Schiaparelli sent an electrode encrusted baby down its space couture runway

Schiaparelli is no stranger to sending a host of outlandish creations down its couture runways. Last season it was a fleet of mammoth greatcoats, made from faux arctic fox tails and sculptural black wigs. Before then it was that infamous lion brooch, true to size and clipped to the front of Irina Shayk’s velvet gown. For this morning’s Schiaparalien show, however, Daniel Roseberry took motherhood into his own hands with his very own electronically encrusted baby, swaddled in circuit boards and loose wires dangling from the soft bit on its head.

Of course, this wasn’t actually a real baby, though when it first appeared in the arms of Maggie Maurer you could’ve fooled us. While this isn’t the first time we’ve seen babies on the runway – Balenciaga featured branded carriers with fake babies in its SS23 Mud show, and Willy Chavarria even used a real one in 2018 – we could trust the house to put its own rarefied spin on the trope for this new season of shows. And as the opening collection of couture week, anticipation is always at a fever-pitch to see what Roseberry will deliver, with Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, Carla Bruni and J.Lo all sitting front row to take it in.

But a day before the show, when invitations were mailed out, celebs, editors and the rest of the fashion press received little golden discs with the house logo scratched across the middle. With the invites, Roseberry was referencing the Voyager Golden Records, two identical discs that were sent into space aboard the Voyager spacecraft in 1977, loaded with recordings of life on earth for extraterrestrial beings to discover. In shownotes, the designer also detailed how Elsa Schiaparelli was “preoccupied with astrology” and that “space has always been an informal code of the Maison.”

In homage to this long-seated motif, Roseberry sent a series of space-inspired looks down his catwalk, taking cues from both the synthetic world of man-made spacecrafts and the imagined world of organic life forms. Sculpted gowns arrived in alienoid constructions and huge embroidered wings, while a tech dress made from old BlackBerrys and obsolete cameras was a stark contrast to those looks. Roseberry also discussed this melding of worlds in notes before, stating that the collection was “a study in contradictions” and that although the “earthbound and heaven-sent” were diametrically opposed, they could unite on the catwalk to produce something unexpected and new.

Elsewhere, structured boleros with otherworldly protrusions were shown alongside gravity-defying breastplates and ethereal fringe. Veiled gowns and necklines that rose to cover the face added a touch of sci-fi to the mix, easily pictured on Zendaya for Dune 2’s upcoming press run. Even the suit – very much a symbol of mundane human life – was elevated to new worlds, expanded to swamp its model and rendered in iridescent pearl. It may be trite to describe a single Schiaparelli collection as ‘out of this world’ (because all of Roseberry’s shows push the mould), but it really does seem that, under the designer’s watchful eye, space really is the limit of where this modern house can go.