Elsa Schiaparelli
Encyclopedia
Elsa Schiaparelli was an Italian
fashion designer. Along with Coco Chanel
, her greatest rival, she is regarded as one of the most prominent figures in fashion between the two World Wars. Starting with knitwear, Schiaparelli's designs were heavily influenced by Surrealists like her collaborators Salvador Dalí
and Alberto Giacometti
. Her clients included the heiress Daisy Fellowes
and actress Mae West
.
Schiaparelli did not adapt to the changes in fashion following World War II and her business closed in 1954.
in Rome. Her mother was a Neapolitan aristocrat and her father a renowned scholar and curator of medieval manuscripts. Her father, Celestino, was Dean of the University of Rome and an authority on Sanskrit
. She was a niece of astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli
, who discovered the so-called canali of Mars, and she spent hours with him studying the heavens. She studied philosophy at the University of Rome, during which she published a book of sensual poems that shocked her conservative family. Schiaparelli was sent to a convent until she went on hunger strike and at the age of 22 accepted a job in London
as a nanny
. Elsa led a refined life with a certain amount of luxury provided by her parents’ wealth and high social status. She believed, however, that this luxury was stifling to her art and creativity and so she removed herself from the “lap of luxury” as quickly as possible. Schiaparelli moved first to New York City and then to Paris, combining her love of art and design to become a couturier.
En route to London, Schiaparelli was invited to a ball in Paris
. Having no ballgown, she bought some dark blue fabric, wrapped it around herself and pinned it in place. In London most of her time was spent visiting museums and attending lectures. Schiaparelli went on to marry one of her lecturers, Count William de Wendt de Kerlor a Franco-Swiss theosophist. In 1921 they moved to New York, where Schiaparelli immediately responded to the modernity of the city. Her husband distanced himself from the city and had abandoned his family by the time their child was born. Maria Luisa Yvonne Radha de Wendt de Kerlor, better known as Gogo Schiaparelli, would become a noted socialite.
Schiaparelli was later introduced to Gaby Picabia, ex-wife of French Dada
ist artist Francis Picabia
and owner of a boutique selling French fashions in New York. Through her work there, Schiaparelli met artists like Marcel Duchamp
and Man Ray
. When Gaby and Man Ray left for Paris, Schiaparelli joined them.
, she started her own business but it closed in 1926 despite favourable reviews. She launched a new collection of knitwear in early 1927 using a special double layered stitch created by Armenian refugees and featuring sweaters with surrealist
trompe l'oeil
images. Although her first designs appeared in Vogue
, the business really took off with a pattern that gave the impression of a scarf wrapped around the wearer's neck. The "pour le Sport" collection expanded the following year to include bathing suits, ski-wear, and linen dresses. The divided skirt, a forerunner of shorts, shocked the tennis world when worn by Lili de Alvarez
at Wimbledon
in 1931. She added evening wear to the collection in 1931, and the business went from strength to strength, culminating in a move from Rue de la Paix to the Schiap Shop in the Place Vendôme
.
A darker tone was set when France declared war on Germany in 1939. Schiaparelli's Spring 1940 collection featured "trench" brown and camouflage print taffetas. Soon after the fall of Paris
on 14 June 1940, Schiaparelli sailed to New York for a lecture tour; apart from a few months in Paris in early 1941, she remained in New York City
until the end of the war. On her return she found that fashions had changed, with Christian Dior
's "New Look" marking a rejection of pre-war fashion. The house of Schiaparelli struggled in the austerity of the post-war period, and Elsa finally closed it down in December 1954, the same year that her great rival Chanel returned to the business. Aged 64, she wrote her autobiography and then lived out a comfortable retirement between her apartment in Paris and house in Tunisia. She died on 13 November 1973.
