Elsa Schiaparelli—Lobster dress
The dress is an off-white, A-line evening gown with a sheer coral inset below the bust that creates a slight empire-waist silhouette.
Designed by Elsa Schiaparelli in collaboration with Salvador Dalí February 1937. Dali drew the initial motif that was then incorporated onto the fabric. The lobster art was printed onto the silk organza dress by master silk designer Sache.
Many of her fashion contributions included collaborations with several Surrealist artists with results similar to this stand-out gown. Dali had incredible enthusiasm for fashion:
“Dalí’s increasingly commercial endeavors and lifelong interest in dress led him to become hugely influential in fashion, from his meticulously flamboyant self-presentation to his collaborations with couturières, to the clothing, jewelry, and store window displays that he went on to create.”
Lobster dress
Philadelphia Museum of Art—Exhibition
“Shocking!” The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli--September 28, 2003–January 4, 2004
Writing in The New Yorker in 1932, Janet Flanner observed that “a frock from Schiaparelli ranks like a modern canvas,“ and the Paris fashion designer herself defined dressmaking as an art rather than a profession. The Philadelphia Museum of Art celebrates the extraordinary Elsa Schiaparelli—acknowledged by her contemporaries as the style arbiter of the 1930s—in the first major retrospective exhibition and catalogue to examine the ways in which her creations mirrored the social, political, and cultural climate of her times.
It is particularly appropriate that this project has been undertaken by an American museum, for Schiaparelli readily acknowledged that her special relationship with the United States—sparked by the sale of a trompe l’oeil sweater to an American buyer in 1927—was the foundation of her great success.
Philadelphia Museum of Art--Exhibition
Schiaparelli designed for the modern woman: she created the practical wardrobe for aviator Amy Johnson’s solo flight to Cape Town in 1936; the culottes for tennis champion Lily d’Alvarez that outraged the English lawn tennis establishment in 1931; and the interchangeable wardrobe that she herself wore on her extensive travels.
She had a close relationship with the Parisian artistic community, posing for Man Ray and collaborating with such artists as Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, Alberto Giacometti, and Marcel Vertes for designs of clothing, fabric, embroidery, jewelry, and advertising.
Schiaparelli was prized by women on the best-dressed list, including Millicent Rogers, Daisy Fellowes, Mrs. Harrison Williams, and Lady Mendl, and the clothing they wore will be among the items featured in this selection.
Schiaparelli’s involvement with film and theater costume was equally celebrated—her designs appeared in more than thirty motion pictures, including Every Day’s a Holiday with Mae West and Moulin Rouge with Zsa Gabor—and is the subject of study here for the first time.
Tears dress (refers to rips rather than sobs)
The garment is made from viscose rayon and silk-blend marocain. Made from the same fabric is a gathered veil that falls gracefully from the top of the head.
The fastening of the garment is a zipper made of white plastic—a material new in fashion at the time, and used as both a functional and decorative element by Schiaparelli.
Similarly, the use of a viscose rayon material instead of silk—which was the standard in couture—represents her dedication to experimenting with new materials, as opposed to relying on traditional couture textiles.
Tears dress
Beyond its noteworthy innovative use of materials, the garment holds its true significance in its manifestation of the collaboration between Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí.
The pattern that repeats throughout the dress features a unique sort of “tear” print that gives the garment its name. The print was designed by none other than Dalí himself.
The pink, magenta, and black printed “tears” that cover the dress are then replicated on the veil; however, instead of the flat trompe l’oeil design found on the dress, the veil includes real tears delicately lined with pink and magenta fabric.
Bow-tie sweater
Elsa Schiaparelli plays with the idea of a bow in this woollen jumper. She uses the trompe-l'oeil effect, which creates an optical illusion. The simple hand-knitted garment and its direct graphic image reflect the more relaxed attitude to formal wear for women in the late 1920s.
The geometric, 'stepped' quality of the bow's curved outlines are an unavoidable technical feature of hand knitting. The designer exploits this feature and uses the design to hint at her later involvement with the Surrealist Movement: 'I drew a large butterfly bow in front, like a scarf round the neck - a primitive drawing of a child'.
Source: Victoria & Albert Museum
Butterfly dress—1937-38
Elsa Schiaparelli, known for avant-garde and surrealist touches, designed this gown at her couture house in Paris.
The gown belonged to Guendolen Carkeek Plestcheeff, who was born in Seattle but spent time in Europe as a young woman. She continued to make buying trips overseas to restock her wardrobe long after she moved back to Seattle in 1931.
Plestcheeff would have worn this gown around the time that she was elected as president of the Seattle Historical Society in 1938. She was a major force in the opening of the society's museum in 1952--the Museum of History & Industry (Univ. of Washington).
Biography
Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several novels. She has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books and history, and brings that love to her stories. Katherine has also written one full-length nonfiction work.
She holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and has lived across the country with a few years in England and Ireland as well.
A full-time author and mother of three children, Katherine and her husband currently live outside Chicago, IL.
Publications
The Berlin Letters: A Cold War Novel, March 5, 2024
AMZ blurb: Bestselling author Katherine Reay returns with an unforgettable tale of the Cold War and a CIA code breaker who risks everything to free her father from an East German prison.
A Shadow in Moscow, 2023
AMZ blurb: In the thick of the Cold War, a betrayal at the highest level risks the lives of two courageous female spies: MI6’s best Soviet agent and the CIA’s newest Moscow recruit.
The London House, 2021
Of Literature and Lattes, 2020
The Printed Letter Bookshop, 2019
Publications
The Austen Escape, 2017
A Portrait of Emily Price, 2016
The Bronte Plot, 2015
Lizzy and Jane, 2014
Dear Mr. Knightly, 2013
Samantha, a 23-year-old orphan, has an anonymous, Dickensian benefactor calling himself Mr. Knightley who offers to put her through Northwestern University’s prestigious Medill School of Journalism. There is only one catch: Sam must write frequent letters to the mysterious donor, detailing her progress.
Cast of characters—WWII
The "Waite" sisters, born in 1918 to Ethel and John Waite; he is 6th Earl of Eriska. Their lives are one of the two plot lines in this novel, set before and during WWII in London. And of course, their letters are the epistolary element in this novel.
Caroline "Caro" Waite is initially the quieter, less adventuresome of the twins as children, but they change roles as adults, after Margo recovers from scarlet fever. Caro goes off to France to work for designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and become an SOE spy (Special Operations Executive, Dalton), in fact, the first female spy in England.
Margaret "Margo" Waite Payne, twin sister. As a child she is the risk-taker, adventuresome, brave (according to her sister). She marries Randolph George Payne, although he and Caro were supposed to marry. When she didn't return from the war, he married Margo.
Randolph George Payne—the man both sisters love, enlists in the RAF during the war. Know as George to Caro, but Randolph to Margo.
Cast of characters—WWII
Martine Herve—Jewish woman who works for Schiaparelli. Mat finds her history. She escaped, over the Pyrenees to Spain, later to the US. He finds a marriage and her children's birth certificates.
Paul Arnim—Gruppenführer—group leader, paramilitary rank. He is a German industrialist who warns Caro to get out of Paris, and to take Martine with her. Shot by German officer Brunel as he was fleeing, with Caro, the explosion at the Factory du Carte.
Cast of characters—present
Caroline Payne, protagonist, had been told by family that her aunt Caro died at age 7 from polio.
Jason, her brother, an MD with wife Gabriela
Amelia, her sister killed by a negligent driver. Neither parent could deal with the emotional impact, and divorced.
Mother Ethel, moved to England, the London House, to care for her dying mother-in-law Margaret who left the house to her because she feared her son would sell it to be rid of family history.
Caroline's father, John Randolph Payne, "Jack," came to the US in 1965 for boarding school; then founded the Boston law firm Swartz, Payne, and Lennox. He still lives and works in the Boston area, but now suffers from cancer, is divorced from Caroline's mother. He was raised in a dysfunctional, guilt-riddled family. His mother Margaret believed that her husband Randolph loved Caro more than he loved her, and that her twin sister was a traitor, had fled France with a Nazi lover.
Caro loves the nickname Jack, and "Jack" is the nickname Margo gave her son John.
Cast of characters—present
Moraitis Papadakis "Mat" Hammond
University professor, historian, who has written an article for publication in The Atlantic on the history of the Arnim family. During his research, he comes across a reference to Christophe Pelletier and Caro, which is why he contacts Caroline (named after her aunt). Mat gave himself that nickname.
Christophe is the Schiaparelli salon employee, bodyguard, they suspect is a mole.
Why I chose this novel
Tana French speaks at Barnes and Noble on March 6 about her newest book, The Hunter, a follow-up to The Searcher, with Cal Hooper, retired Chicago detective in small town agricultural western Ireland in an old established community, where everybody knows everybody and they have their own rules. It is in other words a place where the code of the old West, Cal's milieu, doesn't apply.
Tana French openly admits that she plays with genre, sees it only as a framework of suggestions, not a rule book. Novels that slavishly follow the conventions of a genre are formulaic, predictable, boring (see Agatha Christie, or TV's Hallmark movies, or romance pot boilers.) So that novel, The Searcher, is her experiment with the "old west" genre, ala John Wayne, where the good guys wear white hats, where brute violence generally defines justice, where moral superiors (heroes, sheriffs, land owners, white settlers) enforce "the law of the land." It's a clearly defined, and divided, black and white world. But her novel asks what happens when a man of the old west settles in Ireland. What happens when his black and white code confronts a shades of gray world.
