Elsa Schiaparelli

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Elsa Schiaparelli was an influential Italian-born French haute couture designer, a pioneer of surrealist fashion who blended art and wearable clothing with bold, unconventional designs.

Key moments

10 September 1890Born in Rome, Italy, into an intellectual family
1927Founded her eponymous fashion house in Paris
1934First female fashion designer to appear on the cover of *Time* magazine
1954Closed her Parisian fashion studio
13 November 1973Passed away in Paris

Artistic Collaboration and Legacy

Schiaparelli worked closely with surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau, creating iconic pieces such as the lobster dress and tear-resistant knitwear. She challenged traditional fashion norms with bold colors (including her signature "shocking pink"), experimental fabrics, and trompe-l'oeil designs. Unlike contemporaries like Coco Chanel, who focused on understated, practical luxury, Schiaparelli prioritized whimsical, thought-provoking artistry, making her a defining figure of 1930s high fashion.

Cultural Impact

Her designs were worn by Hollywood stars like Marlene Dietrich and Mae West, and she redefined what fashion could be by integrating fine art, surreal imagery, and everyday objects into clothing. After her retirement, the Schiaparelli brand was revived in 2012, continuing her legacy of bold, artistic couture.

Overview

Elsa Schiaparelli

children
birth name	Elsa Luisa Maria Schiaparelli
birth date	September 10, 1890
birth place	Rome, Italy
death date	November 13, 1973
death place	Paris, France
occupation	Fashion designer
spouse	Wilhelm Frederick Wendt de Kerlor (m. 1914-1924)

relatives	Marisa Berenson (granddaughter) Berry Berenson (granddaughter) Osgood Perkins (great-grandson)<br/ > Elvis Perkins (great-grandson)

Elsa Schiaparelli ( ,[1][2] ,[3][4] ; 10 September 1890 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian fashion designer from an aristocratic background.[5] She created Maison Schiaparelli (the House of Schiaparelli) in Paris in 1927,[6] which she managed from the 1930s to the 1950s. Starting with knitwear, Schiaparelli's designs celebrated Surrealism and eccentric fashions. Her collections were famous for unconventional and artistic themes like the human body, insects, or trompe-l'œil, and for the use of bright colors like her "shocking pink".

Schiaparelli famously collaborated with Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau.[7] Along with Coco Chanel, her greatest rival, she is regarded as one of the most prominent European figures in fashion between the two World Wars.[8] Her clients included the heiress Daisy Fellowes and actress Mae West.[9]

Early life

Elsa Luisa Maria Schiaparelli was born at the Palazzo Corsini, Rome.[10] Her mother, Giuseppa Maria de Dominicis,[11] was a Neapolitan aristocrat.[12] Her father, Celestino Schiaparelli, a Piedmontese, was an accomplished scholar with multiple areas of interest.[13] His studies focused on the Islamic world and the era of the Middle Ages and he was, in addition, an authority on Sanskrit and a curator of medieval manuscripts. He also served as Dean of the Sapienza University of Rome, where Schiaparelli would herself later go on to study philosophy.[14][15][10]

Return to Paris

Following the lead of Gabrielle Picabia and others, and after the death of her lover Laurenti, Schiaparelli left New York for France in 1922. Upon her arrival in Paris, she took an expensive apartment in a fashionable quarter of the city taking on the requisite servants, cook and maid. The self-made associations she formed over the years along with the eminent social position held by her Italian family combined to ensure that she would be embraced by desirable social circles on her return to France.[34]

Although never threatened with destitution as she continued to receive financial support from her mother, Schiaparelli nevertheless felt the need to earn an independent income. She assisted Man Ray with his Dada magazine Société Anonyme, which proved short lived. Gaby Picabia then suggested a business enterprise which would be beneficial to herself and Schiaparelli. Connected to the French couturier Paul Poiret through her association with his sister Nicole Groult, Picabia proposed that they sell French couture in America. This proposed project, however, never became a viable enterprise and was abandoned.[35]

Fashion career

Schiaparelli's design career was early on influenced by couturier Paul Poiret, who was renowned for jettisoning corseted, over-long dresses and promoting styles that enabled freedom of movement for the modern, elegant and sophisticated woman. In later life, Schiaparelli referred to Poiret as "a generous mentor, dear friend."[36]

Schiaparelli had no training in the technical skills of pattern making and clothing construction. Her method of approach relied on both impulse of the moment and the serendipitous inspiration as the work progressed. She draped fabric directly on the body, sometimes using herself as the model. This technique followed the lead of Poiret who too had created garments by manipulating and draping. The results appeared uncontrived and wearable.

