L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2020 www.italoamericano.org 32 L'Italo-Americano But she had something more contingent to solve. "Life for me was rather dull, with a great deal of solitude," she wrote in her autobiogra- phy Shocking Life published in 1954. In her early years in Paris, she was facing poverty. "But though things were dark and mysterious she was near- ly happy – with the happiness of the tramp who, having found a room for the night, watches the winds and the r a i n r a g i n g o u t s i d e , " s h e w r o t e . Y e t p o v e r t y w a s a strong stimulus for action. "Poverty forced me to work and Paris gave me a liking for it, and courage," she wrote. Her friend Gaby again helped her find some jobs. She was a single mother and "She knew that she would not marry a g a i n . H e r m a r r i a g e h a d struck her like a blow on the head, wiping out any desire to make a second attempt," she wrote. The encounter with Paul Poiret, the designer who freed women from the corset, changed her life. She was mesmerized by his sartorial creations that day when she visited his salon. She tried them on but she could not afford them. Poiret gifted her several pieces to help publi- cize his most daring ones. With Poiret's encourage- ment, Elsa began to design clothes and sell them on a freelance basis. She briefly b e c a m e t h e d e s i g n e r o f a small house, Maison Lambal, and in 1927 she opened her own-name fashion house. That same year, she made a name for herself by creating a knitted jumper with a sur- realist twist. After admiring a curiously stitched sweater worn by an American friend, she sought out the woman who knitted it, an Armenian refugee in Paris. After meet- ing with her, Schiap commis- sioned her to make a series of sweaters featuring a trompe l'oeil (three-dimensional) design of a white bow around the neck with coordinated details at the cuffs. "If I make a design will you try to copy it?" she asked the Armenian peasant. "So I drew a large butterfly bow in front, like a scarf around the neck – the primitive drawing of a child in prehistoric times," she wrote. The young designer wore the sweater to a lun- cheon of fashion buyers and an American representative asked for 40 with matching s k i r t s . V o g u e c a l l e d t h e design "an artistic master- piece and a triumph of color and blending." I n t h e b e g i n n i n g , Schiaparelli was synonymous with sports clothing. "In the 1920s, body culture became so widespread as to justify t h e i n v e n t i o n o f s p e c i f i c clothing," says Enrica Morini, professor of contemporary fashion in Milan and author o f t h e b o o k S t o r i a d e l l a Moda. T h e f i r s t c o l l e c t i o n launched in January 1927 was brightly colored knitwear i n s p i r e d b y b o t h I t a l i a n Futurism and Poiret. Schiap began working the element of surprise into her designs, which also proved popular with New Yorkers. Despite the stock market crash of 1929, she was still able to sell her models to exclusive stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue in NY. In the early '30s, tweed suits and skirt pants became the fashion house's forte. In 1932, Janet Flanner, Paris correspondent for the New Yorker, wrote: "Certainly one of the explanations of her phenomenal success here was the un-European modernity of her silhouettes." Her signature silhouette was as architectural as a sky- scraper. Influenced by men's t a i l o r i n g , h e r s t y l e w a s d e f i n e d a s " H a r d C h i c . " Without losing elements of femininity, the high and nar- row waistline, it incorporated padding, quilting, embroi- dery, decorated boleros, and turbans - all elements that metaphorically protect the female body from assault. "The new woman of the '30s did not naively trust men," Morini says. "The ten years spent between New York and Paris taught Schiap that the female universe was beginning to function as an independent entity. Men were opponents, especially in the workplace. The economic cri- sis was hitting women the hardest." S c h i a p d e v e l o p e d n e w materials including rhodo- phane (a 'glass'-like fabric). Despite her love of extrava- gant attire, her clothing was practical. She was the first to adopt plastic zippers. She was the first woman designer to appear on the cover page of Time magazine. T h e f e a t u r e s t o r y d a t e d August 