Schiaparelli Fashion House
Elsa Schiaparelli (September 10, 1890 - November 13, 1973) was a Parisian fashion designer of the 1920s and 1930s. She was born in Rome, Italy, of Italian and Egyptian heritage. She was a great-niece of Giovanni Schiaparelli, who discovered the canals of Mars
She may not have been what most people would call an attractive woman, or an easy-going type; but what she lacked on the outside, she made up for 1,000,000 times on the inside! Her keen eyes for beauty and elegance, her creativity and Artistic expression made even one of her biggest rivals, Coco Chanel describe her as "that Italian artist who makes clothes." While living in America as a protest to Nacism in France, she refused to design clothes, despite the many offers she received, until France was liberated. After her return to Paris, her flamboyant and genial style was, although embraced and desired by most women, sentenced to failure due to the post-WWII austerity, the fact that only a selected few could afford to purchase her luxurious items. Her career lasted from 1938 - 1954. She published her memoirs in 1954, entitled Shocking Life. Surprisingly, despite the fine fabrics she used in her creations, she admired blue jeans and felt happy when her daughter brought her a pair of jeans from one of her visits to the USA. Elsa Schiaparelli, designer of royalty and fame, died in her sleep in 1973.
Who was Elsa Schiaparelli?
Elsa Schiaparelli was one of the two great genius couturiers of the first half of the 20th century - the other being Gabrielle Chanel. They weren't friends. While Chanel was a craftswoman who viewed frock-making as a profession, Schiaparelli regarded her work as Art, and herself as an Artist.Born in Rome in the eighteen-nineties to strict, aristocratic parents, the young girl found her upbringing restricted and conservative. Rebellious and artistic, she left her Catholic school and began her tendency to shock by writing a book of suggestive poetry. Her parents, needless to say, were not pleased and Schiaparelli ran away to bohemian London where she met and married a handsome Polish count at eighteen. His name was Count William de Wendt de Kerlor (1883-?), a Franco-Swiss psychic medium once described as "a persuasive but inconstant Theosophist", and moved with him to Greenwich Village in New York City, where she sold clothing designed by the French couturier Paul Poiret. They had one child, Maria Luisa Yvonne Radha, known as Gogo, who was born in New York City in 1919. Her husband was unfaithful and abandoned her with the little daughter to support.
The broken-hearted Schiaparelli returned to Europe and began her career by sketching a black sweater with a large white bow motif which she had made by an American dressmaker. She opened her famous boutique on the most fashionable street in Paris, the Rue de la Paix, and her vivid designs began to be very popular.
Schiaparelli did everything first in fashion. She did the wraparound dress decades before Diane von Furstenberg. She was the first to use man-made fibres in couture: 50 years before Issey Miyake's pleats and crinkles, Schiaparelli was pushing manufacturers to crumple up their rayon fabric to give it stretch and drape, or crunch it boldly into patterns to add texture. She used a slippery satin rayon jersey called 'Jersela', and a rayon with metal threads called 'Fildifer'. She even, rather wackily, used 'Rhodophane' - which was basically glass - to fix a shimmery overskirt around a pale blue silk-satin evening gown.
She was the first to use visible zips in clothing (in 1930, on the pockets of a beach jacket). She played contrasts brilliantly: black and white; red and green; dull fabric with shiny; thick fabric with thin; rough homespun textures.
Elsa Schiaparelli Books on Amazon
Elsa Schiaparelli (Universe of Fashion)
Amazon Price: (as of 10/06/2008)
Great Fashion Designs of the Thirties Paper Dolls in Full Color: 32 Haute Couture Costumes by Schiaparelli, Molyneux, Mainbocher, and Others
Amazon Price: $6.95 (as of 10/06/2008)
Shocking Life
Amazon Price: $12.89 (as of 10/06/2008)
Schiaparelli Fashion Review Paper Dolls in Full Color
Amazon Price: $6.95 (as of 10/06/2008)
Shocking! The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli
Amazon Price: (as of 10/06/2008)
Sciaparelli compared to Lagerfeld
Like Karl Lagerfeld today, Schiaparelli always said she never minded her ideas being copied: when you're not copied, you're no longer news. Her most copied evening-dress was from 1930 - the first evening-dress that came with a jacket. The floor-length gown was a plain black sheath in crêpe-de-chine and the jacket, also crêpe-de-chine, was white, and tied with a sash that crossed behind, fastened in front and hung to the knee. She's still copied as much as she ever was - though I think we say 'referenced' now, don't we, darlings? Jean Paul Gaultier's signature scent was launched in the 1990s in a bottle shaped like a woman's headless torso. It looked daringly new to me at the time, but Schiaparelli's Shocking fragrance came in a bottle shaped like a dressmaker's headless dummy - in 1937. (The ample curves were inspired by Mae West's hourglass figure.)'Schiap' was friends with, and collaborated with, the avant-garde artists of 1930s Paris. Man Ray photographed her hats; in 1935, he also photographed hands that Picasso had painted to look like gloves. By the following season, Schiap was making gloves to look like hands, in black or white suede, with red snakeskin fingernails stitched on. She designed evening coats with Cocteau's line-drawings embroidered over. Salvador Dalí painted one of his lobsters tumbling down the skirt of a white silk gown. He surrounded it with painted parsley (and was apparently miffed when Schiaparelli wouldn't let him use real mayonnaise). Dalí appears to have been turned on by shocking-pink, too. He collaborated with Schiap on her famous Shoe hat, in black velvet with a shocking-pink heel, which his wife Gala wore.
