Schiaparelli: Still Inspiring

Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973)

 

Today I recieved some very exciting news.....

 

I am one of five finalists for the Young Journalist of the Year Award 2012 at the Clothes Show Live in Birmingham this December!

 

Obviously I am shocked, excited and frantically planning what to wear!

 

In my application I was asked for my who my inspiration was and without hesitation I wrote about the Legend that is Elsa Schiaparelli...

 

So I thought to further honor her innovative fashion legacy and thank her for helping me inch closer to my wildest dreams I'd take you back to the 20th Century were an icon changed the fashion world irrevocably.

 

 

This is what I wrote of Elsa, my heroine:

 

My inspiration was, is and always has been Elsa Schiaparelli . To those who dismiss or misunderstand the fashion world as being frivolous or superficial I refer to them her life story. A woman who introduced innovation to fashion at a time when CoCo Chanel was sweeping the industry with delicate ultra feminine designs. From her Italian aristocratic decent Elsa drew on her intellectual surroundings of philosophical study and inspirational art to produce culturally significant advances in fashion. Her clothes expressed her outrageously sensual poetry and her passion for provocative artistic surrealism and furthermore  empowered women. She dressing them in warrior armour by day with bold skyscraper lines and strong edgy dynamics, and then in aggressively seductive and eccentric attire come night-fall. Her cultural, intellectual and ahead of her time innovation is explicitly what I value in fashion, it inspires and drives me to siege the fashion industry with my inner Elsa and capture our contemporary culture, encapsulating it in history, by telling our story though fashion.     

 

The Famous Shoe Hat

Elsa was a truely exquisite woman and a brave and talented designer with a deeply complex, interesting story. And it just goes to show that even now, decades later, this woman who took the fashion industry by storm is instilling inspiration even today.

That, is what I understand to be a Legend.