13, 1934, defined her as the arbiter of ultra-modern Haute Couture in the '30s. As a supreme authority in the field, she wanted women to be "imaginative and capable of communicating their bold strength to others", Morini says. H e r c l i e n t s i n c l u d e d Hollywood stars Katharine Hepburn, Mae West and Zsa Z s a G a b o r a s w e l l a s a c c l a i m e d b e a u t y D a i s y F e l l o w e s , P a r i s e d i t o r o f American Harper's Bazaar, fashion icon and an heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune. In 1935, Schiap relocated to the now-famous 21 Place Vendôme atelier, a 98-room salon with space for the first r e a d y - t o - w e a r s h o w r o o m associated with a couture label. Certainly from 1935 to 1939, she eclipsed everyone, including Chanel. The best ideas came out of collaborations with incredible artists. Alberto Giacometti designed furniture, brooches, a n d b u t t o n s , M e r e t Oppenheim created fur jewel- ry pieces. Multifaceted genius Jean Cocteau drew for her i n 1 9 3 7 . T o g e t h e r , t h e y designed exquisite evening coats. But from the mid-'30s, Schiap's creativity was inex- tricably tied to an eccentric, i c o n o c l a s t i c a n d i n s o l e n t Surrealist painter: Salvador Dali. There was an instant creative spark between the two. After their first collabo- ration in 1935 for a jocose powder compact in the shape of a phone dial, their prolific partnership produced humor- ous pieces that are still the c o r n e r s t o n e s o f f a s h i o n design, such as tailored suits w i t h p o c k e t s l i k e b u r e a u d r a w e r s , o r t h e s e x u a l l y charged "lobster dress" and the "skeleton dress," a black crepe gown with trapunto quilting to imitate protruding bones. In 1937, they created the famous "shoe" hat. The i d e a c a m e w a t c h i n g a n absurd photo of Dalì wearing a woman's high-heeled pump on his head. The iconic piece played with the surrealist idea of displacement – removing an object from its expected context. Julien Levy, the American art dealer who held the first S u r r e a l i s m s h o w i n N Y C , described Schiaparelli as "the only designer who under- stands Surrealism." The design icon also had a fondness for fragrances. In 1934 she launched a collec- tion of perfumes: Soucis, Salut, and Schiap. The bottle was designed by Jean-Michel Frank. In 1937 she conceived the perfume Shocking! whose name, fragrance, pink pack- aging and curvy bottle mod- eled on Mae West's magnifi- cent figure caught the public imagination. She invented the c o l o r " s h o c k i n g p i n k , " a vibrant, undiluted, intense pink nuance. "I gave to pink the nerve of the red, a neon pink, an unreal pink," she wrote. With the Nazi invasion of Paris in 1940, Schiap escaped to New York with a mission: to raise funds and medicine for French children. Against e v e r y o n e ' s a d v i c e , s h e r e t u r n e d t o c o m p l e t e h e r humanitarian assistance but soon she was forced to flee again to avoid being captured. As an Italian in Paris, her sta- tus was risky and she hated Mussolini. She took refuge a g a i n i n N Y C w h e r e s h e h e l p e d M a r c e l D u c h a m p organize the First Papers of Surrealism exhibition, the biggest all-surrealist show ever seen in the US. It bene- fited the French War Relief Society. In NYC, Elsa and her daughter Gogo also volun- teered for the International Red Cross. Returning to Paris, she tried to start a post-war phase of her creativity. In 1947, her friend Dalì designed the pack- aging for a new fragrance, the Le Roi Soleil perfume pro- duced to celebrate the end of the war. But the times had changed. In 1954, after pre- senting her last collection, she felt her career was over. The salon closed its doors the same year. As a retirée, she spent most of her time in Hammamet, Tunisia, where she had built a colorful home. She died in Paris in 1973 at age 83, but "that Italian who makes clothes" never lost her strong Italian accent. After a long hiatus, the leg- e n d a r y M a i s o n Schiaparelli reappeared on the catwalks in 2013 thanks to a new owner, Italian fash- ion magnate Diego Della Valle. LIFESTYLE FASHION FOOD ARTS ADVICE Continued from page 30 Salut de Schiapparelli, perfume from 1934, in collaboration with Michel Frank (Photo courtesy of Maison Schiaparelli)

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