Being alive we are not too sure about the benefits that being dead may bring us. One thing is for certain, though, once we are gone, none of the worries that plagued our existence on this sad earth will keep on bothering us. But how would we feel if somebody we had never met in our lives would carry our name forward into the future, attaching it for example to their own creations? After all, this happens all the time when fashion designers die and a new Creative Director is called in their place, a process that is usually followed by the media behaving in a condescending way to avoid not being invited to catwalk shows, parties and other assorted fancy events.
It's only natural to wonder for example what would Elsa Schiaparelli think about what's going on at the moment at her revamped fashion house. Up until a few years ago, Schiaparelli was pilfered by all sorts of designers who often didn't even mention her as an inspiration. The history of fashion saw her newspaper print being relaunched and her bust bottle becoming the signature of someone else's fashion house, while her monkey fur designs, leg of mutton sleeves and gloves with red nails reappeared here and there throughout the seasons. Following her rediscovery and relaunch, Schiap became a new fertile ground for a wide range of reinterpretations, remixes or mere copies of her designs.
Vivetta's womenswear designs are for example haunted by the ghost of Schiap, but so is her S/S 15 childrenswear collection.
Showcased in June during Pitti Bimbo, it featured classic Schiap archetypes such as facial profiles forming decorative motifs, elegant fingers creating delicate collars around the neck and three-dimensional lips on little jumpers (this wasn't a totally successful idea as they looked like disturbing labia...).
Then there is the puzzling case of Schiaparelli's Haute Couture collections. The first collection designed by Marco Zanini was launched in January. For his second collection, showcased in July during Paris Haute Couture Week, Zanini opted to throw into a big cauldron Schiap's designs and remix them a bit.
The main silhouettes with exaggerated shoulders were borrowed from the '40s, but the surrealist bunny hats and reinvented turbans courtesy of Stephen Jones came from the '30s. Further Schiap echoes included fur fringes, squarish leather, beaver and glycerine-treated ostrich feather boleros, ample fox or sable sleeves, wide legged trousers matched with a caramel silk blouse, and a voluminous pink coat marked with the "ES" initials in blue.
Schiap's irony was reinterpreted into prints of pigeons with sequinned eyes or rats and squirrels on a bias-cut gown; the eccentric colourful motifs of the Harlequin coat originally embroidered by Lesage and inspired by the Commedia dell'Arte (Spring 1939 collection) were turned into a fur bag, while the 1938 circus collection was evoked by a shocking pink conical hat covered in Lesage embroidery and a fabulously whimsical tinsel bolero that could be used as a replacement for Christmas decorations; Schiap's signature colour reappeared instead in coats and draped silk dresses.
The final effect was that of seeing a series of designs heavily inspired by Schiaparelli, that found some derivation from Adrian's costumes for George Cukor's The Women.
The hats seen on the runway were indeed reinvented versions of the insolent headdresses Sylvia the chronic gossiper wears in the film; the hat crucified by harrows and allegedly inspired by the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (and the accompanying top with a bleeding heart embroidered by Lesage) was actually an updated re-edition of a Surrealist hat from 1937 and an architectural velvet turban reproduced the shape of headdresses that you may see in fashion archives from 1938-40 (like the one from Rome's Gauturo, image 13 in this post).
There are a few puzzling points to make here. Haute Couture is usually an advertising vehicle to sell more affordable items including make-up and fragrances, but the house of Schiaparelli doesn't offer at the moment these products. Therefore the Haute Couture designs are simply made to keep people interested and promote themselves at occasional events, though it should be noted that designs from the first Zanini collection for Schiaparelli rarely appeared on the red carpet. As you may remember, Tilda Swinton donned one at the premiere of The Grand Budapest Hotel at the Berlinale Film Festival and another at the Snowpiercer premiere in L.A.
Which takes us to the second point: up until 2008, fashion publications often wondered if Haute Couture was still necessary, but now most features have moved on to discuss the new hip and younger couture clientele that includes nouveau riches, heiresses, 2.0 princesses, and socialites.
It is for these new clients that designers are including sneakers (albeit lavishly embellished ones) and functionally modern pieces in their collections. Zanini is offering to these supposedly new and young clients a series of '40s looks (quite often matched with dynamic '60s boots with an occasional Courregesian twist about them) that are a bit too costumy and attention-grabbing and that some of them may not be able to pull off at their best.
It is pretty difficult to capture the spirit of a dead designer and inject it in modern garments and accessories; it is proving extremely hard to capture Schiap's spirit and infuse it in wearable clothes. Zanini has so far either borrowed too little or too much from the archives and he is striving to create a properly contemporary look for Schiaparelli.
A few questions remain: what's the financial impact of such a brand at the moment, in a nutshell what does the house of Schiaparelli sell at the moment or what does it advertise? Besides, how long will we have to wait to see something more desirable and less costumy designed in Schiap's spirit rather than a glamorous spectacle perfectly choreographed also thanks to Lesage's embroidery, Maison Gripoix's jewellery and Lemarié's feathers?
There were hints (accessories such as sunglasses, gloves and luxurious mink or sable handbags with locks based on Lesage's designs) at the products Zanini may come up with in future when the fashion house finally decides to step out in the real fashion scene, but nobody knows when and if it will ever happen.
Schiap thought that all clothing is but a masquerade, but she used the masquerade also as a way to comment on specific events. The "Commedia dell'arte" collection (1939) was indeed a way to react to the political situation in Europe. Here we have visually strking and aesthetically charming clothes that could be considered as a masquerade, a catwalk show out of Cukor's The Women, but with no hints at our crazy and insufferable world and, above all, no power to shock.
And so Schiaparelli is destined to remain (for the time being) a girlfriend in a coma, a patchwork monster made of various collections that a Dr Frankenstein-like designer is trying to revive or a corpse going through an unexpected - and undeserved - martyrdom. What's for sure is that, rather than new versions of old clothes, we, ordinary mortals, would have been happier to see an affordable wonderful fragrance in a fun bottle or a lipstick in an outrageously shocking pink shade being released. After all, as Schiaparelli said in one of her 12 commandments, a woman "should buy little and only of the best or the cheapest".
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments