Everything You Need to Know About Elsa Schiaparelli


Establishes a UK brand of the business Schiaparelli. “The newsiest of all fashion creators of the moment has sprung into the news by opening in London and is being quite a rage there,” reported The Sun. The designer set up business in a house in tony Mayfair, at Six Upper Grosvenor Street, where she employed “80 British hands.” The Plain Dealer set the scene: “[Schiaparelli] has it painted white, outside, and inside, and the salon, where she receives her clients and shows her models, is most simple, like her Paris salon. Bare-white walls, no carpets and a row of straight, wooden chairs around the walls, with sail canvas on the backs and seats to ease their hardness.”

1934

In January, Vogue “Forecasts a Wind-Swept Spring.” Into this, Schiaparelli lets fly her “bird silhouette,” which was alternatively labeled “the typhoon silhouette, her latest interpretation of the windblown idea,” notes The Stockton Independent. “Jutting necklines, bodices pushed forward by darts or bias seamings, and skirts introducing a wealth of imaginative bird-and-fish details in small curved wings and fin-shaped folds—all give further impetus to the windswept movement.” This look is also termed the Cellophane. Scarves add to the fun. Schiaparelli’s “glass” dress, made of Khodophane developed by by Colcombet, and interwoven with other materials, debuts in August. Also on offer, according to the UP, were “parachute capes of stratosphere blue, dachshund dog muffs, poke bonnets, and Francois Villon hats.” Schiaparelli is featured on the August cover of Time Magazine.

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“In Schiaparelli’s new house in the Place Vendôme, down the stairway festooned in blue velvet, steps a terse figure—the epitome of spring 1935,” announced Vogue.

Illustration by Cecil Beaton, Vogue, March 1, 1935

1935

Moves into a new space on the Place Vendôme, which features a take-away boutique on the lower floor, called the Schiap Shop. The designer’s First collaboration with Salvador Dali takes the form of a compact in the shape of a telephone dial. “Schiaparelli Comes Out With Celestial Silhouette, Television Hat, Rug Wrap,” announces The Cincinnati Enquirer, explaining that the new shape thus: “With the figure draped in soft, spiral folds, narrow below the knee, and somehow reminiscent of the popular idea of Cleopatra.” The collection, featuring what would become Schiaparelli’s famous newsprint, is called Stop, Look, and Listen.

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