Pass (2011) Fashion and Surrealism in the Years Between the World Wars TESIS DOC UNIV ROCHESTER

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Strange Glamour:

Fashion and Surrealism in the Years between the World Wars

by

Victoria Rose Pass

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the

Requirements for the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Supervised by

Professor Janet C. Berlo

Program in Visual and Cultural StudiesDepartment of Art and Art History

Arts, Sciences and EngineeringSchool of Arts and Sciences

University of RochesterRochester, New York

2011



ii

Curriculum Vitae

Victoria Rose Pass was born in Baltimore, Maryland on February 12, 1981.

She attended Boston University from 1999 to 2003 majoring in Art History

with a minor in Theater, and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of

Arts degree. She received a Master of Arts in Art History in 2005 from the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Pass began her studies in the Program

in Visual and Cultural studies program at the University of Rochester in 2005.

In 2008 she received the Celeste Hughes Bishop award from the Program in

Visual and Cultural Studies. She passed her qualifying examination in 2007.

Pass was awarded the Dean‘s Teaching Fellowship in 2010 and the Dean‘s

Dissertation Fellowship for the 2010-2011 academic year.



iii

Acknowledgements

During my years as a graduate student my wonderful grandmother

Florence would often ask me, ―how many years have you been in college

now?‖ It was always painful to tally that number. The road to getting my PhD

has been a long one, but it was made shorter and much sweeter by the many

wonderful people I have shared it with and who supported me along the way.

I wish that Florence, and all of my grandparents could have been here to see

me finish this degree. Nanny told me stories of her mother saving up to buy

her n ylons during the depression, and her job at Stewart‘s department store,

working on what was basically one of the earliest computers, a payroll

machine. My Grandpa Richard loved to tell me tales of his days as a latch key

kid, cutting out shirt cardboards to line his shoes, and his incredible

recommendations of great movies to watch from the 30s and 1940s were

always spot on. He also delighted in reminded me that I used to live on thestreet in Chicago where the Saint Valentine‘s Day Massacre took place, and

that my Grandmother once met Al Capone. These stories clearly laid the

foundation for my love of history, and I think in a strangely powerful way, my

interest in the years between the world wars, when my grandparents were

growing up. I lost both Richard and Florence while in Rochester, and regret

that I did not have them around longer to ask Nanny about her beautiful

graduation dress, or Grandpa to recommend one more movie for me to watch.



iv

There are also many wonderful people to thank at the University of

Rochester. My advisor Janet Berlo who has been incredibly kind and

encouraging and she truly embraced this project, which I imagine must have

seemed a bit odd at the beginning. She has been a reliable source of advice

and guidance and I really could not have done this without her eagle eye for

editing. Copies of the New York Times Style magazine and articles pulled

from the newspaper tucked in my mail box have always reassured me that she

was there when I needed her to be, but allowed me to work at my own pace

and in my own way. Janet‘s classes helped me develop a style of research and

an appetite for material culture that formed the foundation of this project and

her feminist scholarship has served as an example for me that I hope I will

someday live up to. Janet has truly been an invaluable mentor and I hope I

will make her proud in the years to come.

Rachel Haidu has also been a key member of my committee and I want

to thank her for being generous with her time and for her careful and

thorough comments on my work. Rachel really pushed me to take the ideas

that were in my project further, and challenged me to do things that frankly

scared me when I started work on this project. She has an uncanny knack for

drawing out the important ideas and arguments in my work, which sometimes

get hidden behind the archival material. Without her this dissertation would

not be nearly as interesting as I hope it is now.



v

I would also like to thank Joan Rubin who was incredibly helpful as I

was beginning to construct this project. She brought a perspective on

Modernism and issues of gender that helped to shape the project in important

ways. Victoria Wolcott was incredibly kind, and stepped in for Joan at the

eleventh hour so that I could defend in time to graduate in 2011. In fact it was

her class, The Beats and Beyond were I started to think about fashion in my

research. Beyond my committee, many other professors at the University of

Rochester have helped me as I navigated the last six years including Bob

Foster, Douglas Crimp, Paul Duro, and Joan Saab. I have learned not only in

their classrooms, but from their examples as teachers and scholars.

