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date: 04 November 2024

Schiaparelli, Elsafree

(b Rome, Sept 10, 1890; d Paris, Nov 13, 1973)

Schiaparelli, Elsafree

(b Rome, Sept 10, 1890; d Paris, Nov 13, 1973)
  • Elizabeth Q. Bryan

Elsa Schiaparelli: Handbag, quilted black silk with ribbon, c. 1938 (New York, The Museum at FIT); photo courtesy of The Museum at FIT

Italian-born French fashion designer. Although Schiaparelli began her career with sportswear in the late 1920s, she is remembered for her Surrealism designs of the 1930s, often created in collaboration with such artists as Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau and Marcel Vertès. The drama of her original embroideries, vivid colours and strikingly witty accessories overshadows the simplicity of her sharply tailored suits and slender evening dresses (see fig. 1 and 2). Her ultimate success as a designer stemmed from her original sense of style and her instinctive attraction to the most avant-garde artistic circles.

Schiaparelli was born in Rome to a family of scholars and scientists and was educated in Switzerland and England. In London she fell in love in 1914 with the theosophist Wilhelm Wendt de Kerlor and married him without her family’s approval later that year. From 1914 to 1920 Schiaparelli and her husband led a precarious and bohemian existence, travelling from Britain to France to the United States. Along the way Schiaparelli met members of the international avant-garde, among them the Dadaist Francis Picabia and his wife, Gabrielle, and the photographer Man Ray. Schiaparelli separated from her husband in New York in 1922 shortly after giving birth to their daughter, Maria Luisa Yvonne Radha de Kerlor, whom she nicknamed Gogo. She found work as a translator and as a stand-in on film sets.

In June 1922 Schiaparelli returned to Europe as the travelling companion of Blanche Hays, wife of the prominent American lawyer Arthur Garfield Hays. She began a career in fashion in Paris to support herself and her daughter. In 1925 an American friend of Blanche Hays, a Mrs Hartley, opened a couture house named Maison Lambal with Schiaparelli as designer. Although the collections were reviewed favorably, Maison Lambal was not successful and closed in 1926.

In January 1927 Schiaparelli showed her first collection under her own name in her Paris apartment. The show was titled Display No.1 and consisted of distinctive sportswear. Schiaparelli registered her company in France the following December, the same month that Vogue featured her black sweater with a white trompe l’oeil collar and bow. Having achieved initial financial success, she moved her residence and business to 4 Rue de la Paix with a sign that stated ‘Schiaparelli, Pour le Sport’. It was at this time that Schiaparelli met Paul Poiret, who would remain an encouraging friend. In the 1930s Schiaparelli was at the height of her creativity. By 1932 she had introduced her distinctive jackets with padded shoulders and had opened a ready-to-wear boutique at 4 Rue de la Paix. She had also become a French citizen, while maintaining strong ties to the United States. In 1933 she travelled to the United States to give a lecture to the Fashion Group International and to present her mid-season collection at Saks Fifth Avenue. The following year she was featured on the cover of Time magazine and was recognized as more creative and experimental than her contemporaries. Also in 1934 Schiaparelli, accompanied by the photographer Cecil Beaton, was the sole representative of the Paris couture at a trade show in the Soviet Union. Returning to Paris, she moved her couture house and boutique to larger premises at 21 Place Vendôme. Jean-Michel Frank, who commissioned art from Dalí, Giacometti, Vertès and Bérard to complement his designs, planned the interiors. Her first collection at Place Vendôme was titled ‘Stop, Look and Listen’, a commentary on the politics of the day. She worked with the textile firm Colcombet to create a printed fabric featuring a collage of her press clippings, which she used for both clothing and accessories.

