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 Mr. 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 recognized 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 President Biden’s inauguration in 2021. Beyoncé 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 artist 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, Jill Biden wore a Schiaparelli gown when she attended a state dinner in Paris and a Schiaparelli suit to attend the inauguration of President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico.
It turned out that Mr. 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 Mr. Della Valle said, “the concept of mass luxury.”
It has been such an explosive trajectory that this fall Mr. Roseberry was rumored to be on the short list to become Chanel’s designer, currently the most coveted job in fashion. On Monday, he is receiving 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 chairman of the CFDA and Mr. 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, Mr. 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 II. And that one may be even harder.
From Plano to Paris
Mr. 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 my 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.)
He quit cold turkey in 2017 and not long after quit his job, in part because of a talk the culinary mogul Ina Garten gave at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. As Mr. 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 Ms. Garten and the two became good friends; they often have Christmas dinner together with their respective partners in Paris. She cooks.)
Mr. Roseberry recognized himself in her words. He can get very intense about work. Earlier 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,” Ms. 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 Mr. Della Valle.
Mr. 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 Mr. Della Valle that Mr. 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.
In Paris, he has a lovely apartment in a quiet square in the Seventh Arrondissement furnished with finds from the flea market, but he doesn’t really have a circle of friends. The first thing visitors see when they enter the apartment is his “wall of love,” a mirror filled with snapshots of his family and friends in the United States. For five years he has been in a long-distance relationship with the designer Adam Selman, the chief creative officer of Savage X Fenty, who is based in Los Angeles. (Ms. Garten also gives him advice on long-distance relationships.)
“I’ve never spent so much time alone in my whole life,” Mr. Roseberry said. “For better or worse, most of the people I have access to here are fashion people, and I have a low appetite for spending my Saturday night with a bunch of fashion people.”
On his own, he often draws floor plans. “I’ve been drawing this dream house obsessively for about four years,” he said. “It’s like the Villa Necchi in Milan meets Japanese design. I love functionality but in an extraordinary way.”
Image vs. Reality
Conventional fashion wisdom has it that it’s easier to reintroduce a heritage house than to start a label from scratch; that the existing name recognition, story and archive offer a shortcut. But, as Achim Berg, the former head of the McKinsey luxury group, pointed out, unless you have an owner with very deep pockets, and a big corporate structure, few heritage revivals really work. Dior, Gucci, Vuitton — sure. But Lanvin? Nina Ricci? Rochas? All have struggled. Vionnet disappeared without a trace.
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 jewelry 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,” Mr. Roseberry said. Most designers struggle with being labeled “commercial.” Mr. 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 bejeweled 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,” Ms. Garten said.
Law Roach, the “image architect” who works with 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 Mr. 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.
Yet despite the accolades, and despite Mr. Della Valle’s belief that, as he said, “it’s possible to think about billions,” there are only four Schiaparelli mini-shops in department stores — Bergdorf Goodman, two Neiman Marcuses and Harrods — plus the atelier in Paris and a pop-up in Shanghai. There hasn’t been a new perfume in decades; the sunglasses are almost impossible to find.
“The perception has very quickly outpaced the resources that are there,” Mr. Roseberry said. That has been good for his reputation, but it’s not a recipe for explosive sales. (Schiaparelli is privately owned and does not disclose its annual revenues.)
A few years ago, Mr. Roseberry got representation at CAA. Apple had approached him about a design project, as had Beyoncé, but he just didn’t have the time. His team is only about 20 people: two for couture, two for bags, two for shoes, etc. Most big brands end up throwing away half of what they sample during the editing process for a collection, but Schiaparelli, he said, throws away almost nothing. It can’t afford to. That makes him both very proud and very frustrated.
“Fashion feels so small in a way, and at the same time, the demands that fashion puts on you are so complete,” Mr. Roseberry said. “You turn your head for one minute and you’ve lost footing, or you’ve lost your status — or that’s what people would have you believe.”
Here’s what he believes: “We’re at an inflection point. And everybody knows it.”
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