Schiap's signature was 'hard chic': she always believed that beauty was born, not made. It certainly wasn't born for her: she had deep-set eyes, a receding chin, a big nose and a scattering of little moles over one cheek. Her uncle was a famous astronomer, and he told her the moles were exactly the same shape as the Plough constellation.
Schiaparelli, Royal Fashion Show, and Schocking
She dressed the Duchess of Windsor, for whom the phrase 'hard chic' could have been coined.Schiaparelli's autumn/winter collection for 1950 was called the Front Line, and it was a front line designed to be very flat indeed.
The girls who modeled the suits, rake-thin already, were given a flat, oval panel of wood (wood!), measuring six inches by three, to slip down the front of their girdles to flatten their stomachs further.
Schiaparelli's fashion house in the Place Vendôme closed on her death in 1973, which is why she's remembered only as a snazzy name with faint celebrity echoes. Shocking-pink being one: that screaming, vibrant, dangerous color she launched in 1937, with the same name as we can see on her most famous designer perfume.
Schiaparelli Perfume Sleeping
This collector's item, the perfume bottle by Schiaparelli entitled "Sleeping," depicts a candle holder with a cover. This design was marketed from 1938. Italian Fashion on Amazon
Italian Fashion Designing 1945-1980 Disegno Della Moda Italiana 1945-1980
Amazon Price: (as of 10/06/2008)
Reconstructing Italian Fashion: America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry (Dress, Body, Culture)
Amazon Price: $34.95 (as of 10/06/2008)
Fashion, Italian Style
Amazon Price: $29.60 (as of 10/06/2008)
Schiaparelli
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Surreal Things
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A Sample fof Elsa Schiaparelli's Most Beautiful Dresses
See below 10 examples for why Schiaparelli became so famous!
Evening cape spring 1937, Dark navy wool and red silk embroidered with gilt metal thread 
Versailles Cape, Evening cape, winter 1938-39, Black silk velvet embroidered with gold sequins, also called Apollo of Versailles Cape (Met Museum of Art, N.Y.C.) 
Wrap around dress and coat ensemble, Afternoon dress and winter coat, 1930-31, Black wool and silk 
Two Evening dresses made in collaboration with Salvador Dalí, one with lobster print , one with tear design (tortured silk), summer/fall 1937, white and red silk organza.The lobster dress was infamously worn by Wallis Simpson, the Duke of Windsor's wife, who was the reason he was no longer King of the U.K.. She was photographed in the dress by famed photographer Cecil Beaton.
The placement of the lobster on the 'virginal' white dress has always caused a stir for it's sexual innuendo, and when worn by a woman many blamed for seducing, latching on to, and not letting go of the future King, the dress became symbolic for many and as infamous as she had become.
Here's another image of it followed by the Salvador Dali lobster telephone from 1936 that is supposed to have inspired the dress pattern.
Dress, 1940, Black silk crepe, embroidered with pearls, sequins and metallic strip, and fastened with a plastic zip 
Ivory silk organza evening gown embroidered with metallic thread, pearls and rhinestones from 1938. (Met Museum of Art, N.Y.C.) 
Evening ensemble, 1938, Rayon marocain, backed with satin, and embroidered with various gilt threads, beads and diamantes 
Dinner suit and evening jacket with heavy embroidery from 1938. (Met Museum of Art, N.Y.C.) 
Orange silk organza evening dress from 1935 (Met Museum of Art, N.Y.C.) 
Bow-knot Sweater, Hand-knit pullover sweater with bow-knot, November 1927, Black and white wool. Organza Evening Dress by Schiaparelli
Schocking Pink
Evening Dress, 1952, Organza, with cotton machine embroidery and velvet appliqué, and under-dress of Thai silk. Elsa Schiaparelli was supposedly buried in a very old Chinese silk robe of shocking pink. Important Links to Schiaparelli Items
- Elsa Schiaparelli's Homepage
- Elsa Schiaparelli's Homepage
- ArtandCulture Artist: Elsa Schiaparelli
- A young woman struts down the Champs Elyse's in a gray wool suit tightly fitted to her slim body. The suit is decorated with large white butterflies that seem to flutter around her, giving her a special air of artistic sophistication. On her head another butterfly
- The wonders of 'Schiap'
- 'Wow!" is the reaction, as fashion aficionados visit the Elsa Schiaparelli exhibition here at the Musée de la Mode (until Aug. 29).. The surprise is not because of the "shocking" elements of the designer's work...
Alberta Ferretti Italian Designer
Fashiontv - Alberta Ferretti - Alta Moda Roma 2005/06
Fall-Winter 2005-2006 HAIR & MAKE UP HAUTE COUTURE - 2 fashion show of Sexy hot beautiful gorgeous exotic blonde, brunette, latina, Brazilian supermodel(s), model(s) w/ latest trend, style, design for women in PARIS w/ Funky music
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Reader Feedback
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fotos4web
Gorgeously Rich Dresses... lovely Lens Posted March 12, 2008 |
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LeslieBrenner
Very nice lens! Posted February 04, 2008 |
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Graceonline
For a girly-girl like me, this lens is a riot find. Thank you for the fun trip down fashion memory-lane. I never cared for Chanel's boxy suits. Too bad Schiaparelli's more feminine curves didn't make it as big. Of course, the Chanel hides so much of what Big Fashion might consider a flaw. Posted August 04, 2007 |
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eclecticsalvage
I love Schiaparelli. One of my favorite finds was a pair of her silver sandals in their original pink box. Its always fun to see that lobster dress! Posted July 16, 2007 |
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Caseyfern
Very nice! 5 of 5 :) Posted July 06, 2007 |
