Elsa Schiaparelli - Essay Example

Running Head: Elsa Schiaparelli Elsa Schiaparelli s Elsa Schiaparelli Elsa Schiaparelli was a top fashion designer of Paris in twenties and thirties (Crane, 2001), second only to Coco Chanel. She is known for having made many original innovations in the field of fashion designing. In 1920s, she was the only one in Paris who possessed both the skill of haute couture as well as the boldness of surrealism. Tracing the origin of surrealism, it was a mixing of Freud’s ideas with those of Karl Marx.

Freud introduced the concept of the unconscious which implied that a wide area of human mind was still in the dark. This led to the legitimization of erotic, and surrealism overtook the ideas presented by Karl Marx. Elsa Schiaparelli drew deep inspiration from surrealism. She worked in collaboration with several similar minded artists such as Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, and Alberto Giacometti, between 1889 and 1966 (Hesse, 2007). Surrealism is most significant in those designs of Elsa Schiaparelli which she produced in cooperation with Dali (Kachur, 2003).

Examples of the most surrealistic dresses are the skeleton dress which carried the image of bones on black cloth, as well as the tear dress which carried pictures of wounds on broken skin. Most important in this regard is the spine dress which highlighted the shape of a woman’s figure most emphatically. An important innovation made by Elsa Schiaparelli was that she added the charm of formal dress to common wear. She introduced the use of animal prints. She also introduced the use of zippers which were identical in color to the fabric itself.

She possessed an excellent sense of humor, which she skillfully applied in designing. The aspect of surrealism is most visible in the hats designed by Elsa Schiaparelli. A very popular hat designed by her looked essentially like a lamb chop. Other significant innovations made by Schiaparelli include humorous patterns on sober clothing, which included quotes having been printed on the cloth. She is also credited for introducing other surrealist fashions which included hats having erotic shapes, food-looking accessories, clothes having prints of body parts, bones and organs, and also furniture.

She set a trend of unique finishes in fabrics. The lobster dress designed by Schiaparelli is particularly famous for its surrealistic aspect. It was an evening dress which carried a lobster print on while fabric, which she produced in close cooperation with Dali. The dress attained great popularity for being provocative and seductive, more so because an infamous woman Wallis Simpson happened to wear it who was accused of seducing the king of United Kingdom. Schiaparelli is also credited with introducing the use of shoulder pads which gave a new triangular shape to the female figure, thereby overcoming its nature pear shape.

She also designed perfumes, the most famous of which was called Shocking (Veillon & Kochan, 2002), and was popular mainly because of its packaging as it was contained in a female torso-shaped bottle. She is also known for inventing clever accessories like a telephone shaped purse (Mills, 2005). She also set new trends in jewelry and cosmetics. She added neatness to bright colors, and combined style with simplicity. References Crane, D. (2001). Fashion and its social agendas: Class, gender, and identity in clothing.

Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hesse, R. W. (2007). Jewelrymaking through history: an encyclopedia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. Kachur, L. (2003). Displaying the marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and surrealist exhibition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mills, D. J. (2005). The Treskel: Sequel to the Scaptre and the Labyrinth. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation. Veillon, D., & Kochan, M. (2002). Fashion under the occupation. Oxford: Berg Publishers.