Video: The story of Elsa Schiaparelli - an eccentric surrealist who was idolized by Salvador Dali and hated by Coco Chanel
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
She came up with a zipper, turned the usual fashion show into a bright show, suggested wearing evening dresses with jewelry, opened the world's first boutique, created the first collection of knitted sweaters for women and presented ladies with a separate swimsuit. “Elsa knows how to go too far,” contemporaries said about Elsa Schiaparelli, and Salvador Dali simply idolized her. They didn't have a love story. They had something more. This crazy couple turned their dreams, nightmares, desires and feelings into colors, shapes and fabrics that conquered the whole world.
Elsa Schiaparelli's work not only made her a model of fashion and style, but also led to the emergence of her worst enemy - Coco Chanel. There is still a rumor that Koko once, at a party in a cafe, deliberately pushed a candle from the table onto Elsa in order to set fire to her dress. After that Schiaparelli, a fashion designer from Italy and a native of an aristocratic family, declared an unspoken war on the creator of Chanel Nº5.
She soon became a celebrity that everyone wanted to meet, a fashion designer and designer that many wanted to collaborate with. And someone completely fell in love with Elsa's madness, and it was the famous Salvador Dali.
The history of the feud between Elsa and Coco, the trendsetters of women's fashion in the 1920s and 1930s, has become one of the most interesting conflicts in history. In this war of talent, people not only learned what women are ready for out of hatred. However, they were similar. These women experienced a lot of grief, but did not give up in the name of their passion for fashion.
Their different styles (one preferred pink and surrealism, and the other preferred black and classic) also led to the fact that various artists and designers were drawn to them like moths on fire. Dali was no exception, who simply cannot pass by the "shocking pink" used by Schiaparelli in almost all of his projects, and even more so he could not ignore her symbolic madness.
Salvador Dali - the man who made surrealism a utopia, literally fell in love with Schiaparelli's imagination and became obsessed with her ambitions. Before that, the life of a designer was not going well. The aristocratic family shunned Elsa because of her quirky appearance and the loneliness that always accompanied her. Elsa married early in search of at least someone close, but soon she felt that she had made the worst mistake of her life.
The marriage broke up, and the girl remained in Paris with her little daughter in her arms and without a penny in her pocket. Considering all these misfortunes, Dali and Elsa (when they began to cooperate) felt something in common: firstly, they were against the whole world. Also, both imagined, created and materialized works of art that no one before them could even think of. This couple of crazy people turned their dreams, nightmares, desires and feelings into colors, shapes and textures that conquered the whole world.
Although Schiaparelli and Dali never had anything more connected than friendship, the Catalan artist considered the fashion designer one of his sources of inspiration. Gala, the lover and muse of El Salvador, wore the shoe-shaped hat that Elsa created because the surrealist once told her that he prefers to sleep with a shoe on his head. Dali inspired Schiaparelli to create Shocking perfume, or more precisely, he advised her to make a bottle in the shape of a mannequin. Elsa, in turn, inspired the surrealist genius to create the painting "Woman with the Head of Roses" (1935).
It was Elsa who told the artist about this vision of a woman with a blooming head, who once dreamed that a bouquet of flowers began to grow from her ears and nostrils, and her mother stopped "considering her ugly." The eccentric stories were the basis of the friendship between Dali and Schiaparelli. Together, they have become the focus of attention in the art world as well as high society looking to find new entertainment to admire.
At that time, fashion shows inspired by entomophobic (insect phobia) surrealism and paintings based on the life of an innovative artist have almost entirely survived from the fashion world of such personalities as "The Hat" (which Elsa gave to Coco Chanel).
The dress, inspired by Salvador Dali's lobster painting, on which the designer depicted a still life of lobster and parsley, became the pinnacle of the pair's success. When Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, who was a respected client of Chanel, ordered such an outfit, envy and competition between the two designers escalated to the limit.
Interestingly, around then the defiant, witty and erotic nature of Dali's paintings was criticized. However, it was the success of The Woman with the Head of Roses, written according to Elsa, that restored the artist's reputation. At this time, Time magazine published on the cover a photo of Schiaparelli as the best designer.
However, the war and difficult times for Europeans led to the fact that Schiaparelli's shocking fashion became irrelevant, and this allowed Coco Chanel to climb the "throne" again, with her love of black, elegance and severity, which were very different from surrealism and riot of colors Schiaparelli. This did not happen with Dali's surrealism, and to this day he is a person whom everyone recognizes and remembers.
Unfortunately, many of Elsa's projects, inspired by Salvador's paintings, have been forgotten. Coco Chanel began to dominate the fashion world with her "little black dress" and the exclusive Chanel Nº5 perfume. The sculptures and mannequins created by Schiaparelli were forgotten, and the creative process and daring experiments gave way to the classics.
The woman who inspired Dali with her madness and ambition was actually neither his mistress nor a surrealist artist. She was a fashion designer who decided that pink sequined robes and insect-inspired jewelry were the ultimate expression of style.
Especially for fans of the great surrealist 11 eccentric photographs of surrealist genius Salvador Dali with animals.
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