The Surreal Life of Elsa Schiaparelli

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

0:31Minky, M-I-N-K-Y, Couture, C-O-U-T-U-R-E, dot com. Go to MinkyCouture.com and get your Minky Couture blanket now before everyone in your house claims it is theirs. 30 years ago, an island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City. Who will you trust? Your friends and neighbors? Or will you trust the people five miles overseas? This is a story about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough. But we're not stopping, are we? Listen to Revisionist History, The Staten Island Problem on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:13Why do some women yearn for Shakira's black hair to make a comeback? And whatever happened to the power couple of my dreams, Mariah Carey and Luis Miguel? I'm Maria Garcia. You may remember me from my podcast, Anything for Selena, or My Divo. And now I'm back to unpack more stories from the present and the past. Listen to Muy Excited with Maria Garcia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Menke. Listener discretion advised. It's May of 1937, and Wallace Simpson is the most hated woman in England.

2:01Only months earlier, her soon-to-be husband, King Edward VIII, had announced his abdication after learning Wallace would not receive the title of Her Royal Highness. He declared over radio broadcast, I have found it impossible to discharge my duties as king without the help and support of the woman I love. Whether or not it had been his intention, Edward had painted a target on his beloved's back. As a twice-divorced American socialite, she was already seen by many as utterly unsuitable for the royal family. But the abdication made her the scapegoat for an entire constitutional crisis. Wallace became a modern Lilith in the eyes of the British public, having seduced and ensnared her target away from his duties.

3:02That May, her divorce from her previous husband was finally finalized, and she and Edward were set to marry in June. As she prepared to become the Duchess of Windsor, Wallace had two choices. To soften her image, or to lean into her reputation as a temptress. How would she do that? Through fashion, of course. She once said, I'm not a beautiful woman. I'm nothing to look at, so the only thing I can do is dress better than anyone else. And dress well she did. For a pre-wedding photoshoot with Vogue, Wallace managed to find a gown that conveyed both an ethereal lightness and a cheeky sexuality. This woman's dinner dress was made of ivory silk organza, perfect for a bride-to-be, except the dress also had one extremely notable detail.

4:07a large printed lobster positioned between her legs. The gown was a collaboration between two prominent friends, the artist Salvador Dali, who repeatedly featured the lobster motif as a representation of sexuality in his work, and the women's fashion designer of the moment, Elsa Schiaparelli. The photo of Simpson, taken by Cecil Beaton and published in an eight-page spread in the June 1937 issue of Vogue, ultimately only fueled the public's hatred of Wallace Simpson. The dress was too bold, too weird, too sexual. But Wallace would get the last laugh in fashion history. Schiaparelli only continued to soar to new heights as a designer, and The Lobster Dress remains one of her most recognizable works to this day.

5:12It currently resides in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where Schiaparelli donated a large archive of her work. Though the Schiaparelli fashion house would shudder in 1954, it was revived in 2013 and has referenced the lobster motif in 21st century designs. The original look represents the magic of Elsa Schiaparelli's work, her ability to tap into the artistic and surreal without sacrificing glamour and wearability. Much of her business was built on her understanding of what the modern woman wanted. For example, she knew to draw the line when Dali wanted to smear the lobster with mayonnaise. Listeners might be familiar with Schiaparelli's name, but they may be surprised to learn of her Italian noble origins, which can be traced back through her maternal line.

6:16That lineage influenced her friends and clients in adulthood. Despite her heritage, the story of scap, as she often called herself, wasn't always as glamorous as her gowns. There was the matter of her conman husband, the cutthroat nature of the couture industry, and later, the suspicion that she may have had more in common with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor beyond fashion. As listeners of this podcast may recall from our episode The Duke and Adolf Hitler, Edward and Wallace are remembered for being, at the very least, Nazi sympathizers. During the Second World War, Elsa was accused of being everything from a Vichy spy to a Nazi collaborator and was monitored by both U.S.

7:15and British intelligence services. Much of their suspicion had to do with her vast network of connections across European nobility and political royalty, and her alleged willingness to use those connections to the best of her advantage. The truth behind those rumors is certainly more complicated than the situation was with the Windsors. This is an episode about the extraordinary rise and near fall of the utterly singular Elsa Schiaparelli. While many nobles and politicians played their part in her success over the years, one cannot deny that in the end, it was all her design. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood.

