Lately, Bertrand Guyon has held his Schiaparelli couture shows in the house’s Place Vendôme headquarters, the intimate space creating a salon-like atmosphere. Today, we were at the Opéra Garnier, one of Paris’s grandest venues. Lit Shocking Pink, Elsa’s color, the Opéra suited this bold, confident collection from Guyon.
In a preview, he explained that he took his inspiration directly from the house founder—“her personality and her life.” Guyon noticed that Schiaparelli took different approaches toward dressing for day and dressing for evening; at work, she adopted a rather austere uniform, while at night, her only rule was flamboyance. His mood boards backed that up. In the atelier, she was often in black. On the town, it was feathers and crystal embroidery. And she never said no to a daring chapeau.
Naturally, it was the flamboyant pieces that registered loudest here—a sweeping cape in Shocking Pink moiré silk accessorized with a matching butterfly mask, a draped white dress with a scrim of feathers at the neckline accompanied by a mask of her pup Popcorn, a tulle column embroidered with silk flowers complemented with a matching bouquet “helmet.” Milliner Stephen Jones supplied the fantastical headgear.
But Guyon has a firm handle on the austere part of the Schiaparelli repertoire as well. A pair of black dresses in a crepe with a very dry hand were impressively draped and constructed, and Guyon cuts one of couture’s most rigorous jackets: fitted, nipped at the waist, and with assertive, yet narrow, shoulders. A trio of them walked the runway, each one more lavishly embellished than the last, but all retaining that discipline of cut. There is no slouching in a Schiap jacket.
At couture, there is always much talk about the clients. After all, these customers have the sort of direct interaction with designers and brands that ready-to-wear shoppers can only dream of. Still, rare is the couture collection that handily addresses a wide range of clients. More often than not, there is one message told multiple ways. Guyon will tempt the maximalists and the purists with this offering. That’s a neat trick.
