The couture system in Paris
was established in the late 19th century
and continues to today. Couture designs are
garments made to measure for the individual client.
They are the height of luxury in terms of textiles,
but also in terms of dress-making techniques,
and it terms of finishings.
Couture houses like those of Elsa Schiaparelli were able to draw
upon networks of specialist trades and
individual craftspeople.
So what we're looking at is really the pinnacle of the dress-making trade.
The real Rolls Royce of dressmakers.
Elsa Schiaparelli was born in Rome in 1890.
And she found herself in New York
as a young bride in the early 1920s.
But when the marriage ended she returned to Europe
and settled in Paris in 1922.
Her first fashion collection was a series of knitted jumpers
with trompe l'oeil motifs, and with this first collection
she started to gain a reputation for
herself as a fashion designer.
As her career progressed she was often known for her collaborations with
the Surrealists – Salvador Dalí and Manray,
as well as Jean Cocteau, but
what often gets forgotten is the skill and severity of her evening wear.
Schiaparelli's evening ensemble from 1937/8 is really a tour de force
of haute couture technique.
It combines Schiaparelli's very severe approach to
tailoring with a very luxurious
soft, silk velvet textile.
The most remarkable, notable feature
of the ensemble is the embroidery on the jacket.
It features gilt metal thread.
It features diamante and sequins ...
as well as really elaborate
quite prominent star-shaped metal buttons
that have been coloured fuschia pink.
This combination of techniques really makes
a garment like this the ultimate in luxury
in terms of dress-making skills at this time.
I think it's fair to say that Schiaparelli's
collaboration with the Surrealists is one of her most
well remembered group of garments.
Schiaparelli's 'Tears' dress was created in conjunction with
the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.
In fact it's a reference to some of Dalí's own work.
Paintings in which he depicted women
with flayed or with torn flesh.
The dress, through a very clever printed technique
on the surface of the textile,
mimics the image of flesh torn from the body.
And the mantle, which is meant to be worn over the head
with the textile falling around the shoulders,
through slits in the surface of the fabric
that are then covered over with the bright contrasting colour.
This also mimics the notion of flesh that is flayed or torn.
With Schiaparelli's designs, a lot of her
gloves, in particular, are
incredibly memorable.
They often transcend our idea of what a glove can be.
They also connect in many ways to the Surrealist preoccupation
with gloves and hands.
A number of artists
used hands as a symbol,
included in photographs and in paintings.
These evening gloves were given to the V&A by the American actress Ruth Ford.
She was really one of Schiaparelli's best clients,
and was known for adopting and wearing
some of the designer's most shocking, Surrealist designs.
What's remarkable about these gloves
is that they feature a ruched ribbon of the same fabric
that is stitched along the top of the glove
from the fingers all the way up to the wearer's elbow.
When Ruth Ford wore the gloves
this ribbon would have stood out
from her arm almost three-dimensionally.
Schiaparelli is making a fundamentally mundane accessory,
like a pair of gloves
into something quite remarkable indeed.
Schiaparelli's Shoe Hat derives in part from
a reference to a photograph
that Salvador Dalí's wife took of him
wearing a woman's shoe perched on his head.
Much like that photograph
this hat mimics that notion of an upside-down show
worn on one's head.
Schiaparelli created two versions of this hat,
one was all black, and the other – this one –
has a black base,
but with the heel created out of fuschia-pink
silk velvet.
There's quite a contrast between
Schiaparelli's daywear and her eveningwear.
Much of her daywear is very severely tailored with
square shoulders and a trim silhouette.
Her eveningwear can sometimes verge
on the overtly sexual.
They're very tight-fitting evening gowns with fabric
that often clings to the body. There are very sinuous lines...
Schiaparelli's skeleton dress was also created in
conjunction with Salvador Dalí and
it references his exploration
of the skeletal form, which he often depicted in paintings
and works of art around this time.
It's interesting that in Schiaparelli's approach
to creating that skeleton on the dress,
she essentially sketched out through stitching an elaborate pattern
of the bones on the surface of the dress. And then through
the lining of the dress
fed through a kind of quilting or padding
which then – when the dress is worn –
creates this really remarkable raised pattern of
skeletal bones.
They are really quite prominent on the body.
This hat dates from Schiaparelli's Pagan collection.
What's interesting and slightly unusual about it is that
scattered across the surface are
a series of insects, brightly painted in
green and pink – providing that very Schiaparelli
element of surprise.
Schiaparelli was quoted in the New York Times
on 4 December 1936 with some advice for women
trying to achieve a fashionable wardrobe.
She gave a list of the things that that wardrobe should contain.
The list was:
A furcoat.
A tweed suit.
A dark suit.
An afternoon dress. Four hats. Six pairs of shoes.
And as many accessories as required.