8:09When Elsa Schiaparelli was born in Rome in September of 1890, her parents were expecting a boy. Unprepared for a daughter, they scrambled for a name at the christening. Her German nurse was called Elsa, so that would do. With her naming, Elsa wrote in her autobiography, The Struggle Had Begun. It was the kind of struggle we have seen many times on this podcast. The struggle of a child who wants for nothing save for warmth and attention. Her father was a successful scholar from a family of successful scholars. Her mother was the daughter of a marquise, and her maternal ancestry could be traced back to the southern aristocrats from Naples, descended from Dukes of Tuscany.

9:04Elsa never spoke much of her mother, Maria Luisa, but we know Maria Luisa grew up as the ugly duckling, always compared to her more beautiful sister. Maria Luisa then replicated that familiar dynamic with her own daughters, with Elsa treated as the inferior beauty compared to her elder sister Beatrice. In her memoir, Elsa recounts an incident in which, convinced of her own ugliness, she decided she wanted to become a beautiful flower. She, quote-unquote, planted seeds in her ears, nose, and mouth, and it took two doctors to remove them all. Years later, her friend Dali would stage a public work by sending a woman to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square with her head entirely covered in flowers.

10:03Young Schiaparelli was an artist in her own right. Her father's books inspired a love of the ancients in her, and as a teenager, she wrote a collection of poems. Elsa showed them to her academic uncle, who later published them. Her parents, horrified by the romantic content of her poems, shipped her off to a Swiss convent school. It was likely there that Elsa first learned to sew, but the free-spirited Italian girl was otherwise horribly at odds with the school's Puritan culture. After getting in trouble for bathing naked, Elsa began a hunger strike. News of her protest made it back to her family, and her father swiftly retrieved her.

10:55Her defiance had won the day, but there would be more to fight at home. Her parents had already chosen her a husband, a wealthy Russian man who utterly repulsed Elsa. By this point, she was in her early 20s, and the threat of making good on the marriage promise loomed ever closer. When a friend offered her a job as a caretaker in England, she jumped at the opportunity to leave behind Rome and her suitor. Elsa traveled to London by train, stopping for a few days in Paris. It was the 1910s, and something radical was happening to French women's clothing. Full-length skirts and petticoats were disappearing.

11:46Structured rigidness was giving way to soft drapery, in part inspired by the Ballet-Rousse's recent production of Scheherazade, with costumes designed by Leon Baxt. During Elsa's brief stay in Paris, she was invited to a ball. Having no dress, she went to the shops and bought bolts of fabric, which she draped upon herself. The dress she engineered was apparently quite the hit, but she hadn't thought much about its practicality, and it began to unravel as the night went on. As she recalled in her memoir, Schiaparelli decided then and there, quote, this is the place where I'm going to live. Still, she had a commitment in London, and while it was no Paris, she enjoyed the opportunity to explore the new city.

12:44One night in London, she attended a lecture on Theosophy, the New Age philosophical religious movement. The lecturer was, in Elsa's opinion, quote, rather handsome in a queer way, and captivated the audience with his talk on the power of the soul. After the lecture, the two began talking and didn't stop. The next morning, they were engaged. When the news reached Elsa's parents, they rushed to London to stop their daughter, but they were too late.

13:38Who exactly was this man, this alleged count? That is a great question, though not a simple one to answer. It might be easier to tell you what he wasn't. He was not a count by any family lineage, nor was he a doctor or a professor as he sometimes claimed to be. He was born Wilhelm Friedrich Wendt, but went by numerous variations of that name, including the one on his marriage license. He hailed from Geneva, but claimed he was Polish, Austrian, French, or English, depending on the day. He offered services as a medium, a clairvoyant, a palm reader, really whatever was en vogue at the moment. It's probably clear to you that what Wilhelm really was, was a con man.

