Schiaparelli, Elsa

Schiaparelli, Elsa (skyäpärĕl`lē), 1890–1973, French fashion designer, b. Rome. She established a house of couture in Paris that existed from the late 1920s until 1954, and established a New York showroom in 1949. A daring, flamboyant fashion innovator, she popularized brilliant colors, especially shocking pink, her signature color. She was the first to use synthetic fabrics and zipper fastenings and the first to open a boutique offering ready-to-wear clothing. She is noted for her perfume (notably Shocking, her first and most famous); small hats; angular, wide-shouldered suits and dresses; turbans; walking coats; evening sweaters; halter necklines; cocktail dresses with matching jackets; and scarves. She created extravagant, daring, amusing designs (e.g., bouffant gloves ballooning to the shoulders, phosphorescent brooches, and handbags that played tunes when opened). She also collaborated with such artists as Cocteau and Dalí.

Bibliography

See her autobiography, Shocking Life (1954); biography by P. White (1986); D. E. Blum, Shocking! The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli (2003).

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Schiaparelli, Elsa

(born Sept. 10, 1890, Rome, Italy—died Nov. 13, 1973, Paris, Fr.) Italian-born French fashion designer. After working in the U.S. as a film scriptwriter and translator, she settled in Paris and opened her first shop in the 1920s. By 1935 she was a leader in haute couture and was expanding into perfume, cosmetics, lingerie, jewelry, and swimsuits. Her designs combined eccentricity with simplicity and a trim neatness with flamboyant colour. She introduced the padded shoulder in 1932; designed fur bed jackets and rhinestone-trimmed lingerie in the 1940s; and in the 1950s popularized “shortie” coats in vivid reds, golds, and chartreuses. Her use of “shocking pink,” the sensation of the 1947 season, is still regularly revived. With Christian Dior, she was instrumental in the worldwide commercialization of Parisian fashion.