For Daniel Roseberry, getting attention for Schiaparelli was the easy part – now he needs to build a business. Photo: The New York Times
Of all the internet-breaking, meme-baiting, conversation-starting gowns the designer Daniel Roseberry has made in his five years at the house of Schiaparelli, it is possible that the most... well, shocking, was the strapless black sheath Kylie Jenner wore to its couture show in January 2023.
You know (and you probably do know because it became pretty much inescapable), the one that had the life-size faux lion’s head attached to the left shoulder like a trophy, and had repercussions far beyond the gilded world of the fashion season.
The animal rights world claimed it glorified hunting. Statements were issued. The dress became so controversial that it has not seen the light of day since.
But it also made clear that no designer working today understands how to navigate the attention economy quite like Roseberry.
Since 2019, when he arrived at the maison founded by Elsa Schiaparelli in 1927 and bought by Diego Della Valle, the owner of Tod’s, in 2006, he has transformed the formerly irrelevant name into a brand no red carpet can be without – all without any advertising, a single stand-alone retail store or even a widely recognised logo.
Kim Kardashian wore a green Hulk-meets-haute Schiaparelli bustier dress for Christmas 2020 and became an internet sensation.
Lady Gaga wore a giant red and blue Schiaparelli gown with an enormous gold dove on the top when she sang at US president Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021.
Beyonce wore a black leather Schiaparelli mini with integral gloves topped by terrifyingly long gold nails later that year, when she became the most decorated female artiste in Grammy history.
Clients regularly show up at the couture shows fully decked out, with the bags, the shoes, the jewels, the clothes (the only other brand that inspires such head-to-toe dressing is Chanel).
This year, first lady Jill Biden wore a Schiaparelli gown when she attended a state dinner in Paris and a Schiaparelli suit to attend the inauguration of Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum.
It turned out that Roseberry, whose work exists in the rarefied space between pop culture and formal perfection, may be the perfect designer for these surreal, celebrity-saturated times, and his Schiaparelli the ultimate antidote to, as Della Valle said, “the concept of mass luxury”.
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It has been such an explosive trajectory that this fall Roseberry was rumoured to be on the shortlist to become Chanel’s designer, currently the most coveted job in fashion.
On Monday (Oct 28), he received the "International Designer Of The Year" award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
“I think he’s one of the most important designers in the world right now,” said Thom Browne, the chair of the CFDA and Roseberry’s former boss.
“What he’s done in such a short amount of time to a house that everybody’s known over the years is unique.”
The problem is, Roseberry said, now that the house has, essentially, “called the bluff of everyone and actually built the dream”, it has to build the business.
For most designers, the CFDA award would be the apogee of a career. For him, it’s just the start of act two – and that one may be even harder.
From Plano to Paris
Roseberry, 39, who likes Carhartt and refuses to wear shorts because he hates his legs, was not the obvious choice to reinvent Schiaparelli. It was only his second job in fashion.
Until he got the gig, he said, he had not laid his finger on a piece of chiffon.
One of five children of an evangelical Christian minister and an artist, he grew up in Plano, Texas, and was set to follow them in the family business until a missionary year put him on a different path.
Instead, he moved to New York to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology but left before graduating to intern at Thom Browne. He stayed 10 years, eventually becoming design director.
For most of that time he was taking Adderall, which he had been prescribed by a doctor in Texas when he was struggling with his sexuality, religion and focus.
He came out to his parents when he was 23, and though he still talks to God regularly, he no longer attends church.
“The wounds are just too triggering for me,” he said, continuing, “I spent decades in that pew seething with rage and suppressing it.”
“That’s how I knew how to work,” he said. “I was popping Adderall, iced coffee and a few cigarettes before the day even got going, and I was 145 pounds. I hated food.”
He is now about 30 pounds heavier and still skinny (he is six feet tall).
A model presents a look at the Schiaparelli Spring 2024 couture show in Paris. Photo: The New York Times
He quit cold turkey in 2017 and not long after quit his job, in part because of a talk culinary mogul Ina Garten gave at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.
As Roseberry recalled, she said: “Type A people think they can figure out what to do next while they’re doing something, and they can’t. They have to stop.”
Later, he met Garten and the two became good friends; they often have Christmas dinner together with their respective partners in Paris. She cooks.
Roseberry recognised himself in her words.
He can get very intense about work. This year, he became so run down that he ended up in the hospital after an adverse reaction to a vitamin drip sent him into anaphylactic shock.
In any case, not long after he went out on his own, he met with Floriane De Saint Pierre, a headhunter in Paris, toting a sheaf of his drawings.
“He sketches like an artist,” Saint Pierre said. “It’s fashion, but as an artist would see it. The only other designer I ever met like that was Alber Elbaz.”
After he left, she called Della Valle.
Roseberry draws constantly.
“I know I can do it better than anyone,” he said. He was taught by his mother, whose own mother was a painter. It is an increasingly rare talent in fashion and part of what convinced Della Valle that Roseberry could handle a couture house.
Drawing is also the way he communicates with the Schiaparelli atelier since he doesn’t really speak French, though he is trying to learn.
“It’s just so humiliating to be people’s boss and sound like a dimwit,” he said.
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Image versus reality
Buzz goes only so far toward building a business.
That’s why, in 2023, Schiaparelli branched out into ready-to-wear and accessories: a box bag with gold facial features on the front; platform boots with molded gold toes; costume jewellery that mimics different parts of the anatomy (anatomical hardware has become the brand’s signature).
“If we want the world to understand Schiaparelli as more than just red carpet and couture, it has to become more available,” Roseberry said. Most designers struggle with being labelled “commercial”.
Roseberry has the opposite dilemma.
Although it is his most dramatic stunts that have received the most attention – aside from the animal heads, there was the one in which a model toted a large bejewelled robot baby on one hip – it is his quieter work that is the most alluring, like a white shirt with a sharpened pencil piercing the collar.
He recently made himself a black corduroy suit to wear for the CFDA ceremony. It is machine washable.
“It’s easy to do something simple, but to do something simple and interesting is hard,” Garten said.
Law Roach, the “image architect” who works with actress-singer Zendaya, was the first person to own a pair of Schiaparelli platform boots with the gold toe caps.
“Those shoes can make you feel godlike,” he said.
That is Roseberry’s goal: You wear his clothes and, he says, “People will be engaging with you in a way that doesn’t happen with other things.”
They make you the most fascinating version of yourself. – ©2024 The New York Times Company
