Meryle Secrest - Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2014 by Meryle Secrest
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.
www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Secrest, Meryle, author.
Elsa Schiaparelli : a biography / Meryle Secrest. First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-307-70159-6 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-385-35327-4 (eBook)
1. Schiaparelli, Elsa, 18901973. 2. Fashion designersItalyBiography.
3. Women fashion designersItalyBiography. 4. Surrealism and design. I. Title.
TT505.S3S43 2014
746.92092dc23 2014025820

Front-of-jacket image: Schiaparelli Shocking Perfumes advertisement, Christmas 1946 (detail) by Marcel Verts. Private collection.
Jacket design by Kelly Blair

v3.1

ALSO BY MERYLE SECREST

Between Me and Life

Being Bernard Berenson

Kenneth Clark

Salvador Dal

Frank Lloyd Wright

Leonard Bernstein

Stephen Sondheim

Somewhere for Me

Shoot the Widow

Duveen

Modigliani

For Vicky, as always

Chi crede a sogni matto; e chi non crede, che cos?

He who believes in his dreams is mad;

and he who does not believe in themwhat is he?

LORENZO DA PONTE

Birth is not the beginning

Death is not the end.

CHUANG TZU, 400 B.C.

[Frontispiece] Elsa and her dog

Aunt Zia; Alberto de Dominitis; Elsas mother, Maria-Luisa; and Elsas uncle Vincenzo

Elsa Schiaparelli, aged four

William de Wendt de Kerlor in 1914

Willie and Elsa

Elsa being hypnotized by Willie

Elsa gazing into the future

Mario Laurenti, 1921

Elsa, 1920s

Elsa at work

Elsa circa 1926

A small chic hat

Schiaparellis answer to the little black dress

Schiaparellis designs, copied by the pattern makers

Divided skirts, 1940

Schiaparellis invention of a swimsuit with a built-in bra

Cocktail dress of black jersey

Pixie Hat

Schiaparelli at home in 1936

Bettina Shaw Jones

Gaston Bergery

The fashionably slim Bettina

Bettina in the early 1930s

Portrait of Schiaparelli inscribed to Bettina

1934 example of a military-style coat of black wool

Evening dress of white textured crepe

Evening gown in midnight-blue crepe

Bettina in 1933

Evening coat of full-length fur

A model wearing a clowns hat

Black silk crepe evening dress

Evening dress in rose satin

Paul Poiret

Dal and Gala at an American country estate

Opening-night party for the Museum of Modern Art in 1939

Schiaparelli adjusting one of her hats in the 1930s

Schiaparellis daring shoe hat

Dal and Schiaparelli in 1949

Sir James Allan Horne

The only known photograph of Henry S. Horne

Schiaparellis 1934 Mayfair pied--terre

Elsa in the 1930s

Elsa, Eddie Marsh, and Syrie Maugham

Elsa, 1938

A sewing pattern translation of a blouse, flared skirt, and capelike top

Schiaparelli on the Place Vendme

Interior of the Schiaparelli boutique, 1950s

Schiaparellis monkey-fur-and-suede shoes

A blue silk fabric of her own design, 1933

Schiaparelli chastising Bettina, 1930s

Kay Francis

Vivien Leigh

Bettina Bergery and the Countess Marie-Laure de Noailles, 1930s

One of Schiaparellis super-sized buttons

Boris Kochno, Marie-Laure de Noailles, and Bb Brard, 1930s

Ensemble of upturned hat and black jacket

Ivory organdy, waltz-length evening dress

Schiaparelli in the kind of at-home finery she liked to wear

An imaginary conversation between Stalin and Schiaparelli

Schiaparelli, probably mid-1930s

Metal mesh handbag

Loelia, the Duchess of Westminster

A decorous advertisement for playing cards, undated

Schiaparelli and Gogo, 1938

One of Schiaparellis many entry visas into the U.S.

The French politician Gaston Bergery in 1934

Gaston Bergery in 1940

Elsa on a lecture tour in the U.S., summer 1940

Elsa, arriving in the U.S. in 1939

Schiaparelli arriving on the Pan Am Clipper in New York, 1941

Gogo meets her mother in the customs shed, 1941

Gogo does war work for the French Red Cross in World War II

Paris under the barricades in World War II

Schiaparelli back again in New York in 1945

Schiaparelli in 1949

Window display, 1949

Schiaparelli and artist Drian, 1950s

Hubert de Givenchy

Johnny Galliher with Ilona Massey

Elsa and Johnny Galliher in 1949

Schiaparelli, 1969

Schiaparelli in 1950

A studio portrait, 1960

Schiaparelli in later years with her two granddaughters

The house in Hammamet

The road from the house

The most extraordinary fashion designer of the twentieth century is now just a name on a perfume bottle. She is Elsa Schiaparelli, like Gabrielle Chanel a successful woman in the hierarchy of male Paris couturiers. But she was much more than a dress designer. Schiaparelli was an integral part of the whole artistic movement of the times. Her groundbreaking collaborations with such artists as Kees van Dongen, Salvador Dal, Christian Brard, Jean Cocteau, Alberto Giacometti, and Man Ray took the field of womens wear from a business into an art form.

In the years between World Wars I and II, Schiaparelli, like Chanel, created clothes that were attuned to new freedoms for women and the reality of the role they were playing in the workplace. Skirts left the ankle and stayed close to the knee. Crippling corsets disappeared. Silhouettes were practical and wearable; fabrics could be washed. She was as much inventor as designer of style. Realizing that putting on a dress over the head could be a nuisance, she came up with a dress that could be wrapped around the body, an idea that is still with us. Split skirts were practical; she would show them even though it took decades for the idea of wide-legged pants to be socially acceptable, and even longer for the pantsuit. She patented swimsuits with built-in bras and went on to design similar shortcuts for dresses. The zipper arrived and she used it with panache. The Depression arrived, and along with it the idea of clothes that had a multiplicity of uses, such as reversible coats, the all-purpose dress with sets of accessories, skirts that came apart to make capes or shrugs that could be zipped onto evening gowns, and, during World War II, pockets that looked like purses and vice versa. Some of the most obvious things, like matching jackets for dinner dresses, had eluded everyone until she thought of them, and the idea of adding feathers to an outfit was exploited by Hollywood for years.