When you talk about utilitarian art, the elephant in the room is always fashion. As fashion houses expand to encompass lifestyle brands, most art with a utilitarian function might fall into the fashion category. It is not uncommon to see museum retrospectives now for fashion designers. But it is not always an easy alliance.

The best-case scenario for calling fashion fine art is Elsa Schiaparelli. She was friends with many of the Surrealists and collaborated with artists. Her most famous artist collaborations were with Salvador Dalí. This partnership gave us the infamous photo of Wallis Simpson modeling a lobster dress. It is also credited as the source of her most iconic design: a hat shaped like a shoe. Jean Cocteau drawings were incorporated into decorative motifs on clothing, and he designed jewelry that was sold under the Schiaparelli brand. Meret Oppenheim offered a metal and fur bracelet. Man Ray’s painting Le Beau Temps was inspired by a Schiaparelli collection. Picasso’s Portrait of Dora Marr features a piece of Schiaparelli jewelry. A Magritte painting, The Treachery of Images, inspired her men’s fragrance. Leonor Fini designed the bottle for her most famous perfume. Giacometti designed columns and lamps for her salon. She made gloves based on a Man Ray photo of hands that Picasso had painted to look like they were wearing gloves.

Because she lacked any training in design essentials, she really did approach the creation of clothing as if she were making art. She would drape fabric on herself and work intuitively. Despite this naivete, fashionistas often comment on how well her clothing fits the body.

She led the kind of life that inspires biopics, but there haven’t been any yet. She was born and raised in an Italian palace—many of her relatives were noted intellectuals. She spent time in New York, where her best friend was Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia (her relationships with many artists can be traced back to this friendship). Most of her fashion career took place in Paris between 1927 and 1954. In 1954 she published a memoir called Shocking Life and retired.

While there isn’t a definitive documentary about her career, she inspires the kind of passion that causes people to assemble photographs into short films that get posted to YouTube. The best overview of her work (with loads of rare images) is called The Surrealist Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, which is part of a series called “Fashion History Sessions.” If you are going down a YouTube rabbit hole in search of other clips
about her, be sure to include her first name. Her brand is still very active, and clips abound of recent shows bearing her surname.