Elsa Schiaparelli

by Meryle Secrest

  Poiret and his wife were friends of the Picabias, and when he needed a hostess he hired Gaby. But then she needed a new evening dress and had no money to buy one, certainly not from Poiret. Enter Elsa with, no doubt, yards of richly colored fabric, wonderful ideas, and a mouthful of pins. Between them they pulled and draped and cut directly onto Gaby’s form, and she subsequently greeted the public wearing her first Schiaparelli. The great Poiret noticed, and conveyed his compliments to the designer. This unexpected vote of confidence was more than Elsa could have hoped for. She immediately began working on projects, using the model closest to hand, i.e., herself.

  Without knowing it Schiaparelli had entered her chosen world by entirely circumventing the tedious apprenticeship of construction and pattern design. She was part of the artistic trail first blazed by the great Poiret: simplified designs draped and fitted to the human form that relied for their effect on blazing colors, luxurious fabrics, and spectacular trimmings. Their simple outlines are sometimes seen as the start of modernism. Or not. From the viewpoint of the wearer, the relief of garments that did not restrict, or actually contort, the figure must have been enormous. The first Schiaparelli designs were consistent with everything she would invent in years to come. That is to say, no matter how bizarre the impulse, the result was always wearable. She was in the tradition of the great Poiret himself. Who cared how well a garment was constructed? The effect from a distance was what counted. The coat she made for Blanche Hays is a case in point. There were some embarrassing problems with the neck. As an inexperienced fitter, she had cut it far too large. The shoulders were wrong as well. Not to worry. Elsa cleverly compensated for its defects by hiding both neck and shoulders under a generous shawl collar made of gray fur. The result was extravagantly admired.

  Schiaparelli was assembling a portfolio of designs and taking them around, notably to the designer Maggy Rouff. A male spokesman for that house politely told Schiaparelli she was better equipped to dig potatoes, a remark she would have treated with her customary disdain. Poiret’s nightclub was an evident success, because he was soon back showing clothes at his maison de couture in the Rue Saint-Honoré. In fact, in 1925 he would move to even more elegant quarters on the fashionable rond-point of the Champs-Elysées, a move that the rest of the fashion world would be inspired to emulate.

  A photograph in 1925 of the Maison Paul Poiret after its move shows luxurious fabrics in almost blinding Oriental splendor, along with patterned curtains, silk-velvet divans, pillows, and hangings. One of his postwar showings was the first Elsa had ever attended, and she went there to help an American friend buy some Poirets. Backstage after the show, the friend was trying on clothes when Elsa’s attention was drawn to a particularly irresistible coat. With great daring, she slipped it on. It was a capacious design, cut from heavy black upholstery velvet with vivid stripes, and lined with blue crepe de chine. It was a sensation.

  Suddenly the great man appeared. The coat was perfect for her, he said. Why didn’t she buy it? Perhaps he even offered it to her wholesale. She explained why she couldn’t. Never mind. He would give it to her. “Soon I had a whole wardrobe, for he kept on giving me wonderful clothes whenever I needed them—and also when I did not need them—black embroidered with silver, white embroidered with gold, so that nobody knew how I would appear. Sometimes I led fashion. At other times, wearing my ordinary clothes, I appeared like my own ugly sister!” With that admission Schiaparelli summed up the deep human need that would underlie her search for the perfect dress.

  Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson River in New York State, is known for hot summers and cold winters. So presumably Willie de Kerlor took his mink-lined overcoat along when he traveled there early in February 1921 to investigate the death of an unknown man, whose body was found beside the gun that killed him. Also found in his pocket was a silver medallion that was traced to a Catholic church in New York City. In this case De Kerlor’s contribution was limited to the comment that the authorities had their first reliable lead. This elementary conclusion somehow made local headlines.