14:37While Elsa likely didn't know the extent of her new husband's mendacious tendencies, how could she, after all, after such a quick elopement, I imagine she was drawn to his confidence in creating his own success. It's a trait mirrored in herself. For example, in London, Wilhelm ran his business out of one Piccadilly Place. Piccadilly Place is not the famed Piccadilly Circus, but rather an alley off the road. But Wilhelm understood it was the name that mattered. Years later, when Schiaparelli first established herself in the Parisian fashion scene, she knew that her shop had to be on the glamorous Rue de la Paix.

15:27Never mind that her living space above the shop was actually a rat-infested attic. In 1915, Wilhelm, or, quote, Dr. Kerlor, was sentenced to six weeks in prison, followed by deportation under the Vagrancy Act, which punished, quote, every person pretending or professing to tell fortunes, or using any subtle craft, by palmistry or otherwise, to deceive and impose on any of his majesty's subjects, end quote. Almost a year to the day after their marriage, Elsa and Wilhelm packed their things and left England. Her memoir does not actually reveal how she felt about this turn of events. Because of the war, Elsa's dream of moving to Paris was not an option.

16:24Instead, the couple crossed the Atlantic on the SS Chicago, which, despite its name, actually sailed to New York. What did Wilhelm do when he reached the land of opportunity? Started reading poems again, of course. I could detail Wilhelm's various New York ventures, including a vaudeville stint, but that would be its own episode. For now, just know life in New York for Elsa was not ideal. The couple was making very little money on their own, and they lived off the wedding dowry and an allowance from Elsa's parents. Five years into marriage, Wilhelm's charm was wearing off. He was once again under suspicion of the law, and his constant endeavors were getting tired.

17:19Elsa was starting to build connections outside of her husband. On a 1916 boat trip, she met Gabrielle Buffet Picabia, wife of the French artist and surrealist Francis Picabia. The two had a number of things in common. For one, Gabrielle was descended from minor French aristocracy, just as Elsa was descended from minor Italian aristocracy. For another, both of their marriages were falling apart. Gabrielle would become an extremely important person in Elsa's life. Despite Elsa's failing marriage, she became pregnant in the fall of 1919. Their daughter, Maria Luisa Yvonne Rada de Kerlor, was born in June of 1920, and Wilhelm appears to have walked out on his family shortly after.

18:15Elsa appears to have never sought out Wilhelm for child support. The girl who had gone on a hunger strike in boarding school had grown into a woman determined to do things her own way. At times, Gabrielle helped take care of the baby, or Elsa boarded the baby with a hired caretaker. The daughter came to be known as Go-Go, and as an adult, she described the origin of her nickname. Her mother was constantly on the move, still maintaining a full social calendar, despite the tenuous financial situation she was in. I would look up and say, Go-Go going go go, Go-Go recounted. So I was called Go-Go, and it stuck.

19:03Ironically, it describes mother's maternal pattern perfectly. End quote. Go-Go's childhood was defined by an early polio diagnosis and time spent between various clinics where Elsa was not always present. They maintained a strained relationship through Gogo's adulthood. Her wedding was conveniently held while her mother was away across the ocean. Elsa's luck in New York was running out. Paris called to her again, and her friend Gabrielle was already on her way there. Before Elsa left New York, she made sure Gogo had an American passport, and she legally changed her surname from Decurlor to Schiaparelli.

19:52Elsa's divorce from Wilhelm was eventually finalized in 1924, and four years later, he was murdered in Mexico under very mysterious circumstances. An enigmatic end for an enigmatic man. Neither his wife nor his daughter had seen him since he'd walked out on them years ago, and Elsa never married again. Elsa and Gogo sailed for France in June of 1922. Paris was struggling after four years of war, but that made it cheap to live in. It's partially what drew Elsa to the capital, alongside other creatives like Picasso, Modigliani, Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein. Women's fashion had become even more radical than when Elsa first visited in the previous decade.

20:50Hemlines had risen above the ankle, and hairdos had risen above the neck. Gabby not only temporarily housed Elsa and Gogo upon their arrival, but found the latter a new doctor working with experimental technology and made the connection that kick-started Elsa's fashion career. Gabby and her husband were friends of Paul Poiret, the designer who, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, quote, effectively established the canon of modern dress and developed the blueprint of the modern fashion industry. He pioneered the draped, corset-free silhouette that was coming to define the era. Poirot hired Gabby to host an event, but she had no money to buy a new evening dress.

