“I had this dream of finding a forgotten couture collection in the basement of Elsa’s country house.” Schiaparelli is a couture label that flourished in the 1920s and ’30s. As its creative director, Daniel Roseberry has never seemed hemmed in by that era, but this season he made his restless gaze more explicit. “I wanted people to feel the collection was referencing a different time… and there was something about the ’50s that felt so fresh and simple. You’ll find homages to those silhouettes.”

The show was in fact staged in a basement—the basement of the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, whose upper salons have long been used for couture shows. In the dark, chandelier-lit space Roseberry conjured something of the haute couture shows of old, with models emerging at a stately, almost reverential pace, and making eye contact with the audience, which included Doja Cat and Kylie Jenner, as they criss-crossed the room.

The 1950s are regarded as the acme of haute couture, and turning his eye to that time is a signal of Roseberry’s ambitions. He said he wanted to “show the elasticity of the brand, and also the range of what I think I can do and the ateliers can do.” Indeed, together what they can do is quite stunning. Like the show-opening cape, with the broad shoulders of an eagle—or a phoenix, which was the show’s mascot, Schiap being so good at reinvention, Roseberry explained—with silver lozenge embroidery arranged to look like gleaming feathered wings. Or a black party dress, its tulle skirt in a permanent can-can kick flip, exposing an underside lavishly embellished with coppery pink rhinestones. Another impressive technique was the millefeuille circles that trimmed the arabesque hems of an hourglass dress.

Roseberry expressed a desire to shrug off his “meme weaver” reputation, mentioning his last couture’s much-Instagrammed robot baby. That’s an excellent instinct, but this is Schiap we’re talking about, so the cups of a bustier dress in pink silk duchesse were shaped like high heel shoes, after a famous hat Elsa once made, and a mostly sheer number gave new meaning to the term “naked dress.”

Its neckline was a 3-D rose, which was repeated on a slithering satin cocktail dress accented with pillow-stuffed thorns that hit a sweet spot between the house’s surreal legacy and the kind of seduction that anyone can understand. “There’s a real embracing of the body this time around,” Roseberry noted. One dress we’re all sure to see again is the lace bustier gown with an absinthe green bow-front skirt when it turns up on an A-lister on the red carpet.