These rare works join others in The Costume Institute, which include a version of the high-heeled shoe hat Schiaparelli created in collaboration with Salvador Dalí for her winter 1937–38 collection ( 1974.139), and a patchwork harlequin coat from her spring 1939 “ Commedia dell’Arte” collection, which may have influenced Man Ray’s painting, Le Beau Temps, created in 1939 after the coat would have been designed ( 2002.479.4). Both may have been inspired by a July 1937 costume ball given in Paris by Maurice de Rothschild with the theme “Italian Comedy.” Among her many contributions to the development of twentieth-century fashion, Schiaparelli’s fearless challenge to the status quo, incorporation of wit and humor into fashion designing, and melding of art with dressmaking rank among the highest. Her work has not only broadly influenced the fashion world but also noted individual designers, including Charles James, Geoffrey Beene, and Yves Saint Laurent. While the New Look silhouette was iconic in the 1950s, it coexisted with a less structured silhouette in American sportswear. Day dresses, casual wear, and playsuits in the 1950s followed the general outline of Dior’s silhouette but without the underpinnings, taking shape instead from the ideally healthy body underneath the clothes. The aspect of the body itself as the defining fashionable silhouette would begin to take hold in the 1960s with the introduction of the miniskirt and the body-revealing conceptual fashions of designer Rudi Gernreich. From the 1960s through the ’70s, the ideal silhouette was that of a slender body. Girdles were still being marketed in the 1960s, but by the ’70s, as Harold Koda points out in Extreme Beauty, “[t]he refuge of wearing foundation garments to re-form the body was obsolete and the greater tyranny emerged of an ideal of beauty with the impossibility of recourse to artifice.”

Reeder, Jan Glier. High Style: Masterpieces from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.Reeder, Jan. “Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/elsa/hd_elsa.htm (May 2011) Further Reading I'm a technology teacher, and I use clipart to create instructional materials for my classes. The tech-themed clipart is modern and relevant. Having a section for interactive tech clipart demonstrating software interfaces and coding concepts would be incredibly useful." Born in Rome at her family’s apartment in the Palazzo Corsini, Schiaparelli, by her own account, was a difficult child who chafed against societal and parental controls. Even at an early age, the need for personal freedom, which she later expressed in her designs, was her first priority. She was prone to mischievous pranks that often had adult consequences. As recounted in her autobiography, she was once miffed that she could not attend her parent’s dinner party, and retaliated by opening a jar of fleas under the dinner table, which set off an itching episode among the hapless guests before they fled the scene. I teach environmental science, and the nature-themed clipart is perfect for my lessons. The realistic plant and animal illustrations enhance my presentations. Adding a section with ecology-themed clipart for environmental concepts would be wonderful." Koda, Harold. Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed. Exhibition catalogue. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

The clipart selection related to literature and language arts is fantastic! It has allowed me to create visually engaging materials for my English classes. I suggest including clipart that represents diverse cultures and authors, promoting inclusivity and representation in the classroom." In the 1930s, the silhouette regained some structure. Evening dresses made of bias-cut fabrics clung to the curves of the female body while women’s suits for day wear were carefully tailored to nip in at the waist and curve closely over a slim bottom. The 1930s also marked the introduction of the padded shoulder, first used by couturière Elsa Schiaparelli. While the strong shoulders of the 1930s flattered the waistline by comparison, the overall demand that suits be form fitting allowed for the reintroduction of shaping undergarments. Although similar to corsets, the design of 1930s girdles emphasized their modernity, touting the smoothing elastic fabric and the invisible zipper closure. The Italian-born French couturière Elsa Schiaparelli is best known for the iconoclastic bravado and unrestrained, at times brazen, originality of her work. While her contemporaries Gabrielle Chanel and Madeleine Vionnet set the period’s standards of taste and beauty in fashion design, Schiaparelli flouted convention in the pursuit of a more idiosyncratic style. As much an artist as a dress designer, she commandeered the talents of a host of prominent artisans and artists, most notably those associated with the Surrealist movement. Distilling their disquieting dream-based imagery and provocative concepts through her own creative process, she incorporated themes inspired by contemporaneous events, erotic fantasy, traditional and avant-garde art, and her own psyche into her designs. A repertoire of inventive devices—experimental fabrics with pronounced textures, bold prints with unorthodox imagery and colors, opulent embroideries, outsized and exposed zippers, and distinctive buttons and ornaments ranging from the whimsical to the bizarre—was her medium of creative expression. As a parent of a budding artist, I find the clipart here inspiring for my child's drawings. The creativity in the designs is unmatched. It would be great if there were tutorials or art challenges for kids to enhance their skills using the clipart."On her 1916 voyage to America, a chance meeting with Gabrielle Picabia, wife of Dadaist painter Francis Picabia, developed into a strong friendship that would eventually lead to Schiaparelli’s involvement with proponents of the Surrealist movement in art and, later, to an acquaintance with revolutionary fashion designer Paul Poiret around 1924. Dabbling at the time in writing and gold sculpting, she was also making clothes for herself and her two close friends. Poiret noted her sartorial flair and was the first to encourage her to pursue dressmaking as a suitable outlet for her artistic leanings. In 1954, the House of Schiaparelli declared bankruptcy and its founder retired, spending most of her time in Tunisia, where she had built a home. She died in Paris at the age of eighty-three. Further emphasizing the Surrealistic theatricality of the clothes from this period, Schiaparelli organized some of them into thematic collections—”Stop Look and Listen” in 1935, “Music” and “Paris 1937” in 1937, “Zodiac,”“Pagan,” and “Circus” in 1938, and “Commedia dell’Arte” in 1939. As a result of having lived for an extended period in America, Schiaparelli was particularly attuned to the American fashion industry and the upper-middle-class American woman’s stylistic and utilitarian preferences. This connection served her well financially. While only a few of her clients would wear her most outrageous designs, she could clothe slightly less adventuresome sorts through her many commercial arrangements with American department stores and specialty shops. Before World War II, as the New York Sun reported in 1940, output from her workshops at 21 Place Vendôme, where she had relocated in 1935, had grown to 10,000 garments per year.