Elsa Schiaparelli

August 25, 2014
“This book had its start when I began to wonder why nobody dressed up any more, even for evenings out,” writes Secrest. Although she never answers her question, this consummate biographer (Leonard Bernstein: A Life) does take readers on a breathless, madcap ride across the early 20th century. The book follows Schiaparelli from her meteoric rise to couture queen of 1930s Paris to her fizzling postwar descent into bankruptcy. It begins with the image of the child Schiaparelli running through the Italian palazzo where she grew up, and ends, no less evocatively, by musing on what passed through the designer’s mind as she sat on the terrace of her Tunisian getaway in her later years. In between, Secrest draws on the interviews and writings of Schiaparelli’s friends, family, and colleagues; biographers and historians of the period; public records from ship manifests and visas to FBI documents; Schiaparelli’s 1954 memoir, Shocking Life; and Secrest’s own speculative imagination. The result paints an alternately exhilarating, sympathetic, slyly humorous, and poignant portrait, not only of the surrealism-influenced, innovative fashion designer who invented wraparound dresses, built-in bras, falsies, and shocking pink, but also of the creative cauldron of Paris in its golden age between the two world wars. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit.

August 1, 2014
The life of a flamboyant couturiere. Italian-born designer Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) was a fashion star in Paris from 1927 until she closed her atelier in 1954. Known for clothes with "a daredevil swagger," she favored bold colors, thickly padded shoulders and surrealist motifs, many inspired by Salvador Dali: a hat shaped like a shoe; a diaphanous evening dress screen printed with a gigantic lobster; a jacket whose pockets featured glistening red lips. Her contributions to mainstream fashion included the jacket dress, the wrap dress and visible zippers. Schiap, as she was known, was an egocentric exhibitionist who became a dress designer "by accident; it seemed an easy way to earn money." And earn money she did, with businesses in Paris, London and New York that included perfumes, jewelry, and extensive clothing and accessory manufacturers. According to her daughter, she was a "mad socializer. Mummy got dressed up every night for her umpteen dinner parties, leaving me with a nanny." Schiap needed to be always on the move, to be seen at every party and theater opening and to travel extensively. Surrounded by the rich and famous, she seemed, nevertheless, to crave affection. A friend described her as "a bit of a bulldog, setting up barriers so one did not dare approach her." Prolific biographer Secrest (Shoot the Widow: Adventures of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject, 2007, etc.) faced the barrier of finding few primary sources: virtually no letters, no diary and a memoir written in the third person that Secrest calls "an example of an evasiveness that was almost automatic, pages of superfluous description of minor events and irrelevant anecdotes" in which Schiap made only "cryptic references" to her marriage and daughter. A granddaughter refused to cooperate with the author, as well, and her friends were dead. Secrest ably chronicles Schiap's career and social life, mining others' memoirs and reflections to fashion a colorful portrait of her "famously difficult" subject-but Schiap keeps the secrets of her heart.

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Starred review from September 1, 2014
Ever-curious and wonderfully adept biographer Secrest (Modigliani, 2011) presents the first full portrait of dynamic couturier Schiaparelli. Bookish and rebellious while growing up in Rome, Schiaparelli landed in New York, wed to a con man whose stunts as a psychic investigator got them both in trouble. Left on her own to care for her ill daughter, dark-eyed and determined Schiaparelli, with her lithe physique and dragonfly mind, arrived in Paris like a mighty little tempest in 1922. An artist and by nature in sync with the surrealistsshe and Salvador Dali became close friendsSchiaparelli created arresting trompe l'oeil knits depicting sailor's tattoos and x-rays and ingeniously used lobster, butterfly, newsprint, and circus motifs, exquisite embroidery, and wildly imaginative buttons to achieve a nonchalant chic. Secrest chronicles perfectionist Schiaparelli's business deals, A-list social network, gift for celebrity, arch wit, and ardor for new fabrics and saturated colors, especially the pink she named Shocking. Secrest also reveals the darker side of Schiaparelli's fame, from her FBI file to persistent but unsubstantiated suspicions of collaboration and espionage during the German occupation, her rivalry with Chanel, and the role fashion played in Parisian society during and after the world wars. Richly illustrated and endlessly intriguing, Secrest's biography illuminates the daredevil swagger of Schiaparelli's clothes and the oft-besieged couturier's inexhaustible tenacity and dazzling creativity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2014

Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) was the queen of the fashion world in the years between World War I and World War II, at the time eclipsing even Coco Chanel. She collaborated with such artists as Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Jean Cocteau on her designs for jewelry, clothing, and accessories, many of which had surreal influences or presented trompe l'oeil effects. She threw and attended glittering parties and lived in glamorous locales around the world. She had a signature color, the so-called "shocking pink," and a talent for self-invention and telling outrageous stories about herself. Secrest (Modligliani) does a solid job of placing Schiaparelli's work in historical context and considering others' opinions of her. Unfortunately, since the designer left few letters and no diaries--her 1954 autobiography, Shocking Life, said less about the woman herself than how she wanted other people to be; her "12 Commandments for Women" include such pronouncements as "A woman who buys an expensive dress and changes it, often with disastrous result, is extravagant and foolish"--there's little insight into Schiaparelli's interior life. Copious photographs enhance the narrative. VERDICT Recommended for those interested in fashion history. [See Prepub Alert, 4/21/14.]--Stephanie Klose, Library Journal

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2014

Secrest, the National Humanities Medal-winning biographer of artistic greats, revisits the great Schiaparelli, who dominated mid-20th-century fashion with her daring designs, often created in collaboration with artists like Dali, Cocteau, and Man Ray.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.