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Elsa Schiaparelli was born in Rome in 1890 into a family that traced its lineage to the Medicis. She was not, by her own account, a woman who took expectation lightly. She left the Eternal City in her early twenties, passing through it London And New Yorkand reached inside Paris In the early 1920s, where an encounter with couturier Paul Poiret set her on a different path. By 1927, working out of a small atelier, she produced hand-knit trompe-l’oeil sweaters that caught an American buyer and launched her career. Within a decade, his salon was the most talked about in Paris.
It wasn’t just the clothes that made it so, it was extraordinary. This was the company she kept and that company shaped everything she created. Both Dalí and Cocteau were drawn to the idea of metamorphosis and, as Keystone says, ‘they recognized the transformative power of Schiaparelli’s work.’ Dali saw his Place Vendome premises as the beating heart of Surrealist Paris; Cocteau called it a laboratory for masquerade. The exhibition traces this collaboration through clothing, paintings, sculpture and photography, with loans from major international art museums. Some of the most arresting objects come from the V&A’s own collection: a ‘skeleton’ dress, a ‘tears’ dress, a hat in the form of an upside-down shoe, all by Dali. More than 400 items in total, 100 of them garments and 50 works of art.
But there’s another story going on in the show, and that’s one Internal. Schiaparelli brought the same exacting eye to her houses as she did to her clothes. From 1928, she worked with the French decorator Jean-Michel Franck, first at his boutique at 4 rue de la Paix, then at his apartment on rue Saint-Germain and at his house on rue Barbet-de-Joie. When she moved her couture salon to 21 Place Vendôme in 1935, which she called ‘the center of the world’s grandeur’, she brought Franck back, this time with Alberto Giacometti. The window displays, conceived by his longtime collaborator Bettina Bergheri, became a draw in their own right, built around two articulated wooden figures named Pascal and Pascaline, both of which would be featured in the show by a spiral ashtray, a columnar light, an illustrated screen by Marcel Vertes, and Franiom.
Elsa’s personal life was no different. She proceeded to the Hotel Particulier (Townhouse). Rue de Berry In 1937 there were paintings on every wall, stone sculptures in the room, Dali among the regular guests. She lived there until her death in 1973.
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