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| Elsa Schiaparelli |
(Venice, Italy) Elsa Schiaparelli, the cosmic fashion designer who created the color Shocking Pink, was born into an aristocratic, intellectual family in Palazzo Corsini in Rome in 1890 -- her great-uncle, Giovanni Schiaparelli, discovered the canals on Mars; her father was a professor of Oriental literature; her mother was descended from the Medicis.
Elsa Schiaparelli - Fashion Artist was the topic of yesterday's inaugural conference of
Incontri a Palazzo or "Meetings at the Palace," a series of lectures held in the
piano nobile of Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice's Museum of Fabric and Costumes.
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| Miley Cyrus in Schiaparelli jumpsuit at Oscar parties Feb 22, 2015 |
Elsa Schiaparelli was a wild child. She liked to be called Schiap, not Elsa. Schiap ran away from home at the age of six and was found three days later marching at the front of a local parade. Criticized by her mother for her homely looks, she spent a lot of time with Uncle Giovanni, the astronomer, gazing at the nighttime sky through a telescope.
In 1911, while at the University of Rome, Schiap published an mystical, overtly sensual poem, and her horrified parents sent her to a convent in Switzerland. Schiap went on a hunger strike and got out of the convent, then ran off to England and became a nanny. While attending a theosophical conference, she fell in love with the lecturer, Wilhelm Wendt de Kerlor, who claimed to be a Polish count, theosophist and spiritualist, whom she promptly married. They spent several seasons in Nice, then went to NewYork in 1916 on an ocean liner where Schiap became friends with Gabrielle Picabia, the wife of the avant-garde artist Francis Picabia, who would tug her into their circle of famous friends like Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.
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| Elsa Schiaparelli - Photo: Man Ray |
The couple produced a daughter whom they called Gogo, who contracted polio. But Count de Kerlor turned out to be a con man and a womanizer, and when he had an affair with Isadora Duncan, Schiap asked for a divorce, and in 1922, took Gogo to Paris.
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| Schiaparelli trompe l'oeil Bow Tie Sweater |
Schiap quickly became part of the Paris scene, encountering fashion icon Paul Poiret, who supported her fresh ideas. Schiap considered herself an artist who channeled her creative energies into fashion, and since she was touched by the cosmos, there was an element of other-worldliness to her designs. Her rise to fame was due to a simple hand-knitted black pullover with a white trompe l'oeil bow tie that Vogue declared a masterpiece and was a huge hit in the US.
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| Marlene Dietrich wearing Schiaparelli |
According to
Bio.com:
"For Schiaparelli, fashion was as much about making art as it was about making clothes. In 1932, Janet Flanner of The New Yorker
wrote: "A frock from Schiaparelli ranks like a modern canvas." Not
surprisingly, Schiaparelli connected with popular artists of the era;
one of her friends was painter Salvador Dali, whom she hired to design
fabric for her fashion house."
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| Shocking de Schiaparelli Perfume |
Schiap became a success on the Place Vendôme, counting Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo among her clientele. She invented culottes, the evening gown, the built-in bra and dared to expose zippers. In 1937 she launched a fragrance, "Shocking," its pink glass torso bottle based on Mae West's body. She began collaborating with the Surrealists, especially Salvador Dali, with whom she created a lobster dress which was worn by Wallis Simpson.
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| Wallis Simpson in Schiaparelli lobster dress |
Schiap closed her business in 1954, and published her autobiography
Shocking Life. She died in her sleep in Paris in 1973 at the age of 83.
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| Kate Blanchett in Schiaparelli |
In 2007, Diego Della Valle, CEO and President of Tod's, acquired the brand Schiaparelli. In addition to Miley Cyrus wearing the brand to the after-Oscars parties, Schiaparelli has been recently worn by such celebs as Kate Blanchett and Lorde.
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| Lorde in Schiaparelli |
Like many originals, Elsa Schiaparelli's spirit continues on long after her body was laid to rest.
Ciao from Venezia,
Cat
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog
Elsa Schiaparelli, the cosmic fashion designer who created the color Shocking Pink, was born into an aristocratic, intellectual family in Palazzo Corsini in Rome in 1890 -- her great-uncle, Giovanni Schiaparelli, discovered the canals on Mars; her father was a professor of Oriental literature; her mother was descended from the Medicis
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