On the occasion of International Women's Day, we want to tell you the story of an Italian designer who over the course of her career introduced genuine revolutions into the world of fashion: Elsa Schiaparelli.

Her origins

Born in Rome in 1890 to an aristocratic family of Piedmontese intellectuals, Elsa Schiaparelli stood out from an early age for her eccentric character and her restless nature, to which she added a considerable breadth of learning and a good dose of charm.

After London and New York, at 34 she chose to live in Paris, where, encouraged by the French designer Paul Poiret, she began her career in Parisian haute couture, soon becoming one of the most important fashion figures of the early century, on a par with the far better known Coco Chanel.

Figurative arts in fashion

The essential spark behind Elsa's disruptive creativity was fed, all her life long, by her circle of friends from the art world. Through her friend Gaby Picabia, wife of the painter Francis Picabia, she came into contact with some of the major figures of Dadaism, such as Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray.

Over the course of her career she went on to work with Jean Cocteau, but above all with Salvador Dalí: in 1937 they created the Lobster Dress and the shoe hat, and in 1938 the Tears and Skeleton dresses for the Circus collection.

The prêt a porter

Elsa Schiaparelli sensed that the turning point for the fashion of her day would be the ready-to-sell garment, made to standard sizes and through mass production: the prêt à porter.

With Coco Chanel, her contemporary, she shared the need to abandon the conventions and the constraints in clothing that women had been confined to. But unlike Chanel, she didn't opt for any linear, severe cut. Instead, the fashion of Schiap (the nickname she was given in France) dressed women in a colourful and sporty way, with zips (the first ever visible on clothing) and fanciful appliqués, wedge heels and turbans.

Tattoo sweaters

In knitwear, her tattoo sweaters remain memorable: sweaters marked by large trompe-l'oeil bows in a black-and-white optical style, along with the X-ray pullovers, which traced the structure of the human skeleton as if on a radiograph.

The trompe l'oeil sweaters were described by Vogue as an ‘absolute masterpiece’ and soon became best sellers for the brand.

The fashion show

One example of her extraordinarily far-sighted instincts was her invention of the modern fashion show: a presentation of the new collection - with a central theme and a line of pieces that hung together - featuring art, music and tall, slender models with androgynous builds.

Shocking Pink

Yes indeed, this ultramodern colour was created in 1936 by Elsa Schiaparelli herself. Her perfume Shocking! came in a bottle sculpted by Leonor Fini in the shape of the torso of Mae West (a musical actress, a sex symbol of the era and a provocateur of public opinion), and wrapped in shocking pink packaging, a colour that immediately became an icon of the Parisian maison.

During the Second World War, Elsa closed her atelier in the French capital and moved to New York. On her return, tastes and habits had changed, and with them fashion. In 1954, unable to weather her financial difficulties, she closed the maison and wrote her autobiography, Shocking Life: the nonconformist life of an artist of fashion. She died in Paris in 1973.

And you, did you know the incredible story of Elsa Schiaparelli? We're curious, let us know.