Fashion Costume Jewelry
Flamboyant. Eccentric. Outrageous. Surreal. Elsa
Schiaparelli commands some of the most colorful adjectives to describe both her work and her personality. In her day, she shocked and delighted in equal measure. Today, Schiaparelli is a design icon.
Elsa Schiaparelli was born in 1890 to a wealthy family in
Rome, Italy.
Rebellious from an early age, she once attended a ball simply
wrapped in a length of fabric that, of course, unwound, bringing shame and
scandal to her family.
Her marriage to Franco-Swiss theosophist William de
Wendt did not last, leaving her a single mother to the couple's daughter, Gogo.
fashion costume jewelry |
In 1927, she established her first maison couture,
in the Rue de la Paix. In this highly charged world of artistry, she became
friends with Surrealist Salvador Dalf, and became the archrival of Coco Chanel.
Schiaparelli shared with Chanel the belief in costume
jewelry as an art form—not dependent for its value on the materials used—and
also as an integral part of fashion design, but there the similarities ended.
Her work was constantly compared to Chanel's elegant designs, but
Schiaparelli's early creations drew on whimsical themes.
She took inspiration from African iconography, sailors' tattoos, Paganism,
butterflies, and musical instruments; featured circus or astrological motifs;
took natural forms and stylized them; or selected exotic and unusual floral or
faunal forms, such as a pea-pod pendant, the "Eye" pin, or a clear
plastic necklace printed with insects.
Schiaparelli also showed
great talent in drawing out the skills of her collaborators, among whom Lyda
Coppola, Jean Schlumberger, Jean Clement, and Roger Jean-Pierre stand out.
A
painter with a chemistry degree, Clement was taken on as a designer by
Schiaparelli in 1927. He was skilled at working in plastics, and married his
own innate good taste with Schiaparelli's outrageous concepts to create
sophisticated objects, many of which are museum pieces today.
fashion costume jewelry |
Fashion Costume Jewelry
The concept she developed centered on the Surrealist metaphor of splashing the
"black cocktail dress" of society with vivid and outrageous color.
Her jewelry used of bright, exotic stones in vibrant pink.
From this point onward, shocking pink—"unreal pink"—became her
signature color.
Schiaparelli's approach won over many critics, as well as
receiving acclaim from her Surrealist circle, including Dalf and Jean Cocteau,
who designed jewelry for her, and from fashion illustrator Christian Berard. It
also revealed her continuing quest for presenting an alternative to
contemporary fashion.
After fleeing to New York
City during World War II, Schiaparelli returned to Paris in 1945, but found it
changed.
In 1949, she established a ready-to-wear outlet in New York and
licensed DeRosa to make her jewelry, labeled "Designed in Paris—Created in
America." She returned to the United States in 1954, closing her Parisian
fashion house and leaving behind her assistants, Pierre Cardin and Hubert de
Givenchy.
In 1950s New York,
Schiaparelli turned her attention fully to costume jewelry, creating abstract,
floral, or faunal designs using unusual and highly colourful iridescent
"fantasy" paste stones and glass, in incredibly fake oranges and
pinks, studded with rhinestones. Charm bracelets were all the rage at the time,
thanks to Grace Kelly, and Schiaparelli made some of the best.
Klsa Schiaparelli's costume jewelry line ceased production
in the late 1950s, and she died in 1973.
Examples of Schiaparelli's
Parisian work from the 1930s arc rare: many are museum-quality pieces, fetching
record sums.
fashion costume jewelry |
Most French Schiaparelli work
is unsigned, although a few pieces are marked with "Schiaparelli" in
block letters on a rectangular plate.
Most of her later French work and all
American pieces are signed "Schiaparelli" in script.
Fashion Costume Jewelry
This mark was in
use from 1927, and patented in the US in 1933. Schiaparelli fakes abound, and
the collector should also consider whether pieces are 1980s reproductions when
valuing.
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