Elsa Schiaparelli
Page 11
Schiaparelli, however, went farther than Chanel in that, from the start, she used her considerable ingenuity to make clothes even more relevant, in one sense, and useful, in another. There is a photograph of her walking down a London street in 1931, stopping to demonstrate convincingly that she was wearing a daringly divided skirt. She was, of course, not the first to come up with the idea. A certain Amelia Bloomer had proposed a demure version as far back as 1850, but the “bloomer,” as it came to be known, had to wait another fifty years before it adorned a few brave spirits on bicycles. Public opinion remained opposed; loose-fitting trousers were tolerated as vacation wear but not on the street. However, nothing could stop the tennis players. In 1930, the Spanish ace Lili de Alvarez played in an outfit designed for her by Schiaparelli: a sleeveless white tunic top and discreetly but clearly divided skirt.
For Schiaparelli, the goal was practicality, and her ability to design eminently sensible clothes is one of her lesser-known talents. For instance, some women needed to wear bras under their swimsuits, but this could not be done elegantly with most suits, cut low in the back. Schiaparelli had an answer to that. She designed a swimsuit with its own bra, adding hidden straps that crossed at the back and closed around the waist to keep everything in place. Then she made a drawing to scale of her invention and took out a patent on it. The swimsuit design was sold to Best & Company and reproduced in 1930. Such an accomplishment ought to have put paid to the canard, which still exists, that as a seamstress she had no idea what she was doing. The truth seldom makes a good story.
Then there was the one-piece dress that came in two parts. Quite why Schiaparelli thought of it is not clear, but it must have dawned on her that there had to be another way to put on a dress besides pulling it over one’s head. Her ingenious solution, based on an apron, was to make two halves of a dress, each half with a single armhole. To hold it all together, the ties of one half were designed to go through the slits of the other half, uniting them both at the waistline. There were doubtless a few strategically placed buttonholes as well. The dress, meant for beach wear, was made in four shades of tussore silk. This idea, first launched in 1930, was taken up with enthusiasm by buyers and manufacturers, because it finessed the eternal problem of making clothes exactly to size. A simpler version, called the wrap dress, could be slipped on and off like a pinafore and was also so successful that Schiaparelli kept experimenting with the idea in different versions, a solution that is nowadays claimed as her own invention by another designer. She also went to work on furs at an early stage. No one had thought of making a fur scarf, so she made one. In the shape of a triangle, it was meant to be loosely knotted around the neck and was another success. Fur trims had long been used on cloth outerwear, but how about cloth accents on fur? Another novel idea. Experimenting with evening wear was the next step. Ladies in sleeveless gowns with low-cut necklines knew what it was like to be seated in a draft, before the days of central heating, during an interminable dinner. How about a matching jacket?
The idea is so simple and obvious one is surprised that Schiaparelli was the first to think of it. She wrote that she designed a plain black sheath of crepe de chine down to the ground, with a white crepe de chine jacket with a shawl collar and long sashes that crossed in the back and tied in front. “Stark simplicity.” It was an immediate success, was reproduced all over the world, and proved to be the most successful dress of her career, she added. One can see the advantages of the very long sash that can be applied in different ways, the simple neckline that lends itself to jewelry, and the flattering lines that suit most everyone. One has only to contrast this solution with the fussy elaboration of evening gowns a few decades before to see how its streamlined chic would appeal to a certain smart set. Caresse Crosby, wife of Harry and co-founder with him of the Black Sun Press in 1927, is a typical example. She wrote with satisfaction that she made a sensation in the dress one evening after dinner, as she stood savoring a green mint and displaying her husband’s fabulous gift, a necklace of diamonds to match her jade-and-diamond earrings.
Decorously divided skirts were the clear answer to the changed lifestyle of women, but they took time to become generally accepted. This design, meant for sport, was made in 1940. (illustration credit 5.5)
Schiaparelli’s invention of a swimsuit with a built-in bra, which she patented in 1930 (illustration credit 5.6)
Fashion famously celebrates the ephemeral, but some fads refuse to die. Schiaparelli, who was already delving into hats, came up with something she called the “Mad Cap” in 1932. It was also simplicity itself, a single tube of stretchy knit with pointed corners that could be pulled into almost any shape. The actress Ina Claire picked it up and was photographed holding a glass of wine, with a knowing wink and the Mad Cap saucily arranged so that the point stood on top of her head. It was something about the point. One does not know exactly, but an American manufacturer snapped up his perfectly legal single copy, renamed it the pixie hat, and then proceeded to sell it and make millions. It appeared everywhere, which was extremely galling. Finally, when her hat appeared on a baby, Schiaparelli had had enough. She decreed that every single copy of the horrible hat in stock be destroyed. It was the least she could do.
This extraordinary cocktail dress of black jersey was Schiaparelli’s ingenious solution: how to produce a garment without a single seam. (It did, however, have one button.) It came with a matching strapless bra. (illustration credit 5.7)
For the home sewer, hats she could make herself, plus a minor variation of the “Mad Cap” or “Pixie Hat,” version “C,” which was so popular Schiaparelli could hardly bear to look at it (illustration credit 5.8)
It is true that Schiaparelli was, from her debut, launching a vogue that was then picked up and made millions for somebody else, but that is not the full picture. She, too, was doing very well. It rapidly became clear that the attic suite at 4 Rue de la Paix was not big enough, so she rented more rooms on the second (American third) floor—and still needed space. When Janet Flanner interviewed her early in 1932, she was in one of her periodic spasms of expansion and redecoration, along with her more or less resident designer, Jean-Michel Frank. They arranged the showroom with a nautical motif, stretching ropes on which to hang the scarves, belts, and sweaters she was designing. Then they added black patent-leather curtains and black wood furniture and, as the finishing touch, commissioned a mural of the Basque coast against a white wall in vivid blues and greens. Instead of “Pour le Sport” the house of Schiaparelli was now advertising itself as “Pour la Ville—Pour le Soir” (For Town—For Evening), and all the rich ladies who traipsed up to the attic did not have so far to go. Rich they were, from the beginning; society beauties, members of the burgeoning café society, nouveaux riches, film stars, and more. All this in five years.
At that point Schiaparelli and her dog had long since given up the fight to get any sleep. Frank was again put to work, on the interior of a rather nice apartment on the Boulevard Saint-Germain containing a bedroom, a drawing room, sitting and dining rooms, one that, for the first time, she did not have to share with her cher public. She moved there in 1931. The walls were stark white. Against them, Frank placed a huge orange leather couch of his own design, some black tables with glass tops, curtains made of leather, and two armchairs in green, covered with some sort of newfangled rubber with a rigid surface and a high gloss. The dining-room chairs were made of the same material in white. It was all very hard-edged, sharp, chic, and calculated to shock. As befitted her new status, Schiaparelli commissioned a portrait. This was rather unexpected and not exactly flattering; it showed her in the plainest of black dresses, simply dressed hair, and the kind of expression to be expected of someone who has not slept for weeks. But it was expertly done, and its stripped-down look was exactly right for the decor. People thought it had to be by one of her friends, Pavel Tchelitchew, but recent research has established that it was by a lesser painter, a Romanian named William C. Grimm, who was prominent in social
circles.
The evidence will show that Schiaparelli was not only a very good cook and charming hostess but that her invitations were prized. However, her first real attempt at serious entertaining in the apartment on the Boulevard Saint-Germain did not go well. The first glitch came when Coco Chanel, who was one of the guests, looked around her in horror and then shuddered “as if she were passing a cemetery,” Schiaparelli wrote. Frank’s choices of upholstery were so very much the dernier cri that nobody knew how they would behave when actually sat upon. As it turned out, at very low temperatures the rubber began to melt. When the guests finally got up after the meal, their clothes were decorated with interesting white prints. Schiaparelli found it all fascinating. “They looked like strange caricatures of the sweaters that had paid for the meal!” What Chanel thought is not recorded.
Schiaparelli at home in 1936, contemplating the bust of her ever-absent daughter, Gogo (illustration credit 5.9)
Another painting, this one a focal point of the dining room, was a semi-abstract, almost monumental depiction of a mother and child, again with a doubtful attribution to Tchelitchew. In its uncompromising lines and prominent placement over the fireplace, it made clear what was uppermost in Schiaparelli’s mind, the tragic circumstances that had led to their separation. Very little evidence exists of the course of Gogo’s treatment, but the stark facts are that she was somewhere other than Paris when most of the operations were performed, and sometimes in another country. Schiaparelli had placed her in a school, Les Colombettes in Lausanne, Switzerland, so as to be near the leading authority on infantile paralysis, and more operations loomed—this for a child of eight or nine years old. Schiaparelli wrote, “I was deeply affected at having to leave her so very young, just at the moment when a child begins like a bud to take the colour of the flower, with strangers, knowing that she would have to go through great pain.”