  Newspaper coverage of the period is notable for its inaccuracy as well as its credulousness where soothsayers, mediums, psychologists—in short, any smooth-talking, self-appointed expert—were concerned. Another local paper in New York State, the Binghamton Press, gave De Kerlor a picture, some space, and respectful attention on learning that he had recently moved to Washington, DC. The paper reported that he was there to prepare himself for a naval disarmament conference for which the great powers, including those of the U.S., Italy, Britain, and France, were gathering in the face of some distressing signs of rising Japanese militarism. De Kerlor intended to study the physiognomy of the delegates, give them a “mental X-ray,” it was said, and predict the future of Europe. As one might have guessed, his subsequent findings, published in the Utica Sunday Tribune of January 1, 1922, were long on description and contained no news about the future of Europe whatsoever. Not that anyone seemed to mind. Close readers, however, might have perceived that the seer saved his most optimistic commentary for the head of the American delegation. All one had to do was look at that forehead to judge the mettle of the man, “the largest, biggest, highest caliber head at the conference table.”

  Judicious praise, quick thinking, and the ability to be in the right place at the right time kept De Kerlor afloat, however precariously. He had maintained his ties with psychical circles in Europe, where periodic conventions were held to exchange ideas and hear research papers under the highly misleading title of “experimental psychology.” De Kerlor told the Utica Sunday Tribune that he would be “the” U.S. delegate (there would be several) to the seventh international congress on that specialty in Paris in 1923. In fact there was no such conference in Paris that year, but there was an International Congress of Psychology under the auspices of the British Society for Psychical Research in Oxford in the summer of 1923. For obvious reasons De Kerlor did not go to England. Although seemingly based in New York, he was continually on the move. He was in Cuba from January to August 1922 for unknown reasons; he is listed on the ship’s manifest of the S.S. Cuba in August as he returned from Havana to Key West. Since he obtained his Polish passport that year, he travelled as a Pole, called himself a journalist, and stated he was back in the U.S. to stay.

  However, he returned to Havana three months later, in November. He later explained he was establishing a branch of the Congress for Experimental Psychology in Cuba. He was there for a few months; then, in March 1923, he boarded the S.S. Lafayette of the French Line to Veracruz. He spent his time organizing yet another branch in Mexico City. In December 1923 he crossed a footbridge from Mexican soil into the U.S. at Laredo, Texas. He was stopped at the border. He was claiming to be Polish, but the Bureau of Immigration had evidence, thanks to his application for U.S. citizenship filed several years before but never completed, that he was actually Swiss. That quota was filled. He would have to wait for a year in Mexico and try again.

  De Kerlor appealed, and the decision went to a board of review in San Antonio, Texas. He had a friend in Washington, a Dr. Mitchell Carroll, who could argue on his behalf. While waiting for Dr. Carroll to arrive, De Kerlor launched an intensive charm campaign. The result was that “before we could get him before the board he had told us so much about his Experimental Psychology that the members of the board had formed an opinion of the respectability of his so-called profession, and of the bona fides of his claim to exemption.” Never mind. Once he arrived, Dr. Carroll argued successfully that the good doctor was genuine and that an exception should be made in his case. By February 1924 the gay deceiver was back in the country with his salesmanship intact and a new set of headlines for the papers.

  La Prensa of San Antonio reported, “From Mexico comes Dr. De Kerlor who informs La Prensa that in the School of Advanced Studies, the National University of Mexico, he presented some experimental studies in metaphysics, a study he has been doing for years and has resulted in the invention of an instrument
to demonstrate the existence of brain radiation,” not described. “In his spare time, said doctor had been digging for archaeological finds in remote areas of Mexico and had found startling evidence of hitherto unsuspected ancient temples and tombs believed to belong to an ancient colony of Mayans …” He was irrepressible.

  While De Kerlor was slogging through the jungles of South America, Elsa was in search of an apartment of her own. She found a small refuge in the Rue de l’Université, not far from Blanche; it had a living room on the ground floor and a bedroom upstairs. Her landlord, a gentleman of means, took a liking to her and would occasionally present her with a few bottles of fine wine or a special dish made by his expert chef. Gogo, who was much improved, was staying with her while her mother was eking out a living on the fringes of the fashion world as a designer for the Maison Lambal. She was also getting a French divorce, which came through on March 21, 1924. It cost 19 francs and 5 centimes. This would have needed a certain amount of cooperation from De Kerlor, and he was listed on the divorce papers with a Paris address. He took 82 Rue des Petits-Champs, which could have been the address of the ever-helpful Gaby. De Kerlor knew perfectly well what was happening three thousand miles away because, in one of his many declarations coming from and going to the U.S., he called himself single. As for Schiaparelli, there is no doubt that the failure of the marriage left a scar, and the sudden death of Laurenti would only have added to her misery. In her memoir she states that she would have a series of friendships, “sometimes tender, sometimes detached, witty and sharp and short.” She would not marry again.

