Elsa schiaparelli designs 1930s

The Italian-born French couturière Elsa Schiaparelli is best known for the iconoclastic bravado and unrestrained, at times brazen, originality of her work.

While her contemporaries Gabrielle Chanel and Madeleine Vionnet set the period&#;s standards of taste and beauty in fashion design, Schiaparelli flouted convention in the pursuit of a more idiosyncratic style.

Elsa schiaparelli designs 1930s

As much an artist as a dress designer, she commandeered the talents of a host of prominent artisans and artists, most notably those associated with the Surrealist movement. Distilling their disquieting dream-based imagery and provocative concepts through her own creative process, she incorporated themes inspired by contemporaneous events, erotic fantasy, traditional and avant-garde art, and her own psyche into her designs.

A repertoire of inventive devices—experimental fabrics with pronounced textures, bold prints with unorthodox imagery and colors, opulent embroideries, outsized and exposed zippers,