Gogo’s account is somewhat at odds with this summary. She recalled: “When I was first sent off to my Swiss school, Mummy’s chauffeur, Pierre, put me on the train in Paris with a name tag around my neck. I got off in Lausanne, sat on my suitcase, and waited. After a while the station master called the school, and they sent a frightening woman with a cleft palate to fetch me. She informed me that I was two weeks early and would have to spend my days sorting linens with her and sleep alone in the dormitory at night. Mother had obviously confused the date.” The two reunited for the summers, and, Schiaparelli added, “we spent as much time as possible together in Paris, where I tried to make up for the long separations. She had started to resent my work because it kept me away from her …” There is no doubt that her busiest times always seemed to coincide with Gogo’s school breaks. And if there was an emergency, Gogo was usually very far away. Schiaparelli wrote that she was working on her first collection—something that would establish her as an important new designer—when she had a phone call at five one morning. She does not give the date, but it was probably some time in 1928, and from Lausanne. Gogo’s appendix had burst and an infection had set in. She might die. Did they have Schiaparelli’s permission to operate? She gave it, then took the overnight train to Lausanne, a trip that now takes under four hours by a fast train but in those days probably took six or seven hours.
Gogo’s life hung in the balance for a month. Schiaparelli would stay in Lausanne for a day and a night, then head back to Paris for two days before boarding another train to Lausanne. Most of her collection was designed during those interminable train rides. “I never knew if I were going to find Gogo smiling or limp—I never dared to hope. At last she got better, and I had my first real show.”
After many years and numerous operations, Gogo had recovered, could ride and ski, and her legs, like stalks, were beginning to take on normal contours. But she would always limp. The experience had led to emotional scars that are evident in a photograph of her as an adolescent. Her small chin tucked into her neck, her brows lowered, she is shrinking away from the camera as if from a menacing stranger, all too clearly defenseless and scared.
One of Elsa’s small economies was to look for friends who would share apartments with her, and so far she had been lucky. She was lucky again when a girl she had known since childhood, almost a sister, arrived in Paris, the Countess Gabriella di Robilant. “Gab,” as she was called, was from a distinguished family of military men and statesmen. One of her ancestors had been awarded the title of count in the seventeenth century. Her grandfather was a general, ambassador, and foreign minister, and her father, General Count Mario Nicoli di Robilant, had commanded the Fourth Italian Army before Monte Grappa in World War I, and later represented Italy on the Supreme War Council. “Gab” herself had served in World War I along with her sister Irene in a radiological ambulance that had been donated by the U.S. In 1920 Irene moved to New York to become associate manager of the Italy-America Society, which would have been a life-saving piece of news for Elsa just then and given her a new circle of friends. Both sisters were cultured, optimistic, and outgoing and had active social lives. “Gab” joined Elsa on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, an apartment that came in two units, with separate entrances. “We communicated with each other by telephone,” Elsa wrote, “never going into each other’s flat without first announcing ourselves. Thus we preserved our friendship and, at the same time, we did not feel alone.”
“Gab” occasionally modeled for Schiaparelli, but plenty of other cultured and socially well-placed women worked full time, including the Comtesse de la Falaise, who was Gloria Swanson’s former sister-in-law, the Comtesse Boisrevain, and Bianca Mosca, Schiaparelli’s cousin. It did not hurt that these well-bred, polite, and pretty ladies, who acted as her saleswomen, were perfectly placed to find wealthy clients because they were being invited everywhere. Those clients were, she wrote, “ultra-smart” but conservative in their dress, as were the wives of businessmen, diplomats, and bankers. They liked severe suits and understated black dresses. Schiaparelli’s early designs reflect this trend. One of her most successful wrap-around dresses was bought by the artist Vera White, who, with her wealthy husband, Samuel White III, was buying early modern art, including the photographs of Schiaparelli’s friend Man Ray. The dress, in a rough-textured wool, had silk crepe sleeves in the same dull black, as well as trompe l’oeil silk revers and an intricately gathered silk sash. It was worn with a sleek fitted coat in a 7/8 length, with a flared skirt and buttons down the front. Even today, for a formal afternoon reception it would be the quintessence of chic.
