“Gown in caviar, Jerusalem artichokes and radish silk cigaline.” Sound like a poorly translated menu? How about the description of a couture dress — Schiaparelli style?
Now in his second season as design director, Bertrand Guyon revived the Surrealist spirit of the house with a culinary-flavored collection inspired by founder Elsa Schiaparelli and two other art world powerhouses: Gala Dalí and Louise Bourgeois.
“The very essence of haute couture is about creating the extraordinary out of the ordinary,” the show notes teased.
Onions, pumpkins and tomatoes — a reference to Salvador Dalí’s illustrated cookbook “Les Dîners de Gala” — appeared as 19th-century style illustrations embroidered on white skirt suits that, embellishment aside, carried a whiff of the late Space Age couturier André Courrèges.
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Guyon, a veteran of couture ateliers including Valentino and Christian Lacroix, cooked up draped evening gowns, one in a cutlery-patterned silk jacquard, that were both elegant and witty — a combination that has drawn high-brow A-listers like Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett to the revived Schiaparelli brand.
There was also a wink to the famed lobster dress that Dalí and Schiaparelli created in 1937. Here, the crustacean was embroidered horizontally on the richly sequined front panel of an Empire-line gown painted with seafood motifs.
In a more abstract vein, Guyon matched cobweb-patterned taffeta gowns with cropped jackets made from vintage tea towels, assembled in kaleidoscopic patchworks inspired by the fabric collages of Bourgeois.
If this couture display was meant to be the sartorial equivalent of a gastronomic meal, it fell a bit short. Opening with a visual gag — a dress patterned like a table laid out for dinner — it ended with a sequence of draped gowns in stiff cigaline silk that felt like a last-minute addition. Fortunately, the main course was filling enough.