Schiaparelli was an innovative woman and fashion designer. She had a lot of "firsts" in the fashion industry. Her career began with her introduction of graphic knitwear to the world of fashion with knit patterns and emblems. These led to her fanciful prints of body parts, food, and many more unusual themes. She was the first to use brightly colored zippers, appearing first on her sportswear in 1930 and again five years later on her evening dresses. Not only was she the first to use brightly colored zippers, but she was also the first to have them dyed to match the material used in her garments. She was the first to create and use fanciful buttons that looked more like brooches. They came in the shapes of peanuts, bees, and even ram’s heads. In Parisian fashion, she invented culottes, introduced Arab breeches, embroidered shirts, wrapped turbans, pompom-rimmed hats, barbaric belts, the “wedge,” a soled shoe that would trend through the 20th century and into the next, and mix-and-match sportswear, the concept of which would not be fully recognized for another forty to fifty years. While her innovations in fashion design were numerous, it was her creation of the runway show as we know it today that was most influential. Her modern idea of a fashion show included a runway with music and art, and the use of elongated, shapeless women as models. She believed that this boyish figure would best display the clothing. Many people do not realize the true sum of her impact on fashion and the fashion industry.
and Surrealism, provided a significant source of inspiration for Schiaparelli. She worked with a number of contemporary artists to develop her imaginative designs, most famously with Salvador Dalí. From these artistic collaborations, Schiaparelli’s most notable designs were born. In addition to well-documented collaborations such as the shoe hat and the Tears dress, Dali's influence has been identified in designs such as the lamb-cutlet hat and a 1936 day suit with pockets simulating a chest of drawers. Schiaparelli also had a good relationship with other artists including Leonor Fini
, Jean Cocteau
, Meret Oppenheim
, and Alberto Giacometti
. Chanel referred to her as 'that Italian artist who makes clothes'.
to design a jacket and an evening coat for that year's Autumn collection. The jacket was embroidered with a female figure with one hand caressing the waist of the wearer, and long blonde hair cascading down one sleeve. The coat featured two profiles facing each other, creating the optical illusion
of a vase of roses. The embroidering of both garments was executed by the couture embroidery house of Lesage.
The 1937 Lobster Dress was a simple white silk evening dress with a crimson waistband featuring a large lobster painted (by Dali) onto the skirt. From 1934, Dali had started incorporating lobsters into his work, including New York Dream-Man Finds Lobster in Place of Phone shown in the magazine American Weekly in 1935, and the mixed-media Lobster Telephone
(1936). His design for Schiaparelli was interpreted into a fabric print by the leading silk designer Sache. It was famously worn by Wallis Simpson in a series of photographs by Cecil Beaton
taken at the Château de Candé
shortly before her marriage to Edward VIII
.
The Tears Dress, a slender pale blue evening gown printed with a Dali design of trompe l'oeil
rips and tears, worn with a thigh-length veil with "real" tears carefully cut out and lined in pink and magenta, was part of the February 1938 Circus Collection. The print was intended to give the illusion of torn animal flesh, the tears printed to represent fur on the reverse of the fabric and suggest that the dress was made of animal pelts turned inside out. Figures in ripped, skin-tight clothing suggesting flayed flesh appeared in three of Dali's 1936 paintings, one of which, Necrophiliac Springtime, was owned by Schiaparelli; the other two are The Dream Places A Hand on a Man's Shoulder and Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra.
Dali also helped Schiaparelli design the Skeleton Dress for the Circus Collection. It was a stark black crepe dress which used trapunto quilting
to create padded ribs, spine
, and leg bones.
In 1933, Dali was photographed by his wife Gala Dali
with one of her slippers balanced on his head. In 1937 he sketched designs for a shoe hat for Schiaparelli, which she featured in her Fall-Winter 1937-38 collection. The hat, shaped like a woman's high heeled shoe, had the heel standing straight up and the toe tilted over the wearer's forehead. This hat was worn by Gala Dali, Schiaparelli herself, and by the Franco-American editor of the French Harper's Bazaar
, heiress Daisy Fellowes
, who was one of Schiaparelli's best clients.
called the Tête de Belier (Ram's Head). This inspired the colour of the box of Schiaparelli's 1937 perfume, which was called "Shocking"; the shade called hot pink
by Americans is still known as shocking pink
in British English. The packaging, designed by Leonor Fini
, was also notable for the bottle in the shape of a woman's torso inspired by Mae West
's tailor's dummy.
Other perfumes included:
's outfits for the 1952 production of Moulin Rouge
. She famously dressed Mae West for Every Day's a Holiday
(1937) using a mannequin based on West's measurements, which inspired the torso bottle for Shocking perfume.
placed Chanel in the second division of fashion, whereas Schiaparelli was one of "a handful of houses now at or near the peak of their power as arbiters of the ultra-modern haute couture....Madder and more original than most of her contemporaries, Mme Schiaparelli is the one to whom the word "genius" is applied most often". At the same time Time recognised that Chanel had assembled a fortune of some US$15m despite being "not at present the most dominant influence in fashion", whereas Schiaparelli relied on inspiration rather than craftsmanship and "it was not long before every little dress factory in Manhattan had copied them and from New York's 3rd Avenue to San Francisco's Howard Street millions of shop girls who had never heard of Schiaparelli were proudly wearing her models".