House of Schiaparelli (Maison Schiaparelli)

Whilst in Paris, Schiaparelli—"Schiap" to her friends—began making her own clothes. With encouragement from Poiret, she started her own business, but it closed in 1926 despite favourable reviews.[10] 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'œil images.[10]

Later life and death

In 1954, Schiaparelli published her autobiography Shocking Life and then lived out a comfortable retirement between her Paris apartment and her house in Tunisia. She died on 13 November 1973, at the age of 83.

Notable designs

Schiaparelli was one of the first designers to develop the wrap dress, taking inspiration from aprons to produce a design that would accommodate and flatter all female body types. Her design, which first appeared in 1930, offered a two-sided model with armholes on each side, brought together in the front of the garment and wrapped and tied at the waistline. Buttons may also have been incorporated into this early version. Initially conceived as beachwear and produced in four colours of tussore silk, the dress was popular with buyers and copied by garment manufacturers as a design for everyday street wear. Some forty years afterwards, this uncomplicated and easy-to-wear design was revisited in the 1970s by the American designer Diane von Fürstenberg.[42][43]

In 1931, Schiaparelli's divided skirt—a forerunner of shorts—shocked the tennis world when worn by Lili de Alvarez at Wimbledon in 1931.[10]

Other innovations included a swimsuit design which incorporated an interior bra with an alluring low-cut back by using hidden straps that crossed in the back and closed around the waist.

Maison Schiaparelli

Maison Schiaparelli (the House of Schiaparelli) was first opened in the 1930s at 21 Place Vendôme. After World War II, Elsa Schiaparelli did not manage to find success with her collections. The couture house was shut down on 13 December 1954.[78]

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, Time 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".[15] 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".[15]

In 2022, Schiaparelli was included in Ferren Gipson's book exploring feminine arts and feminist art.[79]

Elsa Schiaparelli SAS

In 1957 Elsa created a company mainly for her perfume licences. The company was acquired in 2007 by Italian businessman Diego Della Valle. In September 2013 Marco Zanini was appointed as its creative director. In 2014 this company was transformed to a fashion house with the trade name Schiaparelli.[80] The first time after the house was nominated as a member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture presented a show was in January 2014.[81] Its first collection was sold exclusively at a by-appointment boutique in Paris.[82] While originally not founded as a fashion house, the company nowadays associates itself in marketing with the fashion legacy of its founder Elsa.

Perfumes

Schiaparelli's perfumes were noted for their unusual packaging and bottles. Her best-known perfume was "Shocking!" (1936), contained in a bottle sculpted by Leonor Fini in the shape of a woman's torso inspired by Mae West's tailor's dummy and Dalí paintings of flower-sellers.[84][85] The packaging, also designed by Fini, was in shocking pink, one of Schiaparelli's signature colours which was said to have been inspired by Daisy Fellowes' Tête de Belier (Ram's Head) pink diamond.[76][86]

Other perfumes included:

Salut (1934)
Souci (1934)
Schiap (1934)

Family

Schiaparelli's two granddaughters, from her daughter's marriage to shipping executive Robert L. Berenson, were model Marisa Berenson and photographer Berry Berenson. Both sisters appeared regularly in Vogue in the early 1970s. Berry was married to the actor Anthony Perkins, with whom she had two children, filmmaker Osgood Perkins and musician Elvis Perkins. In 2014, Marisa collaborated with Hubert de Givenchy to publish the book Elsa Schiaparelli's Private Album which reproduced photographs from her grandmother's personal archives.[87]

Exhibitions

"Shocking!" The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (September 2003 – January 2004) and the Musée de la Mode, Paris (March–August 2004).[88]
Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations; The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (May–August 2012)[89]
Couturier Christian Lacroix presented a tribute fashion collection to Schiaparelli at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in 2013.[90]

External links

Major exhibition of Schiaparelli's work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Catalogue text accompanying the 1984 Hommage a Schiaparelli exhibition held in Paris by the Fondation Tanagra.

