Nara Smith has made Skittles, SpaghettiOs, and Cheez-Its from scratch. But her latest viral food endeavor looks a little different. On Tuesday, the TikTok star served a taste of fashion history in a Schiaparelli vegetable jacket with a story steeped in satire.
The produce-festooned coat comes from Schiaparelli’s spring 2027 runway. Featuring power shoulders and a severe collar, the design is whimsically adorned with radishes, parsnips, and garlic bulbs, while round buttons are replaced with carrot clasps. It’s the ultimate on-theme outfit for the 25-year-old cook, whose elaborate cooking videos always seem caught up in discourse about the “tradwife” movement.
Daniel Roseberry’s vegetable jacket is an ode to one of the house’s archival pieces. Designed by Elsa Schiaparelli for her haute couture collection in 1941, the original velvet jacket not only served as a critique of wartime food shortages, but also subverted gender roles by adorning the male aristocratic waistcoat with emblems of feminized domesticity. Smith knows her fashion history, and played up the satire with cartoonish carrot earrings and matching block heels.
Currently promoting her new cookbook, Homemade, Smith has been embracing her made-from-scratch reputation through clothes. Earlier this week, she donned a dinner jacket embellished with sunny-side-up egg appliqués from Moschino’s resort 2022 collection. Even her book cover riffs off the exaggerated homemaker image, showing her in a pink gingham dress that morphs into a tablecloth.
Of course, Smith has long rebuffed the “tradwife” term. On Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast earlier this year, she pointed out that just because she likes to cook doesn’t mean she adheres to the subservient label. She may be making bubblegum from the comfort of her kitchen, but she’s also building a business and wearing avant-garde fashion at the same time. “I don’t think a tradwife would be cooking in Schiaparelli or Moschino straight off the runway,” she remarked. Food for thought.