Hand-made faux taxidermy at Schiaparelli dropped jaws, while Doja Cat’s repurposing of false lashes captured hearts and laughter at Viktor & Rolf. Valentino carried on this season’s excellence with its latest collection, which is a fabulous take on club fashion, but done the extravagant and unapologetically haute couture way
Donning a name that inspires the image of disco, the house’s Haute Couture Spring 2023 line by Pierpaolo Piccioli is appropriately titled “Le Club Couture,” and delivers exceptionally on the promise. Flowy collars and opera gloves give ensembles a fashionable flair. Men’s shirts drape romantically and tease chests. Tights are bright, bikinis are dazzled. Capes and gowns billow dramatically. And Valentino continues its love affair with loud colors: Matching the character of its bright PP Pink, neon yellow seems to be the shade du jour.
“Couture is a sphere of fantasy and freedom, of the unique and exceptional, where craft is not a fetishistic reflection of value but a means and methodology to achieve improbabilities, to challenge perceptions, to create bold new realities,” the show notes read. “Fabric becomes a chiaroscuro across the body, volumes float, cuts are imperceptible, a ribbon of chiffon may suspend a ball gown. The unbelievable becomes material, imagination becomes real.”Â
Based on this runway, Club Valentino would be a glamorous, multi-level venue where you could wear whatever you wanted, but especially that one outfit you’ve been waiting to flaunt. There’d be a roomy ballroom for those in their gowns, and an equally lavish space for those in little dresses. And of course, the drinks, napkins and hors d’oeuvres would all be colored PP Pink.
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The pandemic is not over, but as we hope to approach its true dusk, Valentino reminds us of the joy in a night of glamor and dancing endlessly.
See the full Valentino Spring 2023 Haute Couture collection below.
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Imaxtree
Schiaparelli’s Spring 2023 Haute Couture collection is as ravishing as it’s whimsical, elegant and macabre.
A moto jacket reimagined as an oversized puffer. Fantastic boleros blown-up yet fitted in all the right places. A simple-looking blazer with an onyx snake trimming the collar, shining as if it were live or liquid.
Under Daniel Roseberry‘s creative direction, the house has proven to have a penchant for fashioning the “extra ordinary,” whether that’s in ready-to-wear or haute couture, while exploring some heavy themes. This time, Schiaparelli grapples with torment, beauty and bravery, taking inspiration from the still-arresting themes of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy” — specifically, “Inferno.” Â
“What appealed to me in the ‘Inferno’ wasn’t just the theatrics of Dante’s creation — it was how perfect a metaphor it provided for the torment that every artist or creative person experiences when we sit before the screen or the sketchpad or the dress form, when we have that moment in which we’re shaken by what we don’t know,” Roseberry wrote in the show notes.Â
In a successful attempt to fashion Alighieri’s “most arresting images,” the collection features faux taxidermy created entirely by hand. It propels any onlooker into a surrealist state: A leopard, lion and she-wolf (worn by none other than Naomi Campbell) force any viewer to revel in the Schiaparelli team’s mind-blowing craftsmanship and encourage a reflection on the duality of beauty and death.Â
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Not wasting any time, Kylie Jenner sat front row at the show wearing a customized version of one of these looks: a black velvet bustier dress featuring a lion head sculpted from foam, wool and silk faux fur and then hand-painted. Doja Cat was there, too, in her own fearless look. Tomato red from head to toe, the singer wore 30,000 Swarovski crystals hand-applied to her face and body, courtesy of Pat McGrath.
Kylie Jenner’s front row look mimicked what was on the runway itself.
Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli
Schiaparelli Spring 2023 Haute Couture is all about doubt as a creative — “the doubt of creation, and the doubt of intent,” Roseberry continued in the show notes. “With this collection, I wanted to step away from techniques I was comfortable with and understood, to choose instead that dark wood, where everything is scary but new, where I would be feeling my way through someplace I didn’t know and didn’t understand.”
See the full Schiaparelli Spring 2023 Haute Couture collection in the gallery below.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring 2023. Photo: Courtesy of Schiaparelli.
