We have often witnessed a surrealist take on the runway: Maison Margiela, Dior, Dolce and Gabbana, Viktor and Rolf, among many others have experimented with this concept.
But there was one woman who dared to do it first, in a time where tradition ruled: Elsa Schiaparelli, an Italian fashion designer who was, along with her greatest rival, Coco Chanel, one of the most prominent figures in fashion at the time.
The world that she inhabited was chaotic; the terror of The First World War had shaken her reality, while the Second World War was on its way. Through her collaborations with Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau and Alberto Giacometti, she defied convention and opened a world of possibilities, by experimenting with materials never used before in fashion, and dressing muses such as Mae West, Katharine Hepburn, and Gala.
We are living in surrealist times as well. Every week for the past two months, either a terrible natural disaster, or dramatic killings of the greatest magnitudes have taken place somewhere…
And somewhere feels closer than ever.
The one thing I’ve learned this year, is that there is nothing more surrealist than disaster… apart from Death.
Join me through ‘Journey through Surrealism,‘ at the Dali Museum in St Petersburg, where I’ve been invited to share my view on their latest exhibit: Dalí and Schiaparelli: In Daring Fashion, opening to the public on October 18th, 2017.
It will be a Journey through art and fashion unlike anything I’ve done before. Celia D. Luna, the woman behind the lens of my latest pictures, will join me. Together we’ll share our interpretation of surrealism in our time.
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