Elsa
Schiaparelli (1890-1974) was a first among “modern” women of the 20th
century. Like a lightening rod, a diviner’s wand, Schiap [pronounced ‘Skap’]
responded to the immediate cultural and political weather of her times,
expressing ideas in her sports, day and evening collections, in her jewelry,
shoes and perfumes. Her work was forthright, outspoken and daring. A woman
could present herself as a spectacle of the marvelous, and her visually
intelligent collaborations with Man Ray, Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali are
featured in this exhibition, along with a light design by Giacometti and the
freestanding ashtray he designed for her salon. L�onor Fini, inspired by the
plaster casts of her figure that Mae West sent to Paris in lieu of fittings,
designed the Shocking! perfume bottle to celebrate the hourglass figure in
fashion. Meret Oppenheim sold Schiaparelli a fur bracelet and the right to
manufacture it and when it was produced. The bracelet was shown in a collection
that included a Dali inspired bureau-drawer pocketed suit, black or white
gloves with red nails of snakeskin, and a felt hat made in the form of an
inverted shoe. Her collection of ’35 was so well received that she designed a
fabric from newspaper clippings, inspired by the papier coll�es
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black’> of Picasso and Braque,
that was then made into scarves, hats and handbags. A fine painting by Paul
Delvaux in the exhibition may have inspired a black and white bark painted
fabric design, and a divine short cape of green fabric leaves. Lautrec‘s Jane
Avril was quoted while wearing a black dress encircled by an iridescent snake
that was made for a film, presenting another cross-fertilization between
Schiaparelli and the milieu of fine art.
Upon
entering this first retrospective of Elsa Schiaparelli’s work, one is met on
the right by an array of monitors in perspective and in perfect sync
transmitting a marvelous interview from 1960 by NBC. Through this footage,
something of Schiap’s mysterious and witty character is conveyed: the
magnificent apartments of her three-story mansion in the heart of Paris, her
art collections, and an early television proudly displayed on a stack of
venerable 17th century encyclopedias. The interview by itself is
worth the price of admission. Grandmother to actress and model Marisa Berenson,
Schiap stood about 5 feet high. She was born into a family of intellectuals in
Rome and her uncle, a noted astronomer, suggested that the beauty marks on her
cheek were in the form of the big dipper. She cherished the constellation and
used it as a motif in her designs and accessories. On the wall opposite the BBC
interview is the text of her sly, yet sound, “Twelve Commandments for Women”:
1.
Since most women do not know themselves they should try to do so.
2.
A woman who buys an expensive dress and changes it, often with
disastrous result, is extravagant and foolish.
3.
Most women (and men) are color-blind. They should ask for
suggestions.
4.
Remember – twenty percent of women have inferiority complexes. Seventy
percent have illusions.
5.
Ninety percent are afraid of being conspicuous, and of what people
will say. So they buy a gray suit. They should dare to be different.
6.
Women should listen and ask for competent criticism and advice.
7.
They should choose their clothes alone or in the company of a man.
8.
They should never shop with another woman, who sometimes
consciously or unconsciously, is apt to be jealous.
9.
She should buy little and only of the best or cheapest.
10.
Never fit a dress to the body, but train the body to fit the
dress.
11.
A woman should buy mostly in one place where she is known and
respected, and not rush around trying every new fad.
12.
And she should pay her bills.
Typically
lit for the display of costume and textiles, the over 200 pieces include her
major gifts to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and to the Mus�e de la Mode et du
Textiles, supplemented by loans from America, Italy, England, Germany, Japan and
other museums in France. In the context of gowns made for Mae West in the film
“Every Day’s a Holiday” and Zsa Zsa Gabor in “Moulin Rouge” there are projected
loops of fascinating film clips. The archival footage was selected from
promotional and commercial films and newsreels. They are projected at an
intriguingly high altitude in the spacious Dorrance Galleries.
It
turned out to be a coincidence that the fountains in Philadelphia were running
with pink water at the time of the Schiaparelli opening in late September. This
was done to promote breast cancer awareness, but it would be impossible not to
enjoy the serendipity and suitably Surreal effect this had in the elegant
fountains of the ‘City of Brotherly Love,’ Philadelphia.
Fashion
emerged from the corseted, bustled 19th century and rushed into 20th,
the ‘Modern Age.’ Prior to World War I, a bourgeois
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black’>, or middle-class
woman, was expected to live a strictly domestic life, to await a suitable
proposal of marriage, their dowry becoming their husband’s property, and to
remain passive partners in family life. The First World War brought, with its massive
destruction and human devastation, a new range for feminine activity. Women in
the tens of thousands, in the factories wearing workman’s clothing, joined the
work force, and began to engage freely in outdoor sports activities. When the
War ended in 1918, so many young men had been slaughtered that the behavioral
expectations of their parent’s generation were abandoned. Neither the returning
men nor the young women, who had had an opportunity to work for themselves and
their independence, desired to perpetuate the social norms of their parent’s
era and thus the ‘roaring twenties’, also known as the Jazz Age, began. The
flapper was a ‘modern’ woman who did not wear corsets and bobbed her hair. In
America, women gained the right to vote and respectability in the workplace
although it was fraught with difficulties and sexual harassment. The tremendous
excitement of urban centers, the cabarets, clubs and nightlife fueled the
extraordinary energies of those times between the World Wars and spanning the
Great Depression.
