Elsa Schiaparelli

    Elsa Schiaparelli was an Italian designer mostly popular between the two world wars. She started out her career by doing knitwear and later expanded her creations to elaborate fashion pieces. Her clothes were smart and sophisticated and designed mostly evening wear. She collaborated with other prominent artists and designers like Alberto Giacometti and also Salvador Dali who she hired to design fabric for her fashion house. She was part of the Surrealist movement and worked in New York and Paris. For Schiaparelli, fashion was as much about making art as it was about making clothes.

    This evening coat is one of the best examples of her artistic creations which was collaborated with French artist Jean Cocteau. It was launched for the Autumn 1937 collection. Cocteau produced the drawing that is translated on the coat. This is exhibited at the V&A  Museum in London. The picture I took myself when I visited the museum a few months ago. It was defiantly a piece that brought a lot of attraction to the room with its fine elaborated decoration. It is a very beautiful dark long silk jersey coat with gold thread and silk embroidery. On the top back there is this double motif that can be read as two faces facing each other and also as a vase of roses standing on a fluted column. The strong lines embroidered till the bottom elongate more the coat. The embroidered pink flowers that are hand stitched on the yoke and shoulders of the coat makes the clothing more feminine and very elegant.

    This particular evening coat reminded me of a particular collection of Giovanni Bedin, which is one of my  all time favourite collections of the 21st century. For Autumn/ Winter 2010 Bedin designed a collection of some very elegant and fun coats. All of them have basically the same shape but the each one is very unique and different in material and design.This particular one below, has similar flowers embroidered  to the ones of Schiaparellis’ coat. Just like in the coat from 1937 the embroidery in this one make the garment very feminine and fun yet elegant. Contrary to Schiaparellis’ the embroidery is of different bright colours that make a good contrast on the black dark silk. It is a finished corsetted and military-inspired coat which is long til before your knees. The skirt is pleated and has a tutu underneath. This one below is made to be worn on a younger age than the one of Schiaparellis’, I would imagine this on a young woman on her early twenties.

Bibliography

Information and pictures taken from:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1974.338.2_1978.288

January 2013 http://www.worthparis.com/thedesigner.asp

searched on the 26th of October 2013