References

Laura Bradley, Judith Watt. Pronunciation Guide:ElsaSchiaparelli AnOther, 23 August 2011, retrieved 18 March 2015^
Schiaparelli, Elsa Oxford University Press^
retrieved 5 August 2019^

Marriage

Schiaparelli fled to London to avoid the certainty of marriage to a persistent suitor, a wealthy Russian whom her parents favored and for whom she felt no attraction. In London, Schiaparelli —who had held a fascination for psychic phenomena since childhood— attended a lecture on theosophy. The lecturer that night was Willem de Wendt, a man of various aliases who was also known as Willie Wendt and Wilhem de Kerlor. He was reported to have legally changed his name in England to Wilhelm Frederick Wendt de Kerlor, a combination of his father's last name and mother's maiden name.[20] de Wendt's profession was that of a tireless, inventive self-promoter, in reality a con man who claimed to have psychic powers, and numerous academic credentials. He alternatively and simultaneously passed himself off as detective and criminal psychologist, doctor, and lecturer. In a stint on the vaudeville stage, de Kerlor billed himself as "The World Famous Dr. W. de Kerlor."[21] Schiaparelli was immediately attracted to this charismatic charlatan and they became engaged the day after their first meeting. They married shortly thereafter in London on 21 July 1914; Schiaparelli was twenty-three, her new husband, thirty.[22] De Kerlor attempted to earn a living aggrandizing his reputation as a psychic practitioner as the couple subsisted primarily on the wedding dowry and an allowance provided by Schiaparelli's wealthy parents.[23] Schiaparelli played the role of her husband's helpmate and helped facilitate the promotion of his fraudulent schemes. In 1915, the couple were forced to leave England after de Kerlor was deported following his conviction for practicing fortune-telling, then illegal.[24] They subsequently lived a peripatetic existence in Paris, Cannes, Nice, and Monte Carlo, before leaving for America in the spring of 1916.

The de Kerlors disembarked in New York, initially staying at the Brevoort, a prominent hotel in Greenwich Village, after which they relocated to an apartment above the Café des Artistes near Central Park West. De Kerlor rented offices to house his newly inaugurated "Bureau of Psychology" where he hoped to achieve fame and fortune through his paranormal and consulting work. His wife acted as his assistant, providing clerical support for self-promotions crafted to provide the newspapers with sensational copy, win celebrity, and garner acclaim. During this period de Kerlor came under the surveillance of the Federal government's Bureau of Investigation, (BOI) a precursor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, (FBI), not only for his dubious professional practices but also on suspicion of harboring anti-British and pro-German allegiance during wartime. By 1917, de Kerlor's acquaintance with journalists John Reed and Louise Bryant had positioned him on the government radar as a possible Bolshevik sympathizer and Communist revolutionary. Attempting to avoid this unremitting scrutiny, the de Kerlors decamped to Boston in 1918, where they continued their activities as they had done in New York.[25] De Kerlor, an incurable publicity hound, made imprudent admissions to a BOI investigator in prideful support of the Russian Revolution and went so far as to admit to an association with a notorious anarchist, whilst his wife incriminated herself by revealing that she was tutoring Italians in Boston's North End on the tenets of Bolshevism, and that she herself had the knowledge to assemble explosive devices. Both were ultimately spared prosecution or deportation, the authorities concluding that such admissions so freely given were more indicative of foolish grandstanding than evidence of individuals who were a threat to society.[26]

Almost immediately after their child, Maria Luisa Yvonne Radha (nicknamed 'Gogo'), was born on 15 June 1920, de Kerlor moved out, leaving Schiaparelli alone with their newborn daughter.[27] In later years, whenever Gogo asked her mother about her absent father, she was told that he was dead.[28] Schiaparelli apparently made no efforts to bring her husband back or to seek support payments for herself and Gogo.[28] In 1921, the 18-month-old Gogo was diagnosed with polio, which proved a stressful and protracted challenge for both mother and child. Years later, Gogo recalled spending her early years in plaster casts and on crutches, with a largely absent mother whom she barely saw. Fearing that de Kerlor would attempt to gain legal custody of Gogo, Schiaparelli had the child's surname legally changed to Schiaparelli prior to their return to France in 1922.[29]

Schiaparelli relied greatly on the emotional support offered her by her close friend Gabrielle 'Gaby' Buffet-Picabia, the wife of Dada/Surrealist artist Francis Picabia, whom she had first met on board ship during the transatlantic crossing to America in 1916.[30] Following de Kerlor's desertion, Schiaparelli returned to New York, attracted to its spirit of fresh beginnings and cultural vibrancy. Her interest in spiritualism translated into a natural affinity for the art of the Dada and Surrealist movements, and her friendship with Gaby Picabia facilitated entry into this creative circle which comprised noteworthy members such as Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Steichen.[31] Schiaparelli took a lover, the opera singer Mario Laurenti, but this relationship was cut short by Laurenti's death in 1922 after a sudden illness.[32] Whilst they were together, de Kerlor had purportedly conducted affairs with the dancer Isadora Duncan and the actress Alla Nazimova.[32]

