Elsa Schiaparelli - Legacy

Legacy

The failure of her business meant that Schiaparelli's name is not as well remembered as that of her great rival Chanel. But in 1934, Time placed Chanel in the second division of fashion, whereas Schiaparelli was one of "a handful of houses now at or near the peak of their power as arbiters of the ultra-modern haute couture....Madder and more original than most of her contemporaries, Mme Schiaparelli is the one to whom the word "genius" is applied most often". At the same time Time recognised that Chanel had assembled a fortune of some US$15m despite being "not at present the most dominant influence in fashion", whereas Schiaparelli relied on inspiration rather than craftsmanship and "it was not long before every little dress factory in Manhattan had copied them and from New York's 3rd Avenue to San Francisco's Howard Street millions of shop girls who had never heard of Schiaparelli were proudly wearing her models".

Perhaps Schiaparelli's most important legacy was in bringing to fashion the playfulness and sense of "anything goes" of the Dada and Surrealist movements. She loved to play with juxtapositions of colours, shapes and textures, and embraced the new technologies and materials of the time. With Charles Colcombet she experimented with acrylic, cellophane, a rayon jersey called "Jersela" and a rayon with metal threads called "Fildifer" - the first time synthetic materials were used in couture. Some of these innovations were not pursued further, like her 1934 "glass" cape made from Rhodophane, a transparent plastic related to cellophane. But there were more lasting innovations; Schiaparelli created wraparound dresses decades before Diane von Furstenberg and crumpled up rayon 50 years before Issey Miyake's pleats and crinkles. In 1930 alone she created the first evening-dress with a jacket, and the first clothes with visible zippers. In fact fastenings were something of a speciality, from a jacket buttoned with silver tambourines to one with silk-covered carrots and cauliflowers.

In spring 2012, The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art held the exhibition, Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, exploring the harmonious and dynamic similarities between the two Italian designers from different eras. Curators fabricated the "impossible conversation" between these iconic women to resurrect a new perspective on the designers, from their craftsmanship to their role as women in the fashion world. Noting their striking contributions as designers and artists, Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, stated, "Schiaparelli’s collaborations with Dalí and Cocteau as well as Prada’s Fondazione Prada push art and fashion ever closer, in a direct, synergistic, and culturally redefining relationship.” In the galleries, iconic pieces from each of the designer's lines are exhibited in front of video footage of simulated conversations between Muccia Prada and Schiaparelli, who is played by actress Judy Davis. The videos strive to portray how the women explore similar themes in fashion through very different approaches. The exhibit ran from May 10 2012 to August 19, 2012.