It may not be Fashion Week, but you can always count on Heart Evangelista to make a style statement. On 2 August, the Filipino actress, artist and entrepreneur graced the GMA Gala 2025 in Manila with a gown like no other.
Evangelista wore a dress from Schiaparelli’s Fall/Winter 2023 haute couture collection, designed by Daniel Roseberry. Dubbed the “stretch puzzle dress”, the look is crocheted with pailettes in different sizes and colours; assembled together, the pailettes form a painting of a woman’s body.
The idea for the artistic gown came from the British painter Lucian Freud. Roseberry was inspired by the chaotic brushstrokes in the artist’s studio and decided to mimic them in his wearable painting of a woman’s body. The female figure has long been an influential subject matter in art, but it is also a key symbol within the house of Schiaparelli. Its founder, Elsa Schiaparelli, famously introduced her Shocking perfume in 1937 with a bottle modelled after a dressmaker’s mannequin. (The striking bottle was designed by the Surrealist painter, Leonor Fini.)
Roseberry has continued Schiaparelli’s legacy by interpreting the woman’s body in his spectacular, surreal designs. You may recall the golden resin bust shaped like a woman’s upper torso from Schiaparelli’s Spring/Summer 2021 haute couture collection, or Kim Kardashian’s custom green gown, featuring a trompe l’oeil leather bodice sculpted to look like a woman’s torso with a six-pack.
The Schiaparelli gown that Evangelista wore is Roseberry’s tongue-in-cheek take on the nude dress, a red carpet staple. (Why wear a nude dress when you can wear a nude painting?) Schiaparelli’s haute couture ensemble required as much work as a painting, with each palette cut individually and painted by hand. The gown was also embellished with rhinestones for a sparkling finishing touch.
Evangelista is a Schiaparelli fan and regularly attends the brand’s couture shows in Paris. It’s no wonder that she turned to the French fashion house for a look for one of the biggest nights out in the Philippines. But the Schiaparelli dress might have also appealed to her because of its painterly look; Evangelista is an artist herself, something that she established through her hand-painted Hermès Birkin bags.
In any case, Evangelista made quite the impression with her colourful and artistic gown, which set her apart from the many celebrities who attended the glitzy GMA Gala in Manila. To complete her red carpet look, the fashion star cheekily flaunted Schiaparelli’s Anatomy Jewellery handbag, which is adorned with enamel and hammered golden brass details that make up a face.
Wearing a face and a body to a star-studded gala? That’s something that Elsa Schiaparelli, fashion’s favourite surrealist, would have appreciated.
This story first appeared on GRAZIA Singapore.
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