The ACI Book Club is an exclusive membership benefit to all ACI members with an interest in exploring the world of fashion focused literature. The second book for the 2019-2020 season is Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography by Meryle Secrest.
Her name was Elsa Schiaparelli. She was known as the Queen of Fashion; a headline attraction in the international glitter-glamour show of the late twenties and thirties, feted in Rome (where she was born), Paris, New York, London, Moscow, Hollywood . . .
Her fashions, inspired, from the whimsical to the most practical—from a Venetian cape of the commedia dell’arte to the Soviet parachute. She collaborated with some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century: Jean Schlumberger, Salvador Dalí (his lobster dress for her), Jean Cocteau, photographers Baron Adolph de Meyer, Cecil Beaton, and the young Richard Avedon. She was the first designer to use rayon and latex, thick velvets, transparent and waterproof, and cellophane. Her perfume was a bottle in the shape of a bust sculpted by Léonor Fini, inspired by the body of Mae West.
Here is the never-before-told story of this most extraordinary fashion designer, perhaps the most extraordinary fashion designer of the twentieth century, in her day more famous than Chanel. Meryle Secrest, acclaimed biographer, gives us the first full life of the grand couturier—surrealist and embattled figure–-whose medium was apparel.
The book is available via public library. The ACI Book Club meets in the Lemon Art Research Library at Phoenix Art Museum and is invited to a no-host lunch at Palette following the book discussion. Space is limited.
Want to attend this ACI member’s only meet-up? Become an ACI member here!