It's official: Schiaparelli has a new creative director to relaunch the fashion house.
Marco Zanini, formerly of Rochas, has been hired as Schiaparelli's new creative director, Women's Wear Daily reports, heading up the revamped fashion label's couture and "pret-à-couture" (high-end ready-to-wear) collections. Zanini departed from Rochas last week, replaced by Alessandro Dell'Acqua.
Schiaparelli has been on the hunt for a head designer since May 2012, when Diego Della Valle announced he would be bringing the storied label back to life. Elsa Schiaparelli, an outspoken designer with a surrealist bent, was a rival of Coco Chanel back in the day; but her fashion house closed in 1954 and she died in 1973, and the brand name has lay dormant ever since.
Della Valle purchased the rights to the brand in 2007, and in 2012, the fashion exec announced he was looking to hire a creative director. In the meantime, he named French model/actress Farida Khelfa as a brand spokeswoman and tapped Christian Lacroix to design a capsule collection as a tribute to Elsa Schiaparelli that was shown at Couture Week this past July.
Now Della Valle has finally settled down and chosen his man: Marco Zanini. In a statement today, Zanini said, "Schiaparelli symbolizes the capacity to think and create in a different way. My wish is to make this mythical house live again." With the success he's had at Rochas, we bet there are high expectations for the new and improved Schiaparelli brand.
Zanini will present his first Schiaparelli collection as part of Couture Week in Paris in January 2014. You can read more details at WWD.com.
The latest interpretation of Schiap's legendarily inventive aesthetic:
