When Tod’s chairman Diego Della Valle bought Schiaparelli (@schiaparelli) in 2007, the brand was little more than a mythical name and a tiny office on Paris’ Place Vendôme stuffed with sketches and records. The house had stopped making collections in 1954 and its licensing business, including trademark perfumes in surrealist bottles, had long since dried up.

But Della Valle saw the potential for reviving the dormant couture house, a so-called “sleeping beauty” brand which had been positioned by founder Elsa Schiaparelli at the vanguard of modern luxury. Schiaparelli’s garments melded couture craftsmanship with provocative design while carving out a place in the cultural zeitgeist through partnerships with artists like Salvador Dalí and Man Ray, as well as dressing clients like Marlene Dietrich.

In recent years, Della Valle and a team including CEO Delphine Bellini and Daniel Roseberry (@danielroseberry) (the brand’s creative director since 2019) have restored the house block-by-block, at times almost literally as the brand reclaimed the leases to its historic hub on Place Vendôme one room at a time.

Read the full piece on the future plans of the mythic couture house in our #linkinbio.

✍️ @robert.williams.weaver_parker
? Courtesy | @schiaparelli