Perhaps Schiaparelli's most important legacy was in bringing to fashion the playfulness and sense of "anything goes" of the Dada and Surrealist movements. She loved to play with juxtapositions of colours, shapes and textures, and embraced the new technologies and materials of the time. With Charles Colcombet she experimented with acrylic, cellophane, a rayon jersey called "Jersela" and a rayon with metal threads called
"Fildifer" - the first time synthetic materials were used in couture. Some of these innovations were not pursued further, like her 1934 "glass" cape made from Rhodophane, a transparent plastic related to cellophane. But there were more lasting innovations; Schiaparelli created wraparound dresses decades before Diane von Furstenberg
and crumpled up rayon 50 years before Issey Miyake
's pleats and crinkles. In 1930 alone she created the first evening-dress with a jacket, and the first clothes with visible zipper
s. In fact fastenings were something of a speciality, from a jacket buttoned with silver tambourine
s to one with silk-covered carrots and cauliflowers.
and photographer Berry Berenson
. Both sisters appeared regularly in Vogue
in the early 1970s. Berry was married Anthony Perkins
, who died of AIDS on September 12, 1992. Almost 9 years later, on September 11, 2001, Berry died on American Airlines Flight 11
when it crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center
during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Elsa Schiaparelli's great grand children include actor Oz Perkins
and musician Elvis Perkins
.
wrote a song Down in the Depths (On the Ninetieth Floor)
for his 1936 musical Red, Hot and Blue
, about a lonely rich woman who "sits above the town in her Schiaparelli gown/ Down in the depths on the ninetieth floor."
In stanza XV of Louis MacNeice
's epic poem "Autumn Journal" (1939), he namechecks Schiaparelli as a designer who epitomised modernity:
'Or give me a new Muse with stockings and suspenders
And a smile like a cat
With false eyelashes and finger-nails of carmine
And dressed by Schiaparelli, with a pill-box hat.'
In Nancy Mitford
's 1949 novel Love in a Cold Climate
, the heroine Fanny wants to wear the Schiaparelli label on the outside of a jacket "so that people would know where it came from".
Schiaparelli is mentioned a number of times as a favorite designer of Mame Dennis-Burnside and Vera Charles in the books Auntie Mame
and Around the world with Auntie Mame (1955 and 1958)
In Muriel Spark
's novella The Girls of Slender Means
(1963) the character Selina steals a Schiaparelli gown that was traded around the May of Teck Club in the climax of the story.
In Mary McCarthy
's 1963 novel The Group
Schiaparelli is named as the designer of the wardrobe worn by the character Elinor "Lakey" Eastlake on her return to the US from Europe just before the outbreak of World War II.
The narrator of the 2008 film Of Time and the City
remarks that "the opening of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King" in 1967 was "The Vatican's response to Schiaparelli."
The Morgan horse has a mare who's registered name is Schiaparelli, foaled in 1986. Not only is she a multiple World Champion, but she's one the best Mares in the breed having produced some of the most popular breeding stallions today.
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
fashion designer. Along with Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...
, her greatest rival, she is regarded as one of the most prominent figures in fashion between the two World Wars. Starting with knitwear, Schiaparelli's designs were heavily influenced by Surrealists like her collaborators Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
and Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
. Her clients included the heiress Daisy Fellowes
Daisy Fellowes
The Hon. Daisy Fellowes The Hon. Daisy Fellowes The Hon. Daisy Fellowes (née Marguerite Séverine Philippine Decazes de Glücksberg, (April 29, 1890 – December 13, 1962), was a celebrated 20th-century society figure, acclaimed beauty, minor novelist and poet, Paris Editor of American Harper's Bazaar,...
and actress Mae West
Mae West
Mae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....
.
Schiaparelli did not adapt to the changes in fashion following World War II and her business closed in 1954.