Why I chose this novel
And reading about this new novel, I found the definitive statement—that Tana French takes something as mundane and predictable as the mystery genre, the legal procedural in her Dublin Murder Squad novels, and transforms it into literary fiction. She starts with the genre but transcends it. And so does Maggie O'Farrell in The Marriage Portrait. But she does something else, more literary, than genre.
Why I chose this novel
The London House incorporates 3 genres, maybe 4 actually:
Epistolary—immediacy, realism, character development and identification for reader, but slow plot, except here, where the search for Caro, with clues in letters and other documents, are the key pieces of information that move the plot forward and solve the mystery.
Why I chose this novel
The London House incorporates 3 genres, maybe 4 actually:
Historical—2 timelines, WWII and present, with the question about history's impact on the future for those who don't question its authenticity. It's the difference between accurate factual history rather than what was reported, the difference between what you believe is true and what you know is true. It's also the woman's perspective on history:
Kate Quinn novels (The Rose Code—Bletchley, Alice Network, Diamond Eye, Nightwitches)
Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian (Belle de Costa Green), The Only Woman in the Room (Hedy Lamarr)
Sonia Purnell, Woman of No Importance, (Virginia Hall)
See Secret River, new perspective on national history
Why I chose this novel
The London House incorporates 3 genres, maybe 4 actually:
Memoir—the letters (sub text)
Mystery—the search for Caro, find clues, discover evidence, determine facts, trace and link documents
Questions for discussion
This novel is set in two historical periods: WWII and the present. The framing narrative is Caroline and Mat, searching for true historical facts about Caro, in the present. The letters of Margo and Caro are the epistolary element, from the past.
Thus one of the themes in this novel is the role of the past as it shapes the present, and therefore more broadly the question about what history actually is.
Mat, explaining to Caroline why he's doing this historical research
“I’m not doing a hatchet job and you know it. You know me. The whole point of this is to do something good, to examine how history is real and messy, but that it isn’t objective or defining.” (p. 15)
Caroline talking to her mother
Mat had said something about the fact that how we absorbed and translated history mattered and that it was never objective. The emotions we brought to it changed it. At the time, I associated his comments with world events; now they struck close to home. Aunt Caroline’s betrayal changed us all. My failure changed us all. (p. 59)
Questions for discussion
Mat to Caroline:
Mat offered me a knowing smile. “History reflects humanity. It isn’t one-dimensional, or even two-dimensional; it’s multifaceted and far more complex and nuanced than we allow.” I rolled my eyes. (p. 160)
Caroline talking about Mat:
This was the Mat who said history was multifaceted, nuanced, and complex, and had walked me through his ideas late into the night. (p 193)
Do you agree or disagree? As we've discussed, women authors often give readers a different perspective on history than the official "sanctioned" version, presumed to be accurate and complete, or objective.
What do you think of Mat’s premise that history is subjective rather than objective, as it is changed by the lens we bring to our study of it?
Questions for discussion
Does the following relate to this discussion of history:
Caroline's mother, to Caroline:
“When something bad happens,” she continued, “it’s easy to blame someone else, and in some cases maybe it is their fault, but that doesn’t matter. Not in the end.
What does matter is how long we hold on to that hurt or that anger. We can magnify the pain, making it worse and worse until it devours us, or we can forgive it and get on with life.
Margaret felt she clutched at her pain and after”—Mom’s focus darted around the room—“my work and my time here, I would say I’ve done the same." (p. 137)
Caroline, to herself:
the corollary to Mat’s statement that history is subjective meant that we could change it, by shifting our perspective. (p. 300)
Caroline to Mat:
I’m beginning to believe how I think changes who I am, and I can hang on to that brighter, even happier woman I found here.” (p. 305)
Questions for discussion
What's the significance of names and nicknames in this novel?
Caroline's father John is called Jack, Caro's favorite nickname
Randolph George Payne is George to Caro, but Randolph to Margo
As girls, Margo and Caro gave themselves other names:
Margo--Bebe DuPont
Caro--Nanette Bellefeuille (beautiful leaf)
Margo names her journal reader Beatrice, thinking it is Beatrix Potter
Caro's code name is Rose Tremaine
Questions for discussion
For their birthday, father John gives both Caro and Margo journals. Caro never writes in hers; at one point, Margo finds the empty journals on a bookshelf.
But Margo does write—letters to her "diary reader" Beatrice, a fictional construct. Why does she write and Caro doesn't?
Questions for discussion
Is it significant to the plot of this novel that Margo and Caro are identical twins?
Questions for discussion
Is the romance element in this novel too dominant? Or perhaps romance is the wrong word. Personal and family relationships might be more accurate terminology. Do you agree?
"My Very Dear Wife" - The Last Letter of Major Sullivan Ballou
National Park Service:
https://www.nps.gov/articles/-my-very-dear-wife-the-last-letter-of-major-sullivan-ballou.htm
Next week:
The memoir as genre