Fashion Costume Jewelry

Fashion Costume Jewelry

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

 Determined to succeed independently and with a passion for the arts and fashion, she moved to Paris in the 1920s, where top designer Paul Poiret introduced her to the world of couture.

 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.

fashion costume jewelry

 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

Schiaparelli channeled the philosophies of Dadaism and Surrealism into her work, as evinced in her "Shocking Pink" collection of 1936, including her "Shocking" perfume and cosmetics. "I gave to a pink the nerve of a red," read her company's manifesto.

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.

fashion costume jewelry

 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

 Pieces from the 1940s and 1950s arc most commonly found today. Collectors seek designs with frosted glass leaves, jagged "ice" glass, or strangely coloured pearls set as grapes. Heavy enamel pins featuring her surreal motifs, such as bagpipes or clowns, are also sought after.

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.