Above the Place Vendôme, in the cloistered cocoon of the Schiaparelli couture salons, Daniel Roseberry is less master of the house than open-hearted guide. In an American uniform of denim and sneakers – Roseberry was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, the son of a church pastor – he is at once an outsider and insider. As a child, the serenely spoken creative didn't fit the traditional values anchored by the church. Men and boys didn't dream of, let alone become, heads of Paris couture houses. Yet, a fashion school graduate who nurtured his fantastical and wildly rich inner life to work at Thom Browne in New York for a decade, Roseberry took the creative directorship at a sedate Schiaparelli in 2019. The 38-year-old has since proved he possesses a composed self-conviction and relentless desire to create pieces worthy of late house founder Elsa Schiaparelli.
Whip-smart, sharp and enigmatic, the Italian-born Elsa, or “Schiap” shirked her aristocratic roots to be both an outlier and captivating centrifugal force in the bohemian life of 1930s Paris. Here she crossed orbits with the surrealists, making collaborators out of Salvador Dalí, Jean Schlumberger and Jean Cocteau.
Fantasy and womanhood, tenderness and strength, darkness and a creative unruliness: Roseberry both invokes and contemporises Elsa's hard chic today. As a result, a constellation of A-list stars has sought his pieces, changing the red-carpet game – and the goalposts on fashion – beyond