I would also like to acknowledge the financial support of The Susan B.

Anthony Institute at the University of Rochester, which funded some of my

research and the University for the Dean‘s Dissertation Fellowship that

supported my final year of work on this project, and particularly Dean Wendy

Heinzelman for her role in instigating this new fellowship.

I would also like to thank the many dear friends I have made here in

Rochester, many of whom were part of various dissertation groups,

participants in writing retreats, unwitting proofreaders, or members of library

chain gangs: Gloria Kim, Aubrey Anable, Avivia Dove-Viehban, Derek

Rushton, Dinah Holtzman, Nicola Mann, Becky Burditt, Michelle Finn, Kira

Thurman, Godfre Leung, and Alex Alisauskas, Mara Gladstone, and Lucy

Mulroney.



vi

Nicola and I started this journey together and her friendship has meant

so much to me over the last six years. She has proofread my work, listened as

I vented frustrations, and generally made life in Rochester a lot more fun.

Becky Burditt has always been there for me when I needed a reassuring

friend, and her kindness is limitless! Gloria Kim‘s exuberant spirit has made

life in Rochester much more fun and she is an incredibly generous friend.

Ayana Weekley somehow magically appeared in Rochester, just when I

needed her, we became fast friends, and I firmly believe that without her and

our many hours of work in the libraries and coffee shops of Rochester, I would

not have finished this dissertation when I did. Her humor and kindness have

meant so much to me. I would also like to thank Marni Shindleman, whose

friendship and invitation to join her Master‘s Swim Team came at exactly the

right moment. Our drives out to Penfield and hours spent in the pool have

truly kept me sane over the last year and a half.

Outside of Rochester I want to thank my friend Jessica Curtright who

has been an incredible ally and partner in crime since our time at Boston

University. Her amazing collection of Vogue tear sheets clearly lead the way

for this project, and I am truly lucky to have her as a friend. I‘d also like to

thank my wonderful friends in New York City who have hosted and

entertained me on my numerous research trips to the city: Alyssa Pack, Sarah

Coulter, Caity Mold-Zern, and Cheryl Olszowka.



vii

I‘d also like to thank Kymberly Pinder, Deborah Mancoff, and Thomas

Sloan at the Art Institute of Chicago as well as Jodi Cranston at Boston

University who all played important roles in getting me to the University of

Rochester.

I would also like to recognize the many incredible archivists and

librarians who have been instrumental in the research for this project. Karen

Trivette Cannell, Juliet Jacobson, and Clara Berg pulled loads of material in

Special Collections at the Fashion Institute of Technology Library, and found

incredible material that I never could have on my own. I‘d also like to thank

Julie Le at the Costume Institute Library as well as librarians at the Watson

library both at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and librarians at the

Brooklyn Museum and New York and Monroe County Public Libraries.

I would especially like to thank the staff of the Rush Rhees Library at

the University of Rochester, particularly Stephanie Frontz, Katie Kinsky, Mark

Bollmann, Kim Kopatz, and Irma Abu-Jumah who have made the Art Library

such a welcoming and fun place to work, and who have all gone above and

beyond the call of duty for me. Stephanie Frontz has been incredibly kind and

generous, and with the help of Kari Horowitz at the Rochester Institute of

Technology Library shuttle cartons of fashion magazines back and forth for

me to look at, and often shuttled me as well! Stephanie was also an incredible

help with my research, and has constantly turned up new sources for me, she

has also been a really wonderful friend. I also want to thank Pat Sulouff and

http://www.rochester.edu/college/aah/people/abujumah.htm





viii

Suzanne Bell who generously and meticulously copy-edited this manuscript.

Without the help of these fantastic librarians, this project would not be nearly

as rich, and the process of researching it would have been far more tedious.

Finally I want to thank my wonderful parents Stuart and Peggy, whose

unflagging support of all of my endeavors has been an invaluable source of

strength for me. My father‘s comic book and science fiction axioms have

served me well, after all, ―No one can defeat Paste Pot Pete!‖ My mom‘s

humor has always had a way of getting me to laugh at the most difficult

situations. I want to thank them both for all of the love and support they have

given me, the museums they took me too, and the love of learning they

encouraged in me.



ix

Abstract

This project examines the complex relationships between Surrealism

and fashion between World War I and World War II. Scholarship on art and

fashion has typically understood fashion as being passively influenced by art

or using art for the sake of profit. I argue that far from being superficial and

incidental to Surrealism, fashion played an integral role in this artistic

movement. By engaging with art historical responses to Surrealism I have

found new ways to understand a new fashion aesthetic in the 1930s, which I

call ―Strange Glamour.‖ I examine the development of this aesthetic and the

relationship between fashion and surrealism by focusing on a series of key

events.

I begin in chapter one with 1921, the year in which Coco Chanel

launched her perfume Chanel No. 5 and Marcel Duchamp created his perfume

readymade, Belle Haleine. I compare the ways that Chanel and Duchamp

questioned conventions of authorship in art and fashion through the molding

of their public persona. These figures instigated a new kind of relationship

between the artist or designer and the work of art or garment in which both

parts are crucial to making sense of the whole. The second chapter focuses on

1927, the year that designer Elsa Schiaparelli created her first design, a

trompe l‘oeil sweater that is directly linked with the Surrealists‘ engagement

with the uncanny. This chapter also considers Man Ray‘s photographs of

hats, which illustrated an article by Tristan Tzara on subconscious

expressions of sexuality in the everyday world in the Surrealist magazine



x

Minotaure in 1933. Far from being automatic writing, as Tzara describes, I

argue that these hats were the self conscious creation of Elsa Schiaparelli.

The 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition and the 1937 exhibition La Mode au

Congo at Galerie Charles Ratton frame the third chapter, which considers the

role of primitivism in Surrealism and fashion during these years, particularly

in relation to sexuality. I examine the designs of French milliner Madame

Agnès that were influenced by the 1931 exhibition, and the unique hats made

by American milliner Lilly Daché in response to a collection of hats she

purchased from the Congo. I also consider a unique group of photographs of

the Congolese hats by Man Ray that were shown at the Ratton exhibition.

The fourth and final chapter examines the links between Schiaparelli‘s

designs of the late 1930s, the uncanny, and Andre Breton‘s idea of convulsive

beauty, beauty which was meant to shock. I consider Schiaparelli‘s designs in

the context of Surrealist objects, and examine the important (and often

neglected) links between Surrealist and fashion exhibitions in the 1930s.

My dissertation demonstrates that an examination of the relationship

between fashion and Surrealism can enrich our understanding of this period

in art and fashion and can also illuminate larger theoretical issues positioned

at their intersection. Through a rigorous engagement with archival sources, I

trace the historical relationships between fashion and Surrealism and point to

the continued importance of collaboration, dialogue, and influence between

these realms.



xi

Table of Contents

Curriculum Vitae ii

Ackgnowledgments iii

Abstract ix

List of Figures xii

Introduction Art and Fashion? 1

Chapter 1 Perfume and Plastic Pearls:Chanel and Rrose Sélavy

47

Chapter 2 Trompe l‘Oeil Sweaters and Mad Caps:Early Surrealism and Fashion

111

Chapter 3 ―The Colonel‘s Lady and African Sadieare Sisters Under their Hats‖

165

Chapter 4 Strange Glamour 233

Conclusion Legacies of Strange Glamour 319

Bibliography 342

Figures 359



xii

List of Figures

Figure 1. Man Ray, Noire et Blanche, 1926 359

Figure 2. Man Ray's Noire et Blanche, in French Vogue, May 1926 359

Figure 3. A.M. Cassandre, Cover of Harper’s Bazaar, September 15, 1937 360

Figure 4. Paul Smith, Kenyon and Eckhardt, Gunther Fur ad, Harper’s Bazaar, September 15, 1937

360

Figure 5. Paul Smith, Kenyon and Eckhardt, Gunther Fur ad, Harper’s Bazaar, October 1937

361

Figure 6. "Saints and Sinners," Man Ray photographs with Vertès drawings, Harper’s Bazaar, September 15, 1937

361

Figure 7. "Peruvian Magic," drawings of Schiaparelli's Inca inspired designs,including the Shocking pink chullo used by Dalí for the RueSurréaliste at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme,

Harper’s Bazaar, October 1937

362

Figure 8. Man Ray photographs of Schiaparelli's hats for Tristan Tzara's "D'unCertain Automatisme du Gout," in Minotaure, October-December1933.

362

Figure 9. Gala Dalí wearing a Schiaparelli evening coat from the winter 1937-38 collection with Salvador Dalí, and Jane Clark wearing the ―Dregsof Wine,‖ embroidered evening jacket from the same collection, withher husband Kenneth Clark (then director of London‘s NationalGallery of Art) at a 1939 opening night party at the Museum of

Modern Art.

363

Figure 10. "Plane Clothes," by Amelia Earhart, in Harper’s Bazaar, January1929

363

Figure 11. "The Sweater Costume is Favored by the Sportswoman," Vogue March 15, 1927

364

Figure 12. "St. Moritz in the Snow," Harper’s Bazaar, March 1930,photographs by Seeberger

364

Figure 13. Vogue cover with Susan Lenglen-style tennis costume, July 15, 1927 365

Figure 14. Ad for Contouration facial treatments, Vogue, September 28, 1929 365

Figure 15. Photograph by George Hoyningen-Huene from "Why Not BeBeautiful?," Vogue November 15, 1926Caption reads: "The sanctum of the modern beauty doctor is ashygienic in every detail as a famous surgeon's operating theater."

366

Figure 16. Constantin Alajov, cover of The New Yorker, October 2, 1926 366



xiii

Figure 17. Berley Studios sketch of a flapper or garçonne look, from MillerSoeurs, Paris

367

Figure 18. Max Meyer sketch of Chanel suit, Spring/Summer 1923 367

Figure 19. Some Moments from the Gaiety of this Palm Beach Season, Vogue, April 1, 1920

368

Figure 20. "The Season's Bouffant Frocks and Ina Claire Find Mutual Charmsin Each Other's Company," Vogue, May 15, 1920

368

Figure 21. Man Ray, Coco Chanel , 1935 369

Figure 22. Max Meyer, Chanel Vest, c. 1916-1920 369

Figure 23. Max Meyer, Chanel coat and dress, c. 1916-1920 370

Figure 24. Chanel's jersey dresses in Les Elegances Parisiennes,

March 1917 370

Figure 25. Chanel designs from Vogue, January 15, 1917 371

Figure 26. Max Meyer sketch of a Chanel coat made of peacock blue jersey and brown fur, c. 1915-1920

371

Figure 27. A Chanel "little black dress" in Vogue, October 1, 1926 captioned:―Here is a Ford signed ‗Chanel‘‖

372

Figure 28. Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, Duchamp as Rrose Selavy, 1920-21 373

Figure 29. Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, Duchamp as Rrose Selavy, 1920-21 373

Figure 30. Reginald Marsh, "So This is That Greenwich Village Where All ThoseQueer Artists Live," Harper’s Bazaar, October 1922

374

Figure 31. Detail, Reginald Marsh, "So This is That Greenwich Village Where All Those Queer Artists Live," Harper’s Bazaar, October 1922

374

Figure 32. Rigaud Perfume ad, Harper’s Bazaar, September 1920 375

Figure 33. Max Meyer, Chanel coat and hat, c. 1922 375

Figure 34. Sem (George Goursat), Advertisement for Chanel No. 5, 1921 376

Figure 35. Sem (George Goursat), poster advertising Chanel No. 5, c. 1923 376

Figure 36. Costume from a production of Jacques Offenbach's La Belle Hélène,Vogue January 1, 1920

377

Figure 37. Max Meyer sketch of Chanel ensemble of blue jersey with yellow andgreen embroidery, c. 1921-1922

377

Figure 38. Chanel dress with Romanoff embroidery, Vogue, May 15, 1925 378



xiv

Figure 39. "Why the Duke Sold the Famous Diamond," in The AtlantaConstitution, December 25, 1927

378

Figure 40. Chanel and Serge Lifar of the Ballet Russe, 1930s 379

Figure 41. Chanel and Vera Bate, c. 1925 379

Figure 42. Best & Co. ad, New York Times, August 27, 1924 380

Figure 43. Best & Co. ad, New York Times, September 4, 1924 380

Figure 44. Wanamaker's ad, New York Times, August 19,1924 381

Figure 45. Chanel, 1929 381

Figure 46. Chanel dresses in Vogue, April 15, 1925 382

Figure 47. Sonia Delaunay, Design for clothes and Citroën B-12, 1925 382

Figure 48. "Some Clothes Take Their Sports Seriously," Harper’s Bazaar,December 1921

383

Figure 49. The Chanel Silhouette from "Drian Shows the Silhouette from Headto Heels," Harper’s Bazaar, August 1922.

383

Figure 50. "Drian Shows the Silhouette from Head to Heels," Harper’s Bazaar, August 1922.

384

Figure 51. Max Ernst, Habits of Leaves, from Histoire Naturelle, 1927 385

Figure 52. Max Ernst, Origin of the Pendulum, from Histoire Naturelle, 1925 385

Figure 53. Schiaparelli's Bow Knot sweater in Vogue, December 15, 1927 386

Figure 54. Gimbel Brother‘s Department Store in New York sold copies ofSchiaparelli sweaters for $7.99, 1928

386

Figure 55. Glenna Collett, a pioneering U.S. golf champion, receiving a trophyin 1929 in a Schiaparelli bowknot sweater

387

Figure 56. "Smart English Sweaters" in Vogue, April 15, 1927 387

Figure 57. Harper's Bazaar, December 1928 388

Figure 58.

Center, Schiaparelli sweater with African motif, "ModernisticDesigns Predominate," Harper’s Bazaar, December 1928 388

Figure 59. Schiaparelli blue blouse with an anchor appliqué in Harper’s Bazaar, April 1929

389

Figure 60. "The Last Word in Paris Fashions," with what may be Schiaparelli'sx-ray sweater, Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan 6, 1929

389



xv

Figure 61. Madame Vittorio Crespi wearing a pale blue evening dress with ashimmering Rhodophane apron, Vogue, January 1935

390

Figure 62. "An X-Ray of Fashion," Harper’s Bazaar, September 1933 390

Figure 63. Schiaparelli in her divided skirt on a trip to Britain in May 1931 391

Figure 64. Spanish tennis player Lili de Alvarez wearing a silk tennis ensembledesigned for her by Schiaparelli in 1931. The British press criticizedher harshly for wearing a divided skirt.

391

Figure 65. Schiaparelli's divided skirt drawn by Dorothy Dulin, Chicago DailyTribune, June 20, 1931

392

Figure 66. Dorothy Dulin drawing of a Schiaparelli striped divided skirt andensemble on the center model and model in lounge chair, Chicago

Daily Tribune, April 30, 1933

392

Figure 67. Carl Erickson, Schiaparelli beach costume, Harper’s Bazaar, June1930

393

Figure 68. Schiaparelli in her trompe l‘oeil dress and a coq-feather cape, 1931 393

Figure 69. "Bas Relief," Vionnet gowns photographed by George Hoyningen-Huene for Vogue, November 15, 1931

394

Figure 70. Detail of a Schiaparelli trompe l'oeil sweater featuring a necktie,1927-30

395

Figure 71. Schiaparelli sweater with trompe l'oeil French sailor's middy, 1928 395

Figure 72. Man Ray's "rayographs" in Vanity Fair, November 1922 396

Figure 73. Man Ray, Marquise Casati, 1922 396

Figure 74. Man Ray and Félix Nadar photographs in Minotaure, October-December 1933

397

Figure 75. Man Ray photograph of Schiaparelli in her lacquered wig by Antoine, Minotaure, October-December 1933

398

Figure 76. "As in the Time of Kate Greenaway," drawing by A.E. Marly, in Harper’s Bazaar, April 1930, ensembles by Poiret and SuzanneTalbot

399

Figure 77. Schiaparelli gown photographed by Baron De Meyer, Harper’s Bazaar, August 1931

399

Figure 78. Bloomingdale's ad for copies of Schiaparelli Mad Caps including the"Sayville Row" New York Times, September 4, 1933

400

Figure 79. Bloomingdale's ad for copies of Schiaparelli "Mad Caps," New York 400



xvi

Times, September 4, 1934Figure 80. Schiaparelli's "Helmet" hat, Harper’s Bazaar, April 1933 401

Figure 81. "It Is Conventional to Be Extreme," Schiaparelli ensemble in Harper’s Bazaar, April 1933

401

Figure 82. Flapper style dresses by Lanvin, Patou, Chéruit, and Worth,photographed on mannequins by Hoyningen-Huene, Vogue,October 15, 1927

402

Figure 83. Schiaparelli boucle coat in Harper’s Bazaar, September 1929 402

Figure 84. Ad for Golflex clothing in Vogue, September 15, 1928 403

Figure 85. Schiaparelli coats in Vogue, October 15, 1931 403

Figure 86. George Hoyningen-Huene, Schiaparelli's Tyrolean hat worn with asports suit with a grey and yellow tweed jacket, a high necked blousein silk jersey stiffened with yellow taffeta, 1932-33

404

Figure 87. Actress Ina Claire in a Schiaparelli ―Mad Cap.‖ Claire helped topopularized this style, 1932

405

Figure 88. Katherine Hepburn wearing Schiaparelli's Mad Cap, undated 405

Figure 89. Cover of L’Officiel , May 1931: "Mme Agnès, drawn on our cover byJean Dunan, wears a charming evening gown, knikers skirt, ofcoarse white silk crépon created especially for her by the MaisonSchiaparelli on the occasion of the Colonial Exhibition. Her coiffeur,'A.O.F.,' one of her latest creations, consists of a crin foundationembroidered in artificial silk." [sic]

406

Figure 90. Two views of Madame Agnès in one of her hats in L’Officiel , May1931

407

Figure 91. Agnès hat in L’Officiel , May 1931 407

Figure 92. Postcard with George Specht, Nobosodrou, Femme Mangbetu, c.1925

408

Figure 93. Josephine Baker modeling an Agnès hat inspired by "La CroisièreNoire," in L’Officiel , August 1926

408

Figure 94. Simone Breton in André Breton's Atelier, c. 1927 409

Figure 95.

George Maillard-Kessle, Helena Rubinstein with African mask, c.1935 409

Figure 96. Paul Poiret, Harem trouser and "lampshade" tunic costume from theThousand and Second Night Party, 1911

410

Figure 97. Man Ray, Simone Kahn (with Fang Mask), 1921 410



xvii

Figure 98. Man Ray, Simone Kahn (with Vanuatu male figure, Eastern Malekula), 1927

411

Figure 99. Man Ray, Untitled (Bangwa "Queen" sculpture with model), c. 1934 411

Figure 100. Man Ray, Untitled (Bangwa "Queen" sculpture with model), c. 1934 412

Figure 101. Man Ray, Nancy Cunard, c. 1926, appeared in British Vogue,October 5, 1927

412

Figure 102. Man Ray, Untitled ( Noire et Blanche variant), 1926 413

Figure 103. Man Ray, Untitled (Kiki with a mask), 1926 413

Figure 104. Agnés on the cover of L’Officiel , May 1927 414

Figure 105. Agnés on the cover of L’Officiel , June 1926 414

Figure 106. Cochinchinois dancers prepare for their first plane flight, L'Illustration, August 22, 1931

415

Figure 107. Nyota Inyoka, n.d. 415

Figure 108. Agnès hats in a Best and Company window display, New York, 1931 416

Figure 109. Hats by Maria Guy and Agnès, Harper’s Bazaar, May 1931 416

Figure 110. Agnès hat in L’Officiel , May 1931 417

Figure 111. Agnès hats in L’Officiel , May 1931 417

Figure 112. Agnès hat from "De Vincennes à Versailles par les Champs lysées," L’Officiel , June 1931

418

Figure 113. Man Ray, Nusch Eluard in a Schiaparelli ensemble, Harper’s Bazaar, March 1935

418

Figure 114. "Schiaparelli among the Berbers," from Vogue August 15, 1936 419

Figure 115. Alfred Eisenstaedt, Lilly Daché doing research in Picture Collectionof New York Public Library, April 1, 1944

419

Figure 116. Reboux hats photographed by Man Ray, Harper’s Bazaar,November 1937

420

Figure 117. Man Ray, Untitled , from the Mode au Congo series, 1937 421






xviii



Figure 123. Ndngese titleholder's hat from Lilly Daché's collection, DemocraticRepublic of the Congo, Early 20th century 424






Figure 129. Man Ray,Untitled

, from the Mode au Congo

series, 1937 427


Figure 131. ―Man Ray photograph. Congolese finery. Exhibition at the GalerieCharles Ratton.‖ Cahiers d'Art 12, no. 1-3, 1937

428

Figure 132. Man Ray's Mode au Congo photographs in Harper’s Bazaar,September 15, 1937

428

Figure 133. Hat by Lilly Daché in Life, September 13, 1937 429

Figure 134. African (Tikar peoples) hat from Lilly Daché's collection in Life,September 13, 1937

429

Figure 135. Lilly Daché hat from a Bullock's Wilshire ad, Los Angeles Times,September 21, 1937

430


Figure 137. Congolese hat from Lilly Daché's collection in Life, September 13,1937

431


Figure 139. Kuba Mask (Mukyeem) from Lilly Daché's collection in Life,September 13, 1937

432

Figure 140. Lilly Daché hat from a Bullock's Wilshire ad, Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1937

432

Figure 141. Cecil Beaton, "Paris Openings," Vogue, March 15, 1935 433

Figure 142. Joan Crawford in a suit of white flannel after filming TheUnderstanding Heart, 1927

433



xix

Figure 143. Edward Steichen, Joan Crawford in a jacket and dress bySchiaparelli, 1932

434

Figure 144. Von Horn, Tallulah Bankhead in Schiaparelli, Harper’s Bazaar,

December 1934

434

Figure 145. Sketch of Salvador Dalí in his diving suit, "Vogue's Eye View ofUnsung Heroes behind the Paris Openings," Vogue, September 15,1936

434

Figure 146. George Hoyningen-Huene, Schiaparelli coat and gown, Harper’s Bazaar, October 1935, 74-5

435

Figure 147. Andre Durst, left: Piguet dress, right: Schiaparelli dress and friar'scape, Vogue, January 