21:45As she had done for herself years earlier, Elsa draped the fabric directly onto Gabby's body, creating what would be one of the first-ever Schiaparelli dresses. This time, however, she was more careful with her pins, and the dress didn't become undone over the course of the evening. Poirot conveyed his compliments to the designer, and Elsa decided a designer was exactly what she would become. Schiaparelli began to assemble a portfolio of designs, using herself as a model. While she did not have formal training beyond her convent sewing lessons, The loose, modern style left room for error. Her breakthrough, however, came not from a dress, but a sweater.

22:37Sweaters at this point in history were considered sportswear, and were largely shapeless utilitarian garments. The story goes that Elsa met an American woman wearing a, quote, most unusual sweater, structured and fitted thanks to its double stitching. Elsa found out that the garment had been hand-knitted by an Armenian woman known as Mike and asked her to collaborate. Schiaparelli designed a simple fitted sweater with a witty trompeau bow at the neck, and Mike executed it. The significance of the bow, a printed illusion, was that for the first time, the modern woman did not have to fasten a real bow to her garment, just as she didn't have to layer petticoats or fasten corsets.

23:35The design was nodding to the trimmings of the past while moving with the tide towards casual dressing. Elsa showed the sweaters in her May 1927 collection, and a year later, the New Yorker was confidently stating that, quote,

24:00During that year, Elsa attracted the attention of a businessman named Charles Kahn, associated with the Galeries Lafayette department store. As partners, they formally launched the firm of Schiaparelli in December 1927. Elsa soon launched her first maison de couture, located at 4 Rue de la Paix. The attic above, as mentioned earlier, became her, frankly, dingy living space and studio. As we all know, a woman must have some money and a room of her own if she is to design. Schiaparelli's success would always be in understanding her customer. She once said, In designing, I consider both clothes and the body architecturally.

24:54Structure and line are the all-important factors in the construction of fashions. And, of course, comfort, too. Clothes must look as if they belong to the woman who wears them, or they're not right. You may be thinking that 1927 was a bad time to open a luxury business, but Schiaparelli's philosophy of combining style and practicality made her clothing a desired commodity. She had an excellent eye for seeing holes in the market and understanding how she could fill them. In 1931, exports of French luxury goods were down 50 % from the year before. But for Schiaparelli, her 400 employees were making between 7 ,000 and 8 ,000 garments a year by 1934.

25:50She did excellent business abroad even through the Depression. Americans couldn't get enough of her. The New Yorker claimed, today she is recognized as the leading smart designer. As the House of Schiaparelli grew, so did Elsa's ideas. In the 1930s, she expanded the house's market and began to design more evening wear. Her clothes became more structured, featuring the broad, strong shoulders she's known for today. At the time, Vogue commented, quote,

26:42In 1934, Time featured her on the cover and proclaimed her a genius. Around this time, Elsa began her collaboration with Dolly. Their first design was a suit with descending drawers as pockets. Then there was the tears gown, which featured a print designed to look like tears in the fabric alongside real ones, and a skeleton dress, which featured full-length gloves and a 3D skeleton effect, made to look like the wearer had a second skin. And who could forget the shoe hat, which was, well, a hat in the shape of a shoe. Elsa's surrealist designs were embraced because she was able to transform the abstract into the wearable.

27:37She had bridged the gap between art and commerce. When she was designing, her mind, quote, went up into the rarefied skies of her most fantastic imagination and set off cascades of fireworks. Fantasy and ingenuity broke forth. Elsa designed gloves that looked like hands. Picasso, meanwhile, painted hands that looked like gloves. Elsa's rival Coco Chanel once called her, quote, that Italian artist who makes clothes. It was meant to be a put-down, but can hardly be qualified as such. Speaking of that rivalry, one legend goes that Chanel once invited Elsa to dance and then spun her right into an open flame.