Personal life
Schiaparelli was born at the Palazzo CorsiniPalazzo Corsini
The Palazzo Corsini is a prominent late-baroque palace in Rome, erected for the Corsini family between 1730-1740 as an elaboration of the prior building on the site, a 15th-century villa of the Riario family, based on designs of Ferdinando Fuga. It is located in the Trastevere section of the city,...
in Rome. Her mother was a Neapolitan aristocrat and her father a renowned scholar and curator of medieval manuscripts. Her father, Celestino, was Dean of the University of Rome and an authority on Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
. She was a niece of astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli
Giovanni Schiaparelli
Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli was an Italian astronomer and science historian. He studied at the University of Turin and Berlin Observatory. In 1859-1860 he worked in Pulkovo Observatory and then worked for over forty years at Brera Observatory...
, who discovered the so-called canali of Mars, and she spent hours with him studying the heavens. She studied philosophy at the University of Rome, during which she published a book of sensual poems that shocked her conservative family. Schiaparelli was sent to a convent until she went on hunger strike and at the age of 22 accepted a job in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
as a nanny
Nanny
A nanny, childminder or child care provider, is an individual who provides care for one or more children in a family as a service...
. Elsa led a refined life with a certain amount of luxury provided by her parents’ wealth and high social status. She believed, however, that this luxury was stifling to her art and creativity and so she removed herself from the “lap of luxury” as quickly as possible. Schiaparelli moved first to New York City and then to Paris, combining her love of art and design to become a couturier.
En route to London, Schiaparelli was invited to a ball in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Having no ballgown, she bought some dark blue fabric, wrapped it around herself and pinned it in place. In London most of her time was spent visiting museums and attending lectures. Schiaparelli went on to marry one of her lecturers, Count William de Wendt de Kerlor a Franco-Swiss theosophist. In 1921 they moved to New York, where Schiaparelli immediately responded to the modernity of the city. Her husband distanced himself from the city and had abandoned his family by the time their child was born. Maria Luisa Yvonne Radha de Wendt de Kerlor, better known as Gogo Schiaparelli, would become a noted socialite.
Schiaparelli was later introduced to Gaby Picabia, ex-wife of French Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ist artist Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia was a French painter, poet, and typographist, associated with both the Dada and Surrealist art movements.- Early life :...
and owner of a boutique selling French fashions in New York. Through her work there, Schiaparelli met artists like Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
and Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
. When Gaby and Man Ray left for Paris, Schiaparelli joined them.
Fashion career
In Paris, Schiaparelli - known as "Schiap" to her friends - began making her own clothes. With some encouragement from Paul PoiretPaul Poiret
Paul Poiret was a French fashion designer. His contributions to twentieth-century fashion have been likened to Picasso's contributions to twentieth-century art.-Early life and career:...
, she started her own business but it closed in 1926 despite favourable reviews. She launched a new collection of knitwear in early 1927 using a special double layered stitch created by Armenian refugees and featuring sweaters with surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
trompe l'oeil
Trompe l'oeil
Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English as trompe l'oeil, is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.-History in painting:Although the phrase has its origin in...
images. Although her first designs appeared in Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
, the business really took off with a pattern that gave the impression of a scarf wrapped around the wearer's neck. The "pour le Sport" collection expanded the following year to include bathing suits, ski-wear, and linen dresses. The divided skirt, a forerunner of shorts, shocked the tennis world when worn by Lili de Alvarez
Lili de Alvarez
Lili de Alvarez was a Spanish multi-sport competitor, an international tennis champion, an author, and a journalist....
at Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon, or simply Wimbledon , is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, considered by many to be the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the other three Majors...
in 1931. She added evening wear to the collection in 1931, and the business went from strength to strength, culminating in a move from Rue de la Paix to the Schiap Shop in the Place Vendôme
Place Vendôme
Place Vendôme is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. It is the starting point of the Rue de la Paix. Its regular architecture by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and pedimented screens canted across the...
.
A darker tone was set when France declared war on Germany in 1939. Schiaparelli's Spring 1940 collection featured "trench" brown and camouflage print taffetas. Soon after the fall of Paris
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
on 14 June 1940, Schiaparelli sailed to New York for a lecture tour; apart from a few months in Paris in early 1941, she remained in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
until the end of the war. On her return she found that fashions had changed, with Christian Dior
Christian Dior
Christian Dior , was a French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, also called Christian Dior.-Life:...
's "New Look" marking a rejection of pre-war fashion. The house of Schiaparelli struggled in the austerity of the post-war period, and Elsa finally closed it down in December 1954, the same year that her great rival Chanel returned to the business. Aged 64, she wrote her autobiography and then lived out a comfortable retirement between her apartment in Paris and house in Tunisia. She died on 13 November 1973.