  Confidences, or confessions, put down on paper with a measure of detachment, constantly refer to herself in the third person. The following comment is an illuminating example: “Schiap had arrived at a turning-point in her life where she wondered what it was all about and what life was for. But though things were dark and mysterious she was nearly happy—with the happiness of the tramp who, having found a room for the night, watches the winds and rain raging outside.”

  As “nearly happy,” she was on the alert for a certain something that would catapult her into the limelight. It arrived in a curious way. James Laver has described the many radical changes in clothing design that were originally made for sports clothes. During the reign of George III, aristocrats out hunting were looking for an alternative to their impractical silk coats and white silk stockings. So a coat in plain cloth was the alternative, sliced in front and bisected in the back to accommodate the rider, who exchanged his stockings and dainty shoes for boots, and his three-cornered hat for a helmet. By the early years of the nineteenth century, “what had been sports clothes had become the ordinary wear of fashionable men both in London and Paris.” Today, formal evening wear for men is still faithful to the design originally meant for horseback riders. As for women, the sports of biking and tennis required them to abandon their heavy skirts for something more daring, i.e., bloomers and split skirts that came above the ankle. And in the 1920s the sweater, that shapeless garment, was strictly utilitarian country wear. Until Schiaparelli.

  She writes that a “very smart” American woman came to visit her wearing a most unusual sweater. She herself avoided wearing sports clothes, including sweaters (or jumpers, as the English call them), because she looked awful, “so much like a scarecrow … that I expected even the birds of the fields to fly away from me.” This one was not shapeless at all but had what Schiaparelli called a “steady” look. And in fact it was far less malleable than the ordinary woolen garment because of its design, a double stitch. Two colors of yarn were worked together. The first, perhaps black, was knitted in the usual stockinette pattern. The secret was a second strand of wool in a contrasting color, perhaps white, that was caught up every fourth or fifth stitch. The result was an interesting flecked effect that also gave structure to a woolen garment, impossible to achieve in the usual way. It turned out that the sweater was hand-knitted by an Armenian woman, Aroosiag Mikaëlian, known as “Mike,” who, with a small group of knitters, made goods for the wholesale trade in partnership with her brother. Schiaparelli went to see her. It was the start of a famous collaboration.

  Elsa at the start of her career, “nearly happy,” 1920s (illustration credit 4.1)

  Schiaparelli designed a plain V-neck sweater with three-quarter-length sleeves that had a bowknot at the neck in a trompe l’oeil design, with matching panels at the cuffs. By then, Chanel was selling machine-knitted dresses and sweaters, but no one had thought much about pattern, let alone trompe l’oeil. Mike, an expert in the technique and sizing required, agreed to try. The first result was a disaster. The second, something that might have fitted Gogo. The third, in black and white, was perfection.

  A photograph exists of Schiaparelli in a variation of this design, sitting, her piquant profile set off by a neat little cap that comes down over her eyes. One can imagine her plotting her debut with all the surprise and cunning of Napoleon. She would choose her moment. She did not have to wait long, because she was invited to a luncheon at which there would be some rich, smart women and, more to the point, American buyers. Perhaps she waited to arrive until everyone was seated, for maximum effect. She was a sensation.

  She had intuitively hit on an idea that women wanted even if they did not know it, a way of dressing that bridged the gulf between the casual and the dressy—one socialite quickly added a row of pearls. After the lunch Schiaparelli was besieged with guests who wanted a sweater just like hers. But she was saving that information for the New York buyer from Abraham & Straus who happened to be at the lunch and wanted forty sweaters exactly like that one. In two weeks. Oh yes, and she wanted forty matching skirts as well. Schiaparelli had no idea how she was going to do that. But she knew better than to say no. Somehow, she and her circle of knitters made it happen. The December 1927 issue of Vogue called her sweater “an artistic masterpiece and a triumph of color blending.” She was in business.

