October 1, 2022
“HER ESTABLISHMENT in the Place Vendôme is a devil’s laboratory,” Jean Cocteau wrote in 1937, when Elsa Schiaparelli, ensconced in her Paris salon with a view of Napoleon’s priapic column, was the foremost couturier in Paris. “Women who go there fall into a trap, and come out masked, disguised, deformed, or reformed, according to Schiaparelli’s whim.” Her patrician brand of Surrealism—which married outré maximalism with minatory elegance, “the richest laces” with “the mos...