Schiaparelli was an innovative woman and fashion designer. She had a lot of "firsts" in the fashion industry. Her career began with her introduction of graphic knitwear to the world of fashion with knit patterns and emblems. These led to her fanciful prints of body parts, food, and many more unusual themes. She was the first to use brightly colored zippers, appearing first on her sportswear in 1930 and again five years later on her evening dresses. Not only was she the first to use brightly colored zippers, but she was also the first to have them dyed to match the material used in her garments. She was the first to create and use fanciful buttons that looked more like brooches. They came in the shapes of peanuts, bees, and even ram’s heads. In Parisian fashion, she invented culottes, introduced Arab breeches, embroidered shirts, wrapped turbans, pompom-rimmed hats, barbaric belts, the “wedge,” a soled shoe that would trend through the 20th century and into the next, and mix-and-match sportswear, the concept of which would not be fully recognized for another forty to fifty years. While her innovations in fashion design were numerous, it was her creation of the runway show as we know it today that was most influential. Her modern idea of a fashion show included a runway with music and art, and the use of elongated, shapeless women as models. She believed that this boyish figure would best display the clothing. Many people do not realize the true sum of her impact on fashion and the fashion industry.
Artist collaborations
Modern art, particularly DadaDada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
and Surrealism, provided a significant source of inspiration for Schiaparelli. She worked with a number of contemporary artists to develop her imaginative designs, most famously with Salvador Dalí. From these artistic collaborations, Schiaparelli’s most notable designs were born. In addition to well-documented collaborations such as the shoe hat and the Tears dress, Dali's influence has been identified in designs such as the lamb-cutlet hat and a 1936 day suit with pockets simulating a chest of drawers. Schiaparelli also had a good relationship with other artists including Leonor Fini
Leonor Fini
Leonor Fini was an Argentine surrealist painter.-Life and work:Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she was raised in Trieste, Italy. She moved to Milan at the age of 17, and then to Paris, in either 1931 or 1932...
, Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Meret Oppenheim
Méret Oppenheim
-External links:**** http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/man_ray.html...
, and Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
. Chanel referred to her as 'that Italian artist who makes clothes'.
Cocteau
In 1937, Schiaparelli collaborated with the artist Jean CocteauJean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
to design a jacket and an evening coat for that year's Autumn collection. The jacket was embroidered with a female figure with one hand caressing the waist of the wearer, and long blonde hair cascading down one sleeve. The coat featured two profiles facing each other, creating the optical illusion
Optical illusion
An optical illusion is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a perception that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source...
of a vase of roses. The embroidering of both garments was executed by the couture embroidery house of Lesage.
Dali
The designs Schiaparelli produced in collaboration with Dali are among her best known. While Schiaparelli did not name her designs, the four iconic Dali collaborations are popularly known as follows:Lobster Dress
The 1937 Lobster Dress was a simple white silk evening dress with a crimson waistband featuring a large lobster painted (by Dali) onto the skirt. From 1934, Dali had started incorporating lobsters into his work, including New York Dream-Man Finds Lobster in Place of Phone shown in the magazine American Weekly in 1935, and the mixed-media Lobster Telephone
Lobster Telephone
Lobster Telephone is a surrealist object, created by Salvador Dalí in 1936 with surrealist artist and patron Edward James...
(1936). His design for Schiaparelli was interpreted into a fabric print by the leading silk designer Sache. It was famously worn by Wallis Simpson in a series of photographs by Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre...
taken at the Château de Candé
Château de Candé
The Château de Candé is a castle located in the commune of Monts, Indre-et-Loire, 10 km to the south of Tours on the border of the département of Indre in France....
shortly before her marriage to Edward VIII
Edward VIII of the United Kingdom
Edward VIII was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, and Emperor of India, from 20 January to 11 December 1936.Before his accession to the throne, Edward was Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay...
.
