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She alternately pays homage to antiquity with “La Collection Païenne” then to butterflies, music and the circus with embroideries of acrobats and animals.
From her provocative complicity with Salvador Dalí are born her lobster evening dress, her stiletto hat and her telephone dial compact.
In 1935, she left her studio on rue de la Paix for 21 Place Vendôme and entrusted the layout and decoration of her new place to Michel Frank.
Elegant women love her extravagance and originality with cheerful eccentricity. Elsa Schiaparelli imagines her famous “shocking” pink and has fun playing with placing a scarf in a dizzying neckline or leaving her thumb and index finger bare on her gloves by adding emery paper and matches.
Maison Lesage embroiders the works of her artist friends such as Cocteau and his poems according to her imagination.
A remarkable and incredible woman, she imagines perfumes in her humorous image «Soucis», «Salut» and «Schiap».
In 1936, she asked Léonor Fini for a bottle featuring the voluptuous curves of Mae West for her famous perfume “Shocking” which was followed by a line of cosmetics.
Elsa Schiaparelli
in collaboration with Salvador Dalí — Evening dress 1937 Silk
© Philadelphia Museum of Art