Though fashion industry titan Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel dismissed her rival Elsa Schiaparelli as “that Italian who makes clothes”, later couturiers recognise..
“HER ESTABLISHMENT in the Place Vendôme is a devil’s laboratory,” Jean Cocteau wrote in 1937, when Elsa Schiaparelli, ensconced in her Paris salon with a view of Napoleon’s priapic column, was the foremost couturier in Paris. “Women who go there fall into a trap, and come out masked, disguised, deformed, or reformed, according to Schiaparelli’s whim.” Her patrician brand of Surrealism which married outré maximalism with minatory elegance, “the richest laces” with “the most austere cassocks” was the dernier cri. Her so-called wooden-soldier silhouette, with its irreproachable shoulders and