Tears Dress
The Tears Dress, a slender pale blue evening gown printed with a Dali design of trompe l'oeil
Trompe l'oeil
Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English as trompe l'oeil, is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.-History in painting:Although the phrase has its origin in...
rips and tears, worn with a thigh-length veil with "real" tears carefully cut out and lined in pink and magenta, was part of the February 1938 Circus Collection. The print was intended to give the illusion of torn animal flesh, the tears printed to represent fur on the reverse of the fabric and suggest that the dress was made of animal pelts turned inside out. Figures in ripped, skin-tight clothing suggesting flayed flesh appeared in three of Dali's 1936 paintings, one of which, Necrophiliac Springtime, was owned by Schiaparelli; the other two are The Dream Places A Hand on a Man's Shoulder and Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra.
Skeleton Dress
Dali also helped Schiaparelli design the Skeleton Dress for the Circus Collection. It was a stark black crepe dress which used trapunto quilting
Trapunto quilting
Trapunto, from the Italian for "to embroider," is a method of quilting that is also called "stuffed technique." A puffy, decorative feature, trapunto utilizes at least two layers, the underside of which is slit and padded, producing a raised surface on the quilt.-Technique:Trapunto is often...
to create padded ribs, spine
Vertebral column
In human anatomy, the vertebral column is a column usually consisting of 24 articulating vertebrae, and 9 fused vertebrae in the sacrum and the coccyx. It is situated in the dorsal aspect of the torso, separated by intervertebral discs...
, and leg bones.
Shoe Hat
In 1933, Dali was photographed by his wife Gala Dali
Gala Dalí
Gala Dalí , usually known simply as Gala, was the wife of first Paul Éluard, then Salvador Dalí, and an inspiration for them and many other writers and artists.- Early years :...
with one of her slippers balanced on his head. In 1937 he sketched designs for a shoe hat for Schiaparelli, which she featured in her Fall-Winter 1937-38 collection. The hat, shaped like a woman's high heeled shoe, had the heel standing straight up and the toe tilted over the wearer's forehead. This hat was worn by Gala Dali, Schiaparelli herself, and by the Franco-American editor of the French Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
, heiress Daisy Fellowes
Daisy Fellowes
The Hon. Daisy Fellowes The Hon. Daisy Fellowes The Hon. Daisy Fellowes (née Marguerite Séverine Philippine Decazes de Glücksberg, (April 29, 1890 – December 13, 1962), was a celebrated 20th-century society figure, acclaimed beauty, minor novelist and poet, Paris Editor of American Harper's Bazaar,...
, who was one of Schiaparelli's best clients.
Perfumes
Fellowes owned a 17.27ct pink diamond from CartierCartier SA
Cartier S.A., commonly known as Cartier , is a French luxury jeweler and watch manufacturer. The corporation carries the name of the Cartier family of jewellers whose control ended in 1964 and who were known for numerous pieces including the "Bestiary" , the diamond necklace created for Bhupinder...
called the Tête de Belier (Ram's Head). This inspired the colour of the box of Schiaparelli's 1937 perfume, which was called "Shocking"; the shade called hot pink
Hot Pink
-Graphic Design:The CD casing is designed to look like it's a vinyl record, reminding the listener to replace the needle, and breaking the track listing into sides. The design of the CD is even reminiscent of a vinyl single, for it is labeled as 33 RPM, and has the lines of the tracks on the...
by Americans is still known as shocking pink
Shocking Pink
Shocking Pink is the eighth cartoon produced in the Pink Panther series. A total of 124 6-minute cartoons were produced between 1964 and 1980.-Plot:...
in British English. The packaging, designed by Leonor Fini
Leonor Fini
Leonor Fini was an Argentine surrealist painter.-Life and work:Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she was raised in Trieste, Italy. She moved to Milan at the age of 17, and then to Paris, in either 1931 or 1932...
, was also notable for the bottle in the shape of a woman's torso inspired by Mae West
Mae West
Mae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....
's tailor's dummy.
Other perfumes included:
- Salut (1934)
- Souci (1934)
- Schiap (1934)
- Sleeping (1938)
- Snuff (for men; 1939)
- Roi Soleil (1946)
- Zut! (1948)
Film costumes
Schiaparelli designed the wardrobe for several films, starting with the French version of 1933's Topaze and ending with Zsa Zsa GaborZsa Zsa Gabor
Zsa Zsa Gabor is a Hungarian-born American stage, film and television actress.She acted on stage in Vienna, Austria, in 1932, and was crowned Miss Hungary in 1936. She emigrated to the United States in 1941 and became a sought-after actress with "European flair and style", with a personality that...
