STORIES
What Lies Beneath
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Nothing here is buried.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, V&A South Kensington
We went into Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at the V&A expecting wit: the lobster on the skirt, the shoe worn as a hat. I didn't expect to stand in front of a jacket and think about my own house.
It's a piece by Daniel Roseberry, built directly on Elsa Schiaparelli's original jacket designs. Eyes, lips and a nose float across the fabric. Gold, tasselled shapes push straight through the surface of the bodice. Nothing about it is hidden. The anatomy isn't concealed under the design; it's the decoration.
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The Piece
Schiaparelli by Daniel Roseberry, Autumn/Winter 2021
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The house came to us with all its original bones intact. The easy move was to pick a lane: restore it faithfully, or gut it and start fresh. We did neither. We kept the original structure fully visible and built an entirely new world directly on top of it.
Elsa's Hand
Trapunto quilting, raised in relief across the surface
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Seeing that same instinct in silk, gold thread, and couture pins felt like confirmation: reinvention only reads as authentic when the original structure stays legible underneath it. Hide the skeleton and a concept becomes costume. Show it, and even the strangest idea reads as inevitable.
That's the design idea. But the exhibit left me with a second one, about time rather than structure. The jacket in front of me wasn't Elsa's hand. It was Roseberry's, decades later, still working from her original idea, for people who never met her. The frame she built wasn't just something to look at. It was built to be inhabited by hands other than her own.
A Golden Thread
Custom couture gown worn by Dua Lipa, Schiaparelli by Daniel Roseberry, 2024
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That's the part we think about most with Lune 1860. It started as an idea about gathering: people around a table, at ease, together. We built the house to be the frame for that. What we hope, more than anything, is that it keeps holding that feeling long after the two of us are the ones hosting it.
The boldest reinventions aren't the ones that erase what came before. They're the ones confident enough to leave the old frame showing, and built to be carried on by someone else.
