The body as a manifesto: Schiaparelli’s use of anatomy

In the history of fashion, few houses have understood the body as well as Schiaparelli. Not as a support, but as a symbol in itself. From its origins with Elsa Schiaparelli to the reinvention of the brand by Daniel Roseberry, anatomy has been one of the most distinctive signs of the maison. Today, and on the occasion of the arrival of its Spring-Summer 2025, we analyze how the body has been used in the brand.

Elsa Schiaparelli: surrealism as a language

In the 1930s, Elsa Schiaparelli broke with conventional Parisian elegance by introducing surrealism into her creations. Her collaboration with Salvador Dalí resulted in iconic pieces that reinterpreted the relationship between the body itself and what we wear. Among them, the famous “Skeleton Dress” (1938), where black crepe padding imitated a rib cage. More than a dream, it was an artistic manifesto: the body is not hidden, it is explicitly revealed. Eyes, mouths, hands, ribs, hearts… anatomical fragments transformed into visual elements made into garments.

Each part of the body itself became an essential part of the Schiaparelli universe. They were not just ornaments, but Elsa’s aesthetic obsessions that emerged from the collective unconscious of the surrealist avant-garde.

Daniel Roseberry: the rebirth of the golden body

Since Daniel Roseberry took over the creative direction of Schiaparelli in 2019, the maison has experienced a renaissance where anatomy has been transformed into pure sculpture at the service of the garment. Its proposal goes beyond clothing. The pieces have become museum objects.

In the Spring-Summer 2022 Haute Couture collection, the body was literally gilded. Roseberry presented busts molded with almost surgical precision, coated in burnished gold, that harked back to the idealized perfection of Greco-Latin art. Far from decorative, these pieces act as breastplates: they envelop female torsos. The metallic ribs, lungs, etc., rise like precious cages of the dress. The breasts, raised in gold leaf, do not evoke eroticism, but devotion, as if they were a mobile altar.

A year later, in Spring-Summer 2023, Roseberry evolved its visual language with a collection inspired by the Divine Comedy. The body was no longer just physical, but metaphysical. The anatomy was fragmented into allegorical codes: eyes on the chest, breasts like metallic sculptures, animal heads… The fashion show navigated between heaven, purgatory and hell, and the body was the vehicle of that dreamlike journey.

Through these codes, Roseberry not only updates the surrealist legacy of Elsa Schiaparelli, but pushes it to a new dimension: the body as an emotional map, as something sacred, a ceremonial art. In her hands, the body ceases to be a mere support and becomes a narrative. A visual manifesto in which every nerve, every bone and every organ has something to say.

Anatomy in Spring-Summer 2025

Anatomy is still present at Schiaparelli, now with an even more amusing dimension. In the Spring-Summer 2025 collection, body details appear in trompe l’oeil style, as in the iconic Face bag, which turns a face into an object of desire.

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Accessories are filled with anatomical charms, as in the handle of the new Soufflé bag; and footwear becomes a second skin: toe caps molded in the shape of human toes on ballerinas, slippers or leather pumps. Sexy, strange, hyper-realistic. Schiaparelli thus reaffirms its obsession with turning the body into a fetish, into humor, into wearable art.