's outfits for the 1952 production of Moulin Rouge
Moulin Rouge (1952 film)
Moulin Rouge is a 1952 film directed by John Huston, produced by Sir John Woolf and James Woolf of Romulus Films and released by United Artists. The film is set in Paris in the late 19th century, following artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the city's bohemian sub-culture in and around the...
. She famously dressed Mae West for Every Day's a Holiday
Every Day's a Holiday
Every Day's a Holiday is a comedy film starring and co-written by Mae West, directed by A. Edward Sutherland, and released by Paramount Pictures. The film, released on 18 December 1937, also starred Edmund Lowe, Charles Winninger, and Charles Butterworth...
(1937) using a mannequin based on West's measurements, which inspired the torso bottle for Shocking perfume.
Legacy
The failure of her business meant that Schiaparelli's name is not as well remembered as that of her great rival Chanel. But in 1934, TimeTime (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
placed Chanel in the second division of fashion, whereas Schiaparelli was one of "a handful of houses now at or near the peak of their power as arbiters of the ultra-modern haute couture....Madder and more original than most of her contemporaries, Mme Schiaparelli is the one to whom the word "genius" is applied most often". At the same time Time recognised that Chanel had assembled a fortune of some US$15m despite being "not at present the most dominant influence in fashion", whereas Schiaparelli relied on inspiration rather than craftsmanship and "it was not long before every little dress factory in Manhattan had copied them and from New York's 3rd Avenue to San Francisco's Howard Street millions of shop girls who had never heard of Schiaparelli were proudly wearing her models".
Perhaps Schiaparelli's most important legacy was in bringing to fashion the playfulness and sense of "anything goes" of the Dada and Surrealist movements. She loved to play with juxtapositions of colours, shapes and textures, and embraced the new technologies and materials of the time. With Charles Colcombet she experimented with acrylic, cellophane, a rayon jersey called "Jersela" and a rayon with metal threads called
"Fildifer" - the first time synthetic materials were used in couture. Some of these innovations were not pursued further, like her 1934 "glass" cape made from Rhodophane, a transparent plastic related to cellophane. But there were more lasting innovations; Schiaparelli created wraparound dresses decades before Diane von Furstenberg
Diane von Fürstenberg
Diane von Fürstenberg, formerly Princess Diane of Fürstenberg , is a Belgian-American fashion designer best known for her iconic wrap dress. She initially rose to prominence when she married into the German princely House of Fürstenberg, as the wife of Prince Egon of Fürstenberg...
and crumpled up rayon 50 years before Issey Miyake
Issey Miyake
is a Japanese fashion designer. He is known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances.-Life and career:Miyake was born 22 April 1938 in Hiroshima, Japan. As a seven year-old, he witnessed and survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. He studied...
's pleats and crinkles. In 1930 alone she created the first evening-dress with a jacket, and the first clothes with visible zipper
Zipper
A zipper is a commonly used device for temporarily joining two edges of fabric...
s. In fact fastenings were something of a speciality, from a jacket buttoned with silver tambourine
Tambourine
The tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....
s to one with silk-covered carrots and cauliflowers.
Family
Elsa Schiaparelli's daughter, Countess Maria Luisa Yvonne Radha de Wendt de Kerlor, better known as Gogo Schiaparelli, married shipping executive Robert L. Berenson. Their children were model Marisa BerensonMarisa Berenson
Vittoria Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson is an American actress and model.-Early life:She is the elder daughter of Robert L. Berenson, an American diplomat turned shipping executive, who was of Lithuanian Jewish descent; his family's original surname was Valvrojenski...
and photographer Berry Berenson
Berry Berenson
Berinthia "Berry" Berenson Perkins was an American photographer, actress, and model. Perkins was also known as the wife of actor Anthony Perkins and died in the September 11 attacks as a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11.-Early life and family:Berinthia Berenson was the younger daughter of...
. Both sisters appeared regularly in Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
in the early 1970s. Berry was married Anthony Perkins
Anthony Perkins
Anthony Perkins was an American actor, best known for his Oscar-nominated role in Friendly Persuasion and as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho , and its three sequels.-Early life:...
