Schiaparelli and surrealism
An exhibition at the Mad celebrates the very close creative relationship between the most eccentric and intellectual of Parisian couturières and the artistic movement founded by Breton.
In a moment of renewed interest in Surrealism (witnessed in Italy by the exhibition "Surrealism and magic. Enchanted modernity" at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the Venice Biennale, where Cecilia Alemani not only chose the title of a text by Leonora Carrington to title the exhibition, but has returned to the artists of the avant-gardes the relevance and autonomy derecognised by a system traditionally rewarding male figures), the Parisian MAD makes it the key to reading Elsa Schiaparelli, with a second, great retrospective after the one dedicated to her in 2004. "Shocking! Les Mondes suerréalistes d'Elsa Schiaparelli" (from 6/7 to 22/1/23) explores a career built on direct collaboration with the artist of the movement, to whom, with her style that is both rigorous and unexpected, she is linked by a deep affinity. Because as Schiaparelli wrote in her autobiography "Shocking life" "Working with artists such as Bébé Bérard, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Vertès and Van Dongen and photographers such as Hoyningen-Huene, Horst, Cecil Beaton and Man Ray was exciting. I helped, encouraged, beyond the materiaal and boring reality that is the manufacture of an object to sell."
An important exhibition, which stages 272 creations including clothes and accessories and almost as many objects to contextualize them: preparatory sketches, photographs (many by Man Ray), sculptures, jewels, perfume bottles, ceramics; with a focus also on the influence that the couturière will exert on other designers, first of all Saint Laurent, with his literal quotations of the "Zodiaque" collection, but also Galliano, Lacroix, Alaïa and of course Daniel Roseberry, artistic director of the maison Schiaparelli from 2019, whose black dress worn by Bella Hadid last year in Cannes, with a very deep neckline to emphasize an oversized golden necklace in the shape of lungs, closes the path of the exhibition. Surrealist with a macabre surrealism at least as much as the skeleton dress inspired by Dalí in '38, a black evening model with padding that reproduces the vertebrae, or the Tears dress, in silk printed with a raw flesh motif taken from a painting of the Catalan artist.
The exhibition begins with an immersive experience that highlights the mentor role of Paul Poiret, met in 1922, in making the young Roman aristocrat divorced from discovering his vocation for couture, and then exhibiting his most whimsical and imaginative creations, from sweaters trompe l'oeil print of the debut in sensational collection such as Païenne, inspired by the metamorphoses of Ovid, Papillon, Commedia del'Arte, Musique, Zodiaque - a tribute to the Versailles of the Sun King where the splendor of Lesage embroidery reaches its apogee -, Cirque. The second floor houses the reconstruction of the couture salons inaugurated in '35 at 21 place Vendome, conceived by the legendary interior decorator Jean-Michel Frank, including the legendary perfume cage with the bottles of Salut, Schiap, Schocking, Sleeping...
We asked Marie-Sophie Carron de la Carrière, chief curator of the heritage of his fashion department of the MAD, to indicate, among those exhibited, the clothes and objects that best illustrate Schiaparelli's path. Like the hand-made pullover with bow in trompe l'oeil of the early days, in 1927, an evening dress from the Papillon ccollection for summer '37 which Alïa will be inspired by for winter '91, the extraordinary Phoebus shocking pink evening cape from the Zodiaque collection, with a gold sun embroidered by Lesage on the back and, in the same winter '38 collection, a black evening cloack with six pockets embroidored by Lesage in white, pink, gold porcelain and metal foils, homage to Sèvre's Rococo porcelain. The evening dress with a lobster print from summer '37 worn by the Duchess of Windsor, the most iconic result of a collaboration with Dalí that will last from '36 to '39. And again an evening cloak with a design by Jean Cocteau, whose continuous line embroidered on the back created the illusion of a double image, that of two profiles looking at each other and / or that of a vase on a colum crowned by a bouquet of roses. The bottle-mannequin with the head replaced by porcelain flowers of the '37 Shocking perfume is the result of the collaboration with Leonor Fini, while Meret Oppenheim designs the fur-covered metal bracelet that Schiaparelli includes in the winter '36 collection, a wearable version of "Déjenuer en fourrure", the coffee set consisting of a cup, saucer and spoon covered in fur exhibited in the same year at an exhibition of surrealist objects commissioned by Breton at the Charles Ratton gallery.
For Carron de la Carrière the most interesting aspects of the designer's work are: "the use of innovative materials such as cellophane and rhodophane reminiscent of glass, or Linatik and Suédavele. Without forgetting that she is the first to emphasize the shoulders and the first to put zippers on evening dresses, allowing women to dress themselves without the help of the maid." A style that gets her loyal customers in the Café society, from Patricia Lopez-Willshaw, a millionaire of Chilean origin, famous for the parties she organizes in the hotel de Rodocanachi in Neuilly, to Wallis Simpson, who orders her wardrobe for his honeymoon, to Lady Mendl, the legendary Elsie de Wolfe, famous interior decorator and buyer of the superb Apollon de Versailles hood from the Zodiaque collection, and who will organize a Circus Ball inspired by the Cirque collection in honor of Schiaparelli. Without forgetting Gala Dalí, which a photo by André Caillet shows with the famous Chapeau Chaussure and black suit with the lip motif, also by Dalí, which decades later will be taken up by Miuccia Prada.
