Elsa Schiaparelli could not
sew and she didn’t sketch, yet she stormed Paris fashion in the 1920s and
1930s. Along with Coco Chanel, her greatest rival, she was regarded as
one of the most prominent figures in fashion between the two World Wars.
Her collaborations with artists such as Salvador Dalí, Cecil Beaton and Jean Cocteau broke down the barriers between the world of dressmaking and the fine arts. Her maxim was “Dare to be different”, and she was. At her peak, in 1937 to 1939, in Paris, she employed 600 workers and sold 10,000 garments a year. Yet by 1959, her house had gone bankrupt. She died in 1973, aged 83, at her mansion in Paris
PORTRAIT OF ELSA SCHIAPARELLI,1935, PARIS, BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES ARTS DÉCORATIFS
When Elsa Schiaparelli passed away, the couture house that she had founded in 1927 had been stripped of its official Haute Couture label. Today, and during the same year of Schiaparelli's 90th anniversary, that label has finally been recovered by the French Ministry of Industry and the French Couture Federation.
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