Elsa Schiaparelli

Butterfly Pea Flower Gin Goats Milk Ice Cream, Multi-citrus Curd, Strawberry Cotton Candy, Jasmine Clove Tea, Bergamot Candied Olives, Smokey Shocking Pink Velvet Seltzer Cake, Hot Pink-tipped Cigarettes, Melted White Chocolate, Lobster Candy, Star Sprinkles

Her rival referred to her as “that Italian artist who makes clothes” and once set her on fire, which had to be put out with seltzer water by ball guests. A 1934 Time article declared, she was “madder and more original than most of her contemporaries…one to whom the word ‘genius’ is applied most often.”

The fashion genius was Elsa Schiaparelli, born in Rome in 1890 to a Neapolitan aristocrat mother and a Piedmontese academic father focused on the Medieval Islamic world. Her father’s brother was an astronomer (despite Elsa’s father’s name, Celestino, meaning from the heavens) and he taught Elsa about the stars. While studying philosophy at the University of Rome, Elsa wrote a scandalous book of poems inspired by the Greek goddess Artemis. Elsa’s words got her sent briefly to a convent in Switzerland, while a hunger strike got her sent back home.

Looking for adventure and to escape a persistent suitor, Elsa ran away to London, trading in strengthening goats milk for strong martinis. At a lecture on Theosophy, she met Willem de Wendt, a charismatic and charming con man. Elsa, age 23, was engaged in less than 48 hours and became an assistant to Willem’s schemes. The couple moved to New York City in 1916 and then Boston in 1918 after the U.S. government suspected Willem of first being pro-German and then a Communist revolutionary.

In 1920, their daughter, nicknamed Gogo, was born. By 1921, Elsa was a single mother and Gogo was diagnosed with polio. A year later, mother and daughter returned to France. Already having met characters in the surrealist art world while en route to New York the first time, Elsa immediately fell into fashionable social circles. She briefly worked for Man Ray’s Dada magazine and then started her own business in 1927. Elsa’s debut collection consisted of knit sweaters with a special stitch created by Armenian refugees. The trompe l’œil, meaning trick of the eye, designs of bows and collars set Elsa’s work apart. She quickly expanded, opening up the House of Schiaparelli.

The fashion house became known for its surrealist designs. Elsa frequently collaborated with her surrealist artist friends, especially Salvador Dalí. Their works included the lobster dress worn by American socialite-turned-Duchess Wallis Simpson, the upside down shoe hat inspired by Dalí’s wife Gala, and a light blue evening gown with trompe l’œil tears. In a similar vein, in 1937, Elsa released a collaboration with surrealist photographer and artist Meret Oppenheim: gloves adorned with shiny red snakeskin finger nails or painted veins.

Elsa worked with surrealist sculptor Alberto Giacometti, who created large buttons and jewelry inspired by mythological creatures. Other designers who worked for Elsa help create bug buttons and necklaces that made the wearer look as if insects were crawling on their necks. Butterflies were another common motif as they were a surrealist symbol for metamorphosis and death. Colorful butterflies cover a 1937 Schiaparelli summer evening dress with a matching parasol. About a year later, Elsa came out with a Zodiac collection inspired by her childhood fascination of the stars and planets, Louis XV’s Versailles, and Greek mythology. The collection included velvet jackets embellished with mirrors panels, capes with gold-beaded suns, and coats with rococo details.

Many of Elsa’s looks were multi-purpose, reversible, adaptable, and practical for the wearer. Inspired by the apron, Elsa was the first designer to create a wrap dress. And noticing problems in women’s swimwear, Elsa invented a swimsuit with a hidden bra and low cut back. During the U.S. prohibition on alcohol, Elsa designed a piece called the speakeasy dress, which had a hidden pocket, the perfect size for a flask. She was the first designer to show off her collections on a catwalk accompanied by music and art. And Elsa was the first designer to display zippers on clothing, making them part of the design.

Also cutting edge, was Elsa’s use of textiles. She used fabric that resembled tree bark and experimented with synthetic materials which had never been used before in couture. Of course, some goofs occurred. One buyer had a dress disintegrate at the dry cleaners. And once at Schiap dinner party, guests left with white designs on their clothes from the new white rubber chairs, which had started to melt from body heat.

While the combination of black, white, and red were the colors that first popularized the fashion designer, Elsa became best known for a bright shade of magenta. Called Schiaparelli pink or shocking pink, it was first used on the packaging of Elsa’s 1936 fragrance, aptly named Shocking. She dressed Zsa Zsa Gabor in hot pink for Moulin Rouge, added the color to several outfits such as a shocking suit with a whimsical mermaid button*,* and she exclusively smoked fuchsia-tipped cigarettes. The color is said to have been inspired by the color of strawberries in a painting by Russian surrealist Pavel Tchelitchew.

Shocking, the perfume, was described as “a hot jasmine tea with a clove and a few dried rose petals thrown in.” What really made the 1936 perfume shocking was its bottle. The scent was encased in glass modeled after Mae West’s hourglass figure. But this wasn’t the first time Elsa shook up the perfume industry. While she wasn’t the first fashion designer to add perfume to her repertoire (that honor goes to Elsa’s mentor and friend Paul Poiret), Elsa did create the first unisex scent in 1928. Called S, it was “made for a queen of a king.” A decade later, she released Snuff, a cologne packed in a Magritte-inspired pipe bottle, which was meant for women as much as it was for men. At the end of WWII, Elsa celebrated with Le Roy Soleil, a perfume with notes of bergamot, cinnamon, jasmine, vanilla, and sandalwood, sold in a sun-capped bottle designed by Dalí.

After Paris was occupied by the Nazis during WWII, Elsa moved back to New York where she volunteered as a nurse’s aide. House of Schiaparelli was kept open by an interim designer while the perfume business was run in London. By the time Elsa returned to Paris after the war, the fashion world had a new generation of couturiers being led by Dior’s New Look. For eight years, Elsa tried to find her place again. She social butterflied her way through Paris, attending operas, films, and costume balls where she dressed as a radish, a goat, or a “mineral water queen.” Elsa designed a light-weight traveling wardrobe called the constellation and became the first designer to add sunglasses to her collections. But in 1954 the House of Schiaparelli shut its doors. Three years later, Elsa created a distinct company for her perfumes, which is what the modern-day House of Schiaparelli was born out of. Elsa spent the last two decades of her life between Tunisia and Paris, wrote an auto-biography, attended fashion shows, and entertained celebrities. She in died her sleep at the age of 83.