Schiaparelli and de Kerlor were eventually divorced in March 1924.[33] In 1928, de Kerlor was murdered in Mexico under circumstances never fully revealed.[28]

Fastenings

Schiaparelli is one of the designers credited with offering the first clothes with visible zippers in 1930.[43] Rather than being concealed, zippers became a key element of Schiaparelli's designs, visibly fastening necklines and running down sleeves and skirts.[47] She used chunky plastic zippers made from cellulose nitrate, the first semi-synthetic plastic fabric, and cellulose acetate.[48] Along with Charles James, Schiaparelli had arrangements with the manufacturers to promote their zip fasteners, using specific brands depending on where the garment would be sold (such as Éclair for Paris models, Lightning Fastener Co. for London models, and Hookless Fastener Co. zips for American export models).[48]

Schiaparelli was also renowned for her unusual buttons, which could resemble candlesticks, playing card emblems, ships, crowns, mirrors, and crickets;[49] or silver tambourines and silk-covered carrots and cauliflowers.[43] Many of these fastenings were designed by Jean Clemént and Roger Jean-Pierre who also created jewellery for her.[49] In 1936, Schiaparelli was one of the first people to recognise the potential of Jean Schlumberger who she originally employed as a designer of buttons.[50]

Jewellery

Schiaparelli's output also included distinctive costume jewellery in a wide range of novelty designs. One of her most directly Surrealist designs was a 1938 Rhodoid (a newly developed clear plastic) necklace studded with coloured metallic insects by Clément giving the illusion that the bugs were crawling directly on the wearer's skin.[51] During the 1930s her jewellery designs were produced by Schlumberger, Clemént and Jean-Pierre, who also made up designs for buttons and fasteners.[49] Schlumberger's jewellery with its inventive combinations of precious and semi-precious stones proved successful, and at the end of the 1930s, he left to launch his jewellery business in New York.[50][52][53] Schiaparelli also offered brooches by Alberto Giacometti, fur-lined metal cuffs by Méret Oppenheim, and pieces by Max Boinet, Lina Baretti, and the writer Elsa Triolet.[54]

Textiles

Schiaparelli was noted for her use of innovative textiles which were woven to resemble textures such as tree bark or crepe paper; a plush made to mimic ermine; and novelty prints including a fabric patterned with newspaper clippings. She made garments from crumpled rayon 50 years before Issey Miyake produced similarly pleated and crinkled pieces.[43] Schiaparelli enjoyed playing with juxtapositions of colours, shapes, and textures,[43] 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 had been used in couture.[43] Some of these innovations were not pursued further, like her 1934 "glass" cape made from Rhodophane, a transparent plastic related to cellophane.[60] Making clothes from these new and untested fabrics posed unexpected hazards—Diana Vreeland had a Schiaparelli dress melt at the dry cleaners' after its synthetic fabric reverted to chemical sludge upon contact with the cleaning fluids.[61]

Artist collaborations

Schiaparelli's fanciful imaginative powers coupled with involvement in the Dada/Surrealist art movements directed her into new creative territory. Her instinctive sensibilities soon came to distinguish her creations from her chief rival Coco Chanel, who referred to her as 'that Italian artist who makes clothes'.[43][62] Schiaparelli collaborated with a number of contemporary artists, most famously with Salvador Dalí, to develop a number of her most notable designs. Schiaparelli also had a good relationship with other artists including Leonor Fini, Méret Oppenheim, and Alberto Giacometti.[63]

In 1937 Schiaparelli collaborated with the artist Jean Cocteau to produce two of her most notable art-themed designs for that year's Autumn collection.[64] An evening jacket was embroidered with a female figure with one hand caressing the waist of the wearer, and long blonde hair cascading down one sleeve.

Film costumes

Schiaparelli designed the wardrobes for several films, starting with the French version of 1933's Topaze, and ending with Zsa Zsa Gabor's outfits for the 1952 biopic of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge in which Gabor played Jane Avril. Moulin Rouge won Marcel Vertès an Academy Award for Costume Design, although Schiaparelli's role in costuming the leading lady went unacknowledged beyond a prominent on-screen credit for Gabor's costumes. Authentically, Gabor's costumes were directly based upon Toulouse-Lautrec's portraits of Avril.[77]

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.