The
Exposition Internationale des Arts et Technologies dans la Vie Moderne
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black’> was an annual
occurrence in Paris and tremendously important in introducing to the broad
public, new materials and technologies. Things that we take entirely for granted
today including electrical and mechanical appliances, plastics and synthetic
fabrics were displayed in impressive industrial pavillions. These expositions
had an undeniable impact on the way western culture as a whole perceived itself
advancing into the future, and Schiap, on the leading edge chose which elements
she would use from them.
Social
mobility was something new; in the past one’s concept of self was socially and
economically defined, but this concept became supplanted by the idea that one
could assume and act out a personality type. This became for many in the 30s a
prevailing paradigm of self identity and as today, women were given the
framework of choosing from a range of personality types. They were targeted by
trends in magazines and entirely merchandised fashion and make-up tie-ins with
the Hollywood movie industry. Popular literature of the time promoted this
concept of performative identity, an enormous best seller “How to Make Friends
and Influence People,” appeared among numroud self-help books, and magazines
like Photoplay reinforced an upwardly mobile mentality based on the abundance of
new consumer goods, and vicarious identification in the fantasy machine of the
movie industry. The perpetually fascinating myth of Cinderella, an honest
working girl rises from rags to riches by marrying the prince, was a liet
motif
in the newest art form, the cinema. In it female stereotypes were promoted by
being the subject of the films. An entertainer, dancer, and the movie stars
themselves, playing roles, were seen as working girls. Not to be underestimated
was the powerful international influence of Mae West in the development of
sexual politics and image manipulation.
Schiaparelli’s
meteoric early successes in the late 20s and early 30s were in sports and day
wear, her trompe l’oeuil bow-knot sweater was purchased first in New York, widely
admired and extensively copied in the United States, marking the beginning of
numerous fruitful and supportive alliances with American fashion and industry.
The concept of “modernity” liberated women’s ambitions, and Schiap was a
liberator in fashion. She created a divided skirt that tennis champion Lily
d’Alvarez wore to compete at Wimbledon in 1931, creating a furor over the issue
of women wearing anything resembling trousers in public and she designed an
interchangeable wardrobe for aviatrix Any Johnson which she used in her record
breaking solo flight from England to Cape Town in 1936.
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black’>In ‘31 Schiaparelli had
established herself as a highly inventive and intelligent couturi�re
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black’>, allied with the
contemporary art scene and using modern technology and synthetic fabrics. Her
evening gowns were designed to be worn under fitted jackets, characterized by
shaped and raised shoulders, often decortated by ornate gilt embroideries with
toylike plastic or other novel buttons. Gowns were slim in line, made in
striking combinations of texture and color and worn at floor length with the
fitted evening jacket with shaped shoulders, which made a smooth transition
from supper to evening entertainment in clubs or cabarets graceful. That “new
silhouette” has become part of the standard vocabulary of fashion, and at the
time it was collected by the reigning socialites in fashion, including the
Dutchess of Windsor extensively.
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black’>
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black’>Based on a drawing by
her close associate Jean Cocteau, Schiap’s blue silk evening coat bearing a
three dimensional bowl of pink fabric roses is on view. Although faded to a
lavendar color this marvelous illusionary evening coat bears an image,
characteristically drawn with a single line. Cocteau’s image is of a classic
statue bust on a pedestal, the figure-ground illusion, read either as mirrored
profiles or an urn, perched on a fluted column below, itself an illusion of
pleats; a kind of double entendre.
When
the Nazis occupied Paris in June of 1940, Schiaparelli went to the United
States to fulfill a contract for a lecture tour, and like many artists and
intellectuals she remained until the liberation in 1945. Her salon continued in
Paris under the direction of her manager, but under the watchful eye of a
German administrator. She volunteered and worked tirelessly for the
Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies, and at times with the American
Friends Service Committee to aid France and the allied war effort. Her
association with Breton and Duchamp in organizing the First Papers of
Surrealism exhibition in New York in 1942 was likely to have acquainted her
with the American collectors the Arensberg’s, and the Philadelphia Museum of
Art. Marcel Duchamp’s greatest works are preserved and beautifully presented in
the Philadelphisa Museum of Art, one of the most important art pilgrimage
destinations in the world.
During
the war years spent in America, she was repeatedly offered contracts to produce
clothing and accessories in the Untied States; she resolutely declined, in
loyalty to the French fashion industry.
Like
all great art forms, the oeuvre of Schiaparelli must be seen first hand and
thought about, to realize the fullness of its rich content, the astonishing
historical period she influenced, and and to incorporate this truth into the
processes of living today. The show travels to Paris, where from March 17
–August 29 2004 it will be installed in the Mus�e de la Mode et du Textile,
Palais du Louvre.
SHOCKING! The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli
September
28, 2003 – January 4, 2004
Philadelphia
Museum of Art, Dilys E. Blum, Curator of Costume and Textiles
March
17 –August 29 2004
Mus�e
de la Mode et du Textile, Palais du Louvre |
