Schiaparelli Taxidermy Haute Couture Spring Summer 2023 show. Story by Eleonora de Gray, Editor-in-Chief of RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Schiaparelli.

Schiaparelli opened Haute Couture Fashion Week in Paris with an extraordinary show, which opened a great discussion on social media networks. The primary focus of this collection – 3 animal heads, looked like trophies, sculpted and embroidered by hand.

It is only obvious that this idea of the show totally belonged to Daniel Roseberry, creative director of Schiaparelli house. Although the message is unclear.

From the first glance it is indeed taxidermy, promoting hunt, death and cruelty (symbol of blood) – animal or human. It might also be interpreted as a certain vision of a woman as a trophy.

In notes to the show we can read that these 3 animal heads are here attached to the dresses to celebrate the glory of nature and guard the woman who wears it.” Then in the same notes we can read that these 3 animals – the leopard, the lion, and the she-wolf – are all animals from Dante’s Inferno (The Divine Comedy).

Confusion…. Where’s the link between imitation of the cut heads of the animals that we see on the walls of the hunters and Dante Alighieri? None. No link, and no symbol whatsoever.

Then we see the Doja Cat, an American rapper, covered in red: make up, 30 000 Swarovski crystals, dress, which made her look like covered in blood or demon from hell itself, who encourages these killings and cruelty.

So what we read in press-release has nothing to do with what we see: “In 1308, the poet Dante Alighieri began what would be his masterwork, The Divine Comedy, a 14,233-line poem divided into three books: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.”

Trying to look like an intellectual, and at the same time showing heads of the animals ready to be on the wall together with the heads of the women, I suppose, is not the kind of show should open Haute Couture fashion week in Paris.

“In the end it is a Divine comedy – it is not a Divine tragedy… We have to pass through hell to get to paradise,” – said Daniel Roseberry. But what it has to do with chopped heads of the animals or trophies, or totem protectors for women… we’ll never know.

And that is another page to the “Schiap” story.

See all looks Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring Summer 2023