Elsa Schiaparelli: Apollo of Versailles cape, silk, metal and paste, 1938 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Estate of Lady Mendl, 1951, Accession ID:C.I.51.83); photo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/80002288

By the mid-1930s Schiaparelli was known for using the most innovative materials, such as cellophane, celluloid and zipper closures; the most exotic furs, such as monkey; and the most unusual details, especially the imaginative buttons designed in collaboration with Jean Clément and Roger Jean-Pierre. On her distinctive daytime suits, with their padded shoulders and exaggerated pockets, her buttons took the form of paperweights and doorknockers, stylized clips and exaggerated zippers. Her use of colour, especially her signature shocking pink, was noted in all her collections. Spectacular ornate embroideries, designed by Cocteau or other artists and executed by Lesage, appeared on her evening jackets and coats (see fig.). Underlying the drama and virtuosity of the Schiaparelli style in the 1930s was expert tailoring and dressmaking.

In 1934 Schiaparelli launched a successful perfume business providing fresh opportunities for artistic collaborations. Shocking (1937) had a bottle shaped like a dress form designed by Lenor Fini, and the candlestick-shaped bottle for Sleeping (1939) was designed by Vertès. Later in her career she collaborated with Dalí to design the packaging for Le Roi Soleil (1947).

Schiaparelli’s fashion designs were stimulated by contemporary artists and she in turn became their liaison to the world of haute couture. From 1937, several of her designs, such as the ‘Shoe Hat’ in collaboration with Dalí, were influenced by Surrealism, even before the Surrealist exhibition held in Paris in 1938. In her thematic collections of the late 1930s, such as the ‘Circus’ collection (Summer 1938), there were such memorable collaborations with Dalí as the ‘Tear Dress’ and the ‘Skeleton Dress’.

When World War II began, Schiaparelli responded with practical designs like ‘Abri’, a one-piece jumpsuit to wear in air raid shelters, with her typical wit. Her Spring 1940 collection featured the ‘Daily Ration’ scarf. Due to the war, in May 1941, Schiaparelli left Paris for Lisbon where she got passage to New York. She spent the remainder of the war living in New York and near Princeton, NJ, working for wartime charities. When Paris was liberated on 25 August, 1944, the haute couture community immediately reached out to the United States, but shortages of materials and labor made the rapid revival of the couture impossible. Schiaparelli was questioned in New York about her travels and activities by representatives of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne, and her application to return to France was not immediately granted. During the war, with her permission, her Paris couture house had remained open in her absence with Irène Dana as head designer. The house participated in the exhibition The Theatre of Fashion, which opened in Paris in the spring of 1945. When Schiaparelli returned to Paris, she presented her first postwar collection in September 1945 with the ‘Talleyrand’ silhouette.

Although Schiaparelli was financially successful in the late 1940s, she never recaptured the leadership role she had played before World War II. In 1949 she announced that a New York company had been established to mass-produce and market Schiaparelli designs in the United States. She oversaw the first showing of this ready-to-wear line in New York. The last couture collection at the Paris house was a twenty-model show in 1954. In December 1954, unable to sustain profitability even after obtaining loans from the fragrance divisions, Schiaparelli filed for bankruptcy. The fragrance company, however, remained in business.

Schiaparelli published her autobiography in 1954, Shocking Life, in which she expressed her philosophy of fashion. The book was reviewed favorably in the Saturday Review by Elizabeth Hawes. In 1969 Schiaparelli donated a large collection of her work to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which would stage the definitive retrospective exhibition of her career in 2004. Retired and living in Paris, Schiaparelli died on November 13, 1973, leaving her daughter, Gogo, and two granddaughters who also had careers in fashion: the actress and model Marisa Berenson (b 1947) and the fashion photographer Berinthia ‘Berry’ Berenson (1948-2001).

Writings

  • E. Schiaparelli: Shocking Life (New York, 1954)

Bibliography

  • ‘Haute Couture’, Time (Aug 13, 1934), pp. 49–54
  • J. Flanner: ‘Profiles: Comet’, New Yorker (June 18 1934), pp. 19–23
  • ‘Schiaparelli the Shocker’, Newsweek (Sept 26, 1949), pp. 51–3
  • P. White: Elsa Schiaparelli: Empress of Paris Fashion (London, 1986)
  • D. Blum: Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli (Philadelphia, 2003)