Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography

Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography

Her name was Elsa Schiaparelli. She was known as the Queen of Fashion; a headline attraction in the international glitter-glamour show of the late twenties and thirties, feted in Rome (where she was born), Paris, New York, London, Moscow, Hollywood . . .<br><br>Her style was a social revolution through clothing€"luxurious, eccentric, ironic, sexy<i>.</i> Her fashions, inspired, from the whimsical to the most practical€"from a Venetian cape of the <i>commedia dell€arte </i>to the Soviet parachute. She collaborated with some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century: on jewelry designs with Jean Schlumberger; on clothes with Salvador Dal­ (his lobster dress for her, a lobster garnished with parsley painted on the skirt of an organdy dress, was instantly bought by Wallis Simpson for her honeymoon with the Duke of Windsor); with Jean Cocteau, Alberto Giacometti, Christian B©rard, photographers Baron Adolph de Meyer, Horst, Cecil Beaton, and the young Richard Avedon. <br><br>She was the first designer to use rayon and latex, thick velvets, transparent and waterproof, and cellophane. Her perfume€"Shocking!€"was a bottle in the shape of a bust sculpted by L©onor Fini, inspired by the body of Mae West. Her boutique at an eighteenth-century palace at 21 Place Vend´me opened into a cage designed by Jean-Michel Frank. American <i>Vogue</i>, in 1927, presented her entire collection as Works of Art. A decade later, she was the first European to win the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award.<br> Here is the never-before-told story of this most extraordinary fashion designer, perhaps <i>the</i> most extraordinary fashion designer of the twentieth century, in her day more famous than Chanel. Meryle Secrest, acclaimed biographer, who has captured the lives of many of the twentieth century€s most iconic cultural figures, among them: Frank Lloyd Wright, Bernard Berenson, and Modigliani, gives us the first full life of the grand couturier€"surrealist and embattled figure€“-whose medium was apparel.<br>  <br>€œDare to be different,€ Schiaparelli advised women, and she lived it to the height; a rebel against convention€"social as well as fashion. She designed an otter-fur bathing suit and a hat inspired by a lamb chop. (€œI like to amuse myself,€ she said. €œIf I didn€t, I would die.€) Chanel, her arch rival, called her, €œthat Italian woman who makes dresses.€<br>             <br>Here is the story of Schiaparelli€s rise to fame (as brazen and unique as any of the artistic creations that emerged from her Paris workrooms before World War II); her emotionally starved upbringing in Rome (her mother was part Scottish, part Neapolitan; her father, a prominent medieval  scholar specializing in Islamic manuscripts, dean of the faculty of Rome; her uncle, an astronomer famous for his description in 1877 of €œcanals€ on Mars); her years overshadowed by a prettier sister; her  elopement with a Swiss-born man who claimed to be a count, disciple of mysticism and the occult€"who managed to get himself and his young bride deported from Britain . . . her struggle to care for her polio-stricken daughter, Gogo, as a single and financially destitute mother living in Greenwich Village. <br>             <br>Secrest writes of Schiaparelli€s keen instincts€"an astute businesswoman, she launched herself into hats, hose, soaps, shoes, handbags, in the space of a few years. By 1930, her company was grossing millions of francs a year.<br>             <br>Secrest chronicles her exploits during World War II (she managed to escape from Europe to the United States) and, using FBI files, shows that during Schiaparelli€s stay in New York, her whereabouts were documented almost week by week; she was never explicitly charged, but the cloud of collaboration lingered long after her return to Paris.<br><br>As Secrest traces the unfolding of this dazzling career, she reveals the spirit that gave shape to this large and extravagant life, a woman€"a force€"whose artistic vision forever changed the face of fashion and redefined the boundaries of art.