, who died of AIDS on September 12, 1992. Almost 9 years later, on September 11, 2001, Berry died on American Airlines Flight 11
American Airlines Flight 11
American Airlines Flight 11 was American Airlines' daily scheduled morning transcontinental flight from Logan International Airport, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles International Airport, in Los Angeles, California...
when it crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Elsa Schiaparelli's great grand children include actor Oz Perkins
Oz Perkins
Osgood Robert "Oz" Perkins II is an American actor.He was born in New York City, New York, the elder son of the actor Anthony Perkins and the photographer and actress Berry Berenson, who was killed in the 9-11 attacks...
and musician Elvis Perkins
Elvis Perkins
Elvis Perkins is an American folk-rock recording artist. He released his debut studio album, Ash Wednesday, in 2007...
.
In popular culture
Cole PorterCole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
wrote a song Down in the Depths (On the Ninetieth Floor)
Down in the Depths (on the Ninetieth Floor)
"Down in the Depths " is a song written by Cole Porter, for his 1936 musical Red, Hot and Blue, in which it was introduced by Ethel Merman...
for his 1936 musical Red, Hot and Blue
Red, Hot and Blue
Red, Hot and Blue is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter and the book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1936 and introduced the popular song, "It's De-Lovely" sung by Ethel Merman.-Synopsis:...
, about a lonely rich woman who "sits above the town in her Schiaparelli gown/ Down in the depths on the ninetieth floor."
In stanza XV of Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...
's epic poem "Autumn Journal" (1939), he namechecks Schiaparelli as a designer who epitomised modernity:
'Or give me a new Muse with stockings and suspenders
And a smile like a cat
With false eyelashes and finger-nails of carmine
And dressed by Schiaparelli, with a pill-box hat.'
In Nancy Mitford
Nancy Mitford
Nancy Freeman-Mitford, CBE , styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years...
's 1949 novel Love in a Cold Climate
Love in a Cold Climate
Love in a Cold Climate is a novel by Nancy Mitford, first published in 1949. The title is a direct quotation from George Orwell's novel Keep The Aspidistra Flying .-Plot summary:...
, the heroine Fanny wants to wear the Schiaparelli label on the outside of a jacket "so that people would know where it came from".
Schiaparelli is mentioned a number of times as a favorite designer of Mame Dennis-Burnside and Vera Charles in the books Auntie Mame
Auntie Mame
Auntie Mame is a 1955 novel by Patrick Dennis that chronicles the madcap adventures of a boy, Patrick, growing up as the ward of his deceased father's eccentric sister, Mame Dennis. The book is a work of fiction inspired by the author's eccentric aunt, Marion Tanner, whose life and outlook in many...
and Around the world with Auntie Mame (1955 and 1958)
In Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark
Dame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
's novella The Girls of Slender Means
The Girls of Slender Means
The Girls of Slender Means is a novella written in 1963 by Scottish author Muriel Spark. It was included in Anthony Burgess's 1984 book Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice.-Plot introduction:...
(1963) the character Selina steals a Schiaparelli gown that was traded around the May of Teck Club in the climax of the story.
In Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy (author)
Mary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...
's 1963 novel The Group
The Group (novel)
The Group is a 1963 novel by American writer Mary McCarthy. It made the New York Times Best Seller list in 1963.- Content :In 1933, eight young female friends graduate from Vassar College. The book describes these women’s lives post-graduation, beginning with the marriage of one of the friends,...
Schiaparelli is named as the designer of the wardrobe worn by the character Elinor "Lakey" Eastlake on her return to the US from Europe just before the outbreak of World War II.
The narrator of the 2008 film Of Time and the City
Of Time and the City
Of Time and the City is a 2008 documentary film directed by Terence Davies.The film has Davies recalling his life growing up in Liverpool in the 1950s and 1960s, using newsreel and documentary footage supplemented by his own commentary voiceover and contemporaneous and classical music...
remarks that "the opening of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King" in 1967 was "The Vatican's response to Schiaparelli."
The Morgan horse has a mare who's registered name is Schiaparelli, foaled in 1986. Not only is she a multiple World Champion, but she's one the best Mares in the breed having produced some of the most popular breeding stallions today.
Further reading
Recent edition of Elsa's autobiography, originally published by Hudson in 1954. Published to coincide with the Philadelphia exhibition belowExternal links
Major exhibition of Schiaparelli's work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with a good website ("Explore the Exhibition"). Searching the museum website will also turn up dozens of Schiaparelli pieces in the main collection, with photos.- www.fondationtanagra.com Go to Galleries and then High Fashion for text from the catalogue of the 1984 Hommage à Schiaparelli exhibition in Paris.
- Sewing Patterns by Elsa Schiaparelli