I have often mentioned, remembered and praised Elsa Schiaparelli in various posts on this blog, highlighting my admiration for the Italian-born and Paris-based designer who revolutionised the world of fashion in the 30s.
Nothing will ever make me hate her: I admire her indomitable spirit and the novelties she launched, but I think that at the moment we are all missing the point with the Schiaparelli references.
Randomly pilfered by many, but actually known by very few people even in her native Italy, Schiaparelli has been back into fashion for two main reasons: 1) she was a pioneer designer who launched iconic clothes, accessories and perfumes; 2) Tod’s Diego Della Valle bought the Elsa Schiaparelli rights a while back and rumours of being on the look out for a new creative director and resurrecting the brand have been rife since. I suspect though that the latter has become the main reason why all these Schiaparelli references have come up in a lot of recent collections, everybody seems to be screaming "Pick me! pick me! I'm the one who can resurrect Schiaparelli's fashion house!"
Take Dolce & Gabbana's collection: in yesterday's post I mentioned Schiap's 1938 evening gown with prints of fairground animals designed by Vertès and shocking-pink balloon sleeves in conjunction with Aquilano-Rimondi’s new collection. Today I have to mention it again, this time in connection with Dolce & Gabbana’s designs.
Indeed the new collection by Italian design duo bears strong references to Schiaparelli: 
her signature shocking-pink colour was featured in dresses and cumbersome fur coats that evoked Schiap’s monkey fur designs; her bulbously ballooning leg of mutton sleeves reappeared throughout the collection (remember them in Schiap's late 30s jackets with elaborate embroidered and beaded motifs or in her costumes for Jane Avril, the character played by Zsa Zsa Gabor in the 1952 film Moulin Rouge?); 
her iconic trompe l’oeil Armenian jumper was transformed into a proper tuxedo with a voluminous jacket, while black and white leopard prints seemed to evoke Schiap's kitschest designs.
There were Salvador Dali's references in the watch necklaces and the random scallop shells decorating the dresses or forming shell-shaped leather fans on platform shoes, but it was Schiap that prevailed in the accessories such as the glove hats and scarves (that also echoed the hat Eileen Agar had created overlapping a pair of Schiaparelli gloves) and in the big bows and headdresses that called to mind Schiaparelli's style in the iconic Horst P. Horst photograph.
It was a shame Dolce & Gabbana didn't use a picture of Mae West for their dresses and evening ball gowns to make sure the Schiaparelli reference was complete, but maybe the expiry of personality rights made them opt for Marilyn Monroe.
While at the very beginning of the show everything seemed bold, bright and fun, mid-catwalk things got a bit more tiring, proving that, so far, whoever settled down on copying Schiap, only managed to perfectly pilfering or slightly updating her designs.
Yet they forgot about her beliefs, message and ethos. When acclaiming crowds welcomed her in the States, Schiaparelli was happy, but she also knew how empty, vain and vacuous the world of fashion could be. Unfortunately nowadays designers are quite happy in this superficially silly world and D&G - surrounded by the testimonial of their brand new make-up range Scarlett Johansson, Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto, Kate Hudson and a bunch of other assorted supermodels and celebrities - seemed perfectly at ease. Maybe forward-thinking Schiaparelli wouldn’t have approved of this sort of shenanigans.
“...just as nobody would any
longer be willing to build another Versailles, a St Peter’s, a Taj
Mahal, or a Kremlin, so we must find new and hitherto untried methods
of progress, without losing a fraction of our creative power or sense
of beauty,” Schiaparelli stated towards the end of her biography, very aptly entitled Shocking Life.
I'm positive that Schiap's spirit is not with all those well-established designers who are trying to blatantly resurrect her or plagiarise her with their "Cookie Monster on acid" looks (see previous post - paragraph about the Iceberg catwalk). Yet I'm positive her ghost is with all those young
designers out there who (like her) might not have great tailoring skills (yet), but who
look at fashion with a fresh mind and a heart bursting with original inspirations.
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