What’s shocking now?
There are many possible answers to that question, though few of them, probably, have to do with fashion. Reality long ago overtook wardrobes as a source of perpetual astonishment.
Yet flying from the facade of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in the Louvre as the first full season of couture shows since 2020 began, came a clarion call: “Shocking! The Surreal World of Elsa Schiaparelli.”
It was an announcement of a new exhibition as well as a reminder that once upon a time, clothing had the ability to confound.
That once upon a time fashion could jolt viewers out of their torpor or cynicism; challenge convention; make them blink and blink again merely with a flash of flesh, an astounding construction, a seemingly absurd idea about the body and what goes on top.
Yet in a world of increasing extremes, where truth is a fungible concept and crisis is starting to seem like the norm, that time seems practically quaint: a museum piece, in more ways than one.
Even at the couture, that designer laboratory freed from commercial constraints because it is made to order for the very few.
So what’s shocking now? Daniel Roseberry, the creative director of Schiaparelli, had an answer of sorts: “beautiful things.” Sometimes, in the face of overwhelming externalities and unrelenting grimness, he suggested, it’s enough to dazzle with delight; to offer a reminder of the ability to dream. Even if it’s a bit overinflated. It’s not about daywear, baby.
It’s about a hat that looks like an entire field of golden wheat (but actually was burned ostrich feathers); a black velvet cocktail frock sprouting glittering tulips or swirling under a tempest of satin; a dress composed entirely of bejeweled necklaces. It’s about dialogue: with the designers that came before, such as Christian Lacroix, who first revived Schiaparelli back in 2013.
Dialogue! Fancy that. It’s actually kind of a radical suggestion. (More radical, anyway, than the bared breasts Roseberry also sprinkled throughout his show, which seem at this point both banal and gratuitous.) And it’s got to start somewhere.
That’s escapism with a very subtle edge: not just for those who can buy it, but for those who can behold it — which now, thanks to the digital world, is pretty much everyone. Come for the visual fancy and stay for the reminder of the better angels of our nature.
Even if, as with the feathers, frills and diamanté extravaganza of Giambattista Valli, which seemed to conjure up Elvis and Priscilla Presley dressing for a 1960s gala at the Villa Borghese in Rome, the expression sometimes doth froth a bit too much.
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