  Women’s Wear Daily, that unerring barometer of shifting moods, provided a running commentary on this new designer of “strikingly original sweaters.” These were appearing in an amazing variety of geometrical patterns, cut straight to mid-hip and usually paired with something quite elegant, like pleated silk, that took them far from the tennis court or, for that matter, the golf course. Dilys Blum wrote, “Worn with crepe de chine skirts with front pleats, they were accessorized with matching scarves and sport socks that had the sweater’s pattern repeated on the sock’s cuff. For her May 1927 collection, Schiaparelli favored gray and added hand-knitted wool jackets edged in grosgrain ribbon that fastened with a double button at the waist, matching pullovers, and wool skirts—clothing ideal for resort wear, walking in town, or shopping. The designer’s name quickly became synonymous with the hand-knitted sweater, so that by August 1928 The New Yorker could confidently state that ‘Schiaparelli, after all, belongs to knitted sweaters and they to her.’ ”

  What made Schiaparelli so newsworthy was her rapid, seemingly bewildering range of ideas, and these were practically free gifts to the New York rag trade. All a department store buyer had to do was acquire a single Schiaparelli original, and imitation Schiaparellis could be manufactured within days, to be sold at a fraction of the original price. Her bowknit sweater made the stores in every conceivable color and was so popular that the Ladies’ Home Journal of November 1928 offered instructions on how to knit one yourself. Schiaparelli’s name is not even mentioned.

  Elsa at work: hitting on an idea (illustration credit 4.2)

  The situation was different in France, where buyers were not allowed to make their own copies but bought the necessary quantities from the fashion houses themselves. In New York, Macy’s offered an original Schiaparelli sweater with a modernistic skyscraper for $34.75 at the same time that a similar Schiaparelli was being sold elsewhere for $4.95.

  Watching helplessly as her best ideas were being stolen, Schiaparelli was powerless to intervene. She did, however, decide that if she was selling to an American buyer sh
e could certainly up the price. She also abandoned her practice of selling sweaters wholesale to other designers after she learned that one of them had sold for 900 francs a model for which she had been asking 350 francs. She was in a fast-moving, competitive world in which today’s sensation is tomorrow’s bore, and the miracle is how quickly she adapted. In the space of two or three years she had attracted the attention of a wealthy businessman. He was Charles Kahn, associated with the Galeries Lafayette, the huge Paris department store. As partners, they formally launched the firm of Schiaparelli in December 1927. By then the two rooms of the Rue de l’Université were full to overflowing. It was time to launch her first maison de couture, and that could only be on the Rue de la Paix. Number 4.

  Schiaparelli moved from “one room up and one down” to relatively spacious quarters: bedroom, sitting room, workroom, and sales room. Outside her doors was a sign in simple, black-and-white letters, “Pour le Sport.” Location is everything, and with a single coup she had landed herself in the middle of the most elegant section of Paris, with the Place Vendôme at one end and the glorious façade of the Opéra at the other. Her quarters were, however, in the attic—one does not know whether customers were whisked up in an elevator or had to climb the flights of stairs—cold in winter and stifling in summer. Since she was also living there, she was in a sense eating and sleeping in a shop window. That, as it turned out, was a stunt she tried in one of her own windows later on (but with somebody else).

  Being on constant display mattered less than it might, since Schiaparelli Inc. was her life, and because she was by nature extremely well organized, so that even her desk had an unused look. She had become friendly with Jean-Michel Frank, a brilliant young interior designer soon to be taken up by wealthy clients internationally, including the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Noailles, on the Place des États-Unis, and Nelson Rockefeller in New York. Frank had the gift of luxe pauvre, meaning that his style was almost Japanese in its restrained use of color and furnishings, but combined with opulent materials. For instance, his neutral walls in shades of beige or honey, or subtle shades of white, would be overlaid with squares of parchment or vellum to give the whole room a golden glow. Or he would cover walls in contrasting strands of straw, applied at excruciating length to create a dazzling overall effect of watered silk. In this case Frank was dealing with a tight budget, in the early stages of his career (he was thirty) and anxious to please. He chose white walls and black furniture, most of it small and rectilinear so that it could be easily moved around. Nothing was to detract from the displays, artfully arranged, of scarves, handbags, gloves, socks, and the like, for Schiaparelli was already branching out. She wrote, “He was small in stature, and had a terrific and desperate inferiority complex, but limitless wit. He started an entirely new way of furnishing a house from the kitchen upwards.”