restore a youthful, carefree lightness to Chloé and a firm sense of reality. She did that with cute bloomer shorts, ankled-gathered sheer pants in peach-and-cream tones, many slips, and a finale of bubbly dresses in charmeuse and mousseline taken from floral prints and designs done by Karl Lagerfeld for the house in the 1977 summer collection. Kamali said she liked the look of colors faded by the sun and, as well, styles that looked “lost and found.”

Chloe
Photo: Getty Images

The collection included a few sharp pantsuits, a terrific long “fishing” vest in soft brown leather and a flattering, classic style of Chloé trousers. Kamali knows how to make a winning show and a statement, but if her second major collection had a fault, it felt too narrow in terms of the age of women who might realistically wear and look good in the clothes. Indeed, amid the charming frills, it needed a weightier dose of realism for the sophisticated imagination to grab on to.