Elsa Schiaparelli vintage costume jewellery

Elsa Schiaparelli vintage costume jewellery

Born in Rome, Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) is a talented jewelry designer, who worked in a surreal direction that shocked critics in the 1930s. However, her products quickly gained popularity and still admired by modern collectors.
Just like Coco Chanel, Schiaparelli believed that costume jewelry is both an independent art and an integral part of clothing. However, unlike the elegant classical design of Chanel’s products, the decorations of Schiaparelli made in 1920-30’s had unexpected forms. She used circus and astrological motifs, and the natural forms of flora and fauna acquired an irrational stylized character. The strangest specimens included pea pods as pendants in necklaces and brooches in the form of human eyes… .
Undoubtedly, the modernist trend of the twentieth century – surrealism influenced her creativity. Besides, she had creative contacts with the vivid representatives of this direction. The influence of surrealism on her works is most noticeable in the dramatic collection of 1936 “Shocking Pink”.

According to her biography, in the early 1920’s she moved to New York and became a screenwriter. However, soon she returned to Paris and opened her first fashion house on the Rue de la Paix in Paris. She became a competitor and friend of Coco Chanel and Salvador Dali.

In 1940, she moved to New York and returned to her fashion house in Paris only in 1945. After selling her store in Paris in 1954, giving way to her talented assistants Hubert Givenchy and Pierre Cardin, she returned to New York and began the second phase of her work. In the 1950s, Schiaparelli released a series of abstract, floral and animal motif jewelry with the characteristic use of unusual stones and colors.

Elsa Schiaparelli vintage costume jewellery

These ornaments and products of the 1940s are the most popular among collectors today (copies of the 1930s are very rare). The collector should know that the early works of Schiaparelli are not signed, although on some of them her name is in big block letters on a rectangular cartouche.

Surrealist artists Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau and Christian Berar were close friends of Schiaparelli. They developed the design of jewelry for her, and their concept of surrealism influenced the work of Schiaparelli.

Elsa Schiaparelli died in 1973.