Then Bettina Shaw Jones arrived in Schiaparelli’s life. There is a photograph of her taken beside a swimming pool in 1928, wearing one of Schiaparelli’s designs for “le Sport,” somewhere between resort wear and an actual swimsuit. She is lounging against some modernistic steps, holding a cigarette as if in a desultory argument with a man seated near her, one that he is evidently losing. Taken by George Hoyningen-Huene, it became one of the most celebrated images in twentieth-century fashion photography. It also shows the qualities that Bettina possessed to perfection. It did not matter that the outfit—a striped top, shorts, and something striped and socklike on her feet, from Schiaparelli’s first collection—was not particularly flattering, and perilously close to being clownish. Bettina could carry it off. Flanner wrote four years later (1932) that her “saintlike skeleton and pale marble looks are now regarded by tout Paris as a fantastic ensemble permanent to the house’s collection.”
Bettina gate-crashed her way into Schiaparelli’s life as she did into much else. A Long Island socialite, she had begun writing surrealist short stories when she was seventeen, worked briefly for a Wall Street investment company, and was seen at all the best coming-out parties. Born on Staten Island in 1902, in those days she was “Betty,” a mistake she corrected quickly, probably on her first trip to Paris at the age of eighteen. On another of her trips, in 1925 or 1926, she met Gaston Bergery, ten years her senior, a lawyer and prominent young politician. She fell madly in love. Unfortunately, her timing was off; Bergery was di
vorcing his first wife and about to contract a brief marriage with Lyubov Krasina, daughter of the Russian diplomat Leonid Krasin, no doubt because she was pregnant. Bettina also fell for the young Comte Alain Richard le Bailly de La Falaise, three years younger than herself, who would end up marrying Maxine Birley, an English socialite who became one of Schiaparelli’s models. All that was in the future. For the moment she loved them both, “like a donkey between two carrots,” she wrote. But then it seemed that Gaston’s marriage might be very brief indeed. In any event, in the autumn of 1927 she was determined to get back to Paris, but she did not have any money. In October 1927, wearing her very best suit and coat, Bettina Shaw Jones boarded the RMS Mauretania bound for Le Havre. Once the gangways were up and the ship was steaming out of New York harbor, she emerged and calmly stated that she did not have a ticket—or a cabin. Things looked bleak for a bit. But then an admiring stranger, a wealthy Florida businessman, heard of her plight and took out his checkbook. He was Alfred I. Barton, who would go on to found the Surf Club in Miami Beach a few years later. Surrounded by delightful companions, Bettina enjoyed a pleasant crossing—she had taken the precaution of packing a toothbrush and a passport—and duly arrived. Her telegram home simply said “Paris, happy well love Bettina.”
Bettina Shaw Jones, later Bettina Bergery, Schiaparelli’s indispensable majordomo (illustration credit 5.10)
Whether Gaston met her at the boat, or was even particularly happy to see her, is not known. But then it seemed they were seeing each other, and in due course, discreetly engaged. No one could resist Bettina for long. She is remembered as a born diarist with a gift for close observation and a scintillating turn of phrase. She used to insist she was never a mannequin for Schiaparelli’s clothes because she was not pretty enough. By that she must have meant on the runway, because there are plenty of photographs showing her wearing Schiaparellis in the early years. Her gift lay in putting people at their ease with some droll comment one could not resist; she could be kind or cutting. Male or female, she was usually in love with somebody, and invited everywhere, which made talking to Bettina absolutely de rigueur the morning after a party. So it was odd that Schiaparelli, so good at spotting talent, took so long to see Bettina’s. In her memoir Schiaparelli records their first meeting, perhaps shortly after Bettina got off the boat in 1927. She conceded that the slim young American had a striking personality. But when asked what she could do, Bettina replied, “Nothing.” Schiaparelli sent her away. Bettina kept coming back and Schiaparelli kept saying no. Finally, Elsa conceded she might be able to use her somewhere. Bettina’s gifts at last made themselves clear, and she became Schiaparelli’s first public-relations director as well as a designer of window displays. In 1954 Schiaparelli could write that Bettina was still with her, “the soul of supreme and indestructible loyalty.”