28:29Elsa was less interested in a little black dress and more so in bright hot pink, a shade she invented and dubbed Shocking Pink. When she launched a perfume line, the first and best-known scent would be called Shocking! The bottle, designed with Dali, was shaped like the actress Mae West's torso. In Europe, Schiaparelli had a certain amount of social cachet thanks to her noble lineage, and she was able to easily integrate with the right circles of artists and tastemakers. These duchesses and socialites and actresses became her best clients. Catherine Hepburn credits a Schiaparelli makeover as kickstarting her career, and Elsa began to design costumes for films.

29:27Of her clients, she was less a fan of the English noblewomen, complaining that the, quote, great ladies never paid their bills. Of those women, Bettina Shaw Jones holds particular importance. Bettina was a Long Island socialite and aspiring author who made her way to Paris and fell in love with a young, married politician, Gaston Bergerie. The two would eventually marry themselves, and Gaston's name will return in a bit. But for now, Bettina entered Elsa's life by repeatedly begging her for a job until the latter relented. She became Schiaparelli's first public relations director and stayed with the house through the 1950s.

30:21In 1935, Elsa moved from her salon at the Rue de la Paix into a 98-room space at the Place Vendant. She no longer had to live above her shop. Two years later, she bought an 18-room mansion once owned by Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, a niece of Napoleon's. Schiaparelli wrote, I learned years later to my great surprise that I was distantly, very distantly, related to the princess. I bought it on the spot. In 1939, as tensions were rising in Europe, Schiaparelli was at the height of her fame and power. She asserts in her memoir that she had never taken part in politics. That is a blatant lie, or at least a blatant self-delusion.

31:17Post-war French intelligence established that in 1939, she was a member of a group that was a loose assembly of socialists, revolutionaries, and other interested parties known as the Solidarity Internationale Antifasciste. In those early months, Parisian life for Elsa went on as usual. In fact, the parties only seemed to get bigger, and clients were more eager than ever to see what Schiaparelli would come up with next. To misquote the musical, life was an atelier. Elsa's designs could not be detached from larger shifts happening in the world. Evening dresses she showed in 1939 featured gathered fabric in the back, resembling a misshapen bustle or perhaps a backwards apron.

32:15The revival of the bustle was becoming a larger industry trend, and the corset threatened to return. The New Yorker published in the summer of 1939, quote, Couturiers are reviving the days when it was a man's world and women suffered discomfort, making themselves decorative. It was that same fateful summer in which Germany invaded Poland and Britain and France declared war on the Third Reich. Parisians panicked, believing their city would be attacked immediately as it had been in World War I. Schiaparelli's atelier fitted its basement as a shelter. She was still open for business, but there wasn't much business to be had.

33:04European customers were not ordering couture. Much of her staff had left, and some of her peers were closing their doors. Elsa, ingenious as always, started designing for the moment. There was her famous siren suit, a jumpsuit that could be quickly pulled on with wide legs, a fitted bodice, and pockets large enough to carry identity papers and flashlights. There was a carry-all bag designed to fit a gas mask and a first aid kit, as well as a powder puff and lipstick. She didn't forget evening wear. Large pockets became an accessory, embroidered and gilded. And as for her perfume line, she designed a bottle shaped like a candlestick, knowing that soon electricity would be in short supply.

34:01Meanwhile, the war escalated outside of Paris. Elsa began to house refugees, up to 30 at once in her home. Downstairs, she hosted a meeting place for British officers, volunteer American ambulance drivers, and women in the French Mechanized Transport Corps. On the morning of June 14th, Elsa received a call. Quote, The Germans will be in Paris in a few hours, a friend of the cabinet relayed. I advise you, for many reasons, to leave immediately. Elsa and about 20 of her staff immediately traveled south. They were offered space in an associate's summer home. Despite the threat of an occupied Paris, Elsa's greatest concern was still finishing her fall collection.

34:55Though her business seemed to survive crisis after crisis, things had finally come to a breaking point. The armistice was signed on June 22nd. Elsa had signed on for a coast-to-coast lecture tour that was slated to start later in the year, and she decided to leave right away. She had already obtained the necessary travel permits for Spain and Portugal, and was granted a lucrative American visa without much trouble because she, quote, knew the man well who was in charge of the distribution. Elsa traveled with two titled French women and their sons, whom she intended to help cross the border. One of the fathers did not want his child to leave the country, so Elsa smuggled him past the security checkpoint by hiding him in her coat.