The Reopening of Elsa Schiaparelli's Doors

Silhouette of Elsa Schiaparelli

I’m sure that after hearing news of the 2012 MET Costume Institutes exhibition, “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations”, many of us were stumped when we heard the word “Schiaparelli”. Considering she closed her salon doors in 1954 even though we may not have known who she was considering our modern era of popular designers (i.e. Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors, and Calvin Klien); her influence spawned many of the principals and developments of modern fashion.  The real exciting news about the fashion house is that they will be reopening this July, and at the same salon Schiap’s original salon was located in Paris, no less! Farida Khelfa has been named the new brand ambassador, but we will have to wait until October until they announce their Creative Director [source]. Below are some more photos from the exhibition, courtesy of Models.com, and once again, going back to my personal “Bible of Fashion”, “In My Fashion”, by Bettina Ballard, I wanted use Ms. Ballard’s words as evidence of Schiaparelli’s greatness and splendor, and what we should be expecting to see from this design house who will be picking up where it left off more than 50 year ago:

“The 1930’s was height of her fame…In later years, when times softened, the very things that had helped make her fame now played her false. She belonged to a definite space of time in which she filled a definite fashion need. She changed the outline of fashion from soft to hard, from vague to definite…If Schiaparelli’s strong fashion dictatorship did not survive the war it was because she belonged to indelibly to the calculated frivolity of prewar Paris.”

 “She branched out into the couture to glorify the hard elegance of the ugly woman.”

   “To be shocking was the snobbism of the moment, and she was the leader in this art…Paris was in a mood for shocks and Elsa Schiaparelli could present hers in well-cut forms and with an elegance that no one could deny.”

  “The only person who really counted in her life was her daughter, Gogo, and everything that either the mother of daughter did or said was news. Schiaparelli’s genius for publicity has been rivaled only by Christian Dior. Her outspokenness during her days of fame was all part of the Schiaparelli shock treatment.”

“She was clever in persuading such artists as Berard, Cocteau, Drian, and Vertes to do prints for her before designer prints had ever been thought of…She worked on mad new fabrics with Colcombet and Staron, prodding them on to daring experiments that frightened their conservative souls….She permitted Vertes to paint sophisticated, faintly suggestive advertisements for her perfume called “Shocking” which created a new, seductive approach to the sale of perfume.”

  “Certainly she used color with the boldness of Picasso, and the drama that she produced with black was even more outspoken than that with colors, particularly her use of gold embroidery with black."

“Schiaparelli’s clothes were always photogenic, and no artist ever did a bad sketch of a model (sample piece of clothing)—they had such sureness of line, such boldness…many of the smartest women wore her clothes to the smartest places where they were invariably targets for every camera…When she introduced the long dinner suit for evening wear, it became a uniform for concerts, theaters, and night clubs, overshadowing all softer, more feminine costumes, particularly when towering hats or feather headdresses were added.”

You can see how society celebrated the opening of this exhibition at the annual MET Gala here.

Style Maven: Coco Chanel

Here are some excerpts from the book, "In My Fashion" by Bettina Ballard, an early fashion editor of Vogue from the magazine's younger years in the 1930's to the postwar era,  her title of which I pay homage to, and got my inspiration for my own blogger title here on IMF.blog:

“An impertinent chic; one foot forward,
hips forward, shoulders down, one hand
in a pocket and the other gesticulating.”

"Her advice is nearly always good. On food, she says, 'Eat simple food, not too much of it, at regular hours." Meals are something you share only with intimate friends who are good for your digestion.

"On exercise she advises, 'walk in the open air on country roads with your head looking always forward—don’t watch the Earth as if you were glued to it.' Her walk remains young and springy."

"Her advice on clothes is 'Always dress to make yourself feel young—this means being free and easy and unpretentious in you cloths. You have to breathe and move and sit without being conscious of what you have on. Don't expose a lot of flesh unless it is firm and young.'"

"About perfume she says, 'Spray it on wherever you expect to be kissed—any women who goes to excess in perfuming herself has no future because she will only offend her friends and admirers.'"

"As to the couture, she told me before the war, 'you make money on the customer who orders lots of cloths at once. The one-dress customer just takes up time and wastes money.'" (Aside: I presume his would be a good representation of her business strategy at the time)