Schiaparelli and Surrealism

Schiaparelli’s collaborative projects with these artists varied from photography to designing accessories, perfume bottles, fabrics and garments. They stretched her creative boundaries beyond the commercial concerns of the fashion world and excited her.

This dark blue silk jersey coat was a collaborative design between Schiaparelli and artist Jean Cocteau. In her autobiography Schiaparelli recalled: "Jean Cocteau made some drawings of heads for me. I reproduced some of these on the back of an evening coat and one, with long yellow hair reaching to the waist, on a grey linen suit".

The coat was worn by Doris Castlerosse, a great client of Schiaparelli. She bought many of her pieces from Schiaparelli’s London store which opened in Mayfair in 1934.

Schiaparelli’s ‘Etruscan’ dress of 1936 was inspired by ancient sculpture. With a high neckline and full length skirt it is demure yet blatant in its emphasis of the breasts beneath the garment.

The slimline evening dress in brown crepe has two circular roundels worked in trapunto quilting over the bust mirroring the high divided breasts of Etruscan female sculptures.

At the back of the garment an open v shaped neckline is crossed by a simple band at the neck fastened with a button of gilt metal, cast with a naïve relief of a horse like an Etruscan coin.

One of Schiaparelli’s most fruitful partnerships began in late 1936 with the painter Salvador Dali. Schiaparelli’s felt and velvet shoe hat of A/W 1937–8 was designed to sit upon the head like an upturned shoe. It was inspired by an image of Dali with his wife Gala’s shoe placed on his shoulder.

Schiapareli’s love of placing ‘found objects’ on the head, even extended to a hat in the shape of a lamb chop. This chop motif reappeared on a cocktail jacket of Summer 1938.

Lavishly marked out in coloured mirrored fragments, four lamb chops adorn the front of the garment.

Schiaparelli collaborated with Dali on designs for her Summer 1938 collection which took inspiration from the circus.

Dali designed the fabric of this woven pink silk jacket, featuring prancing, plumed horses. Fastened with ceramic buttons in the shape of swooping acrobats, the jacket was worn over a deep purple, silk crepe evening dress with a draped culotte hemline.

Dali’s prancing horse motif appears again on another cocktail jacket from the same collection, this time as decorative cast metal buttons on the front of a deep red wool crêpe jacket. The garment is decorated with coloured metal and glass bead appliqués down the centre front and along the top of the pockets.

One of the most significant pieces from the Summer 1938 collection was the ‘Skeleton’ dress. A long black crêpe sheath dress embellished with a raised skeletal form, worked on the surface in trapunto quilting.

The design was sketched out by Dali, the leg ‘bones’ linked to the ‘pelvis’ with elegant hooks in the style of jewellery links. It was presented with a black veil topped with a swirling golden shell headpiece. The dress belonged to actress Ruth Ford, sister of the Surrealist poet Charles-Henri Ford. The garment was a gift to her from Dali’s patron, Edward James, a great supporter of the Surrealist movement.

The ‘Tear’ dress, also from the Summer 1938 collection, takes the form of an elegant bias-cut evening gown which is transformed with a trompe l’oeil print of rips and tears, mimicking torn flesh.

The matching veil uses the same motif, yet instead of a print it is created in appliquéd strips which hang down to reveal a dark pink layer beneath.

Salvador Dali’s painting of 1936, 'Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra' features a female figure dressed in a white gown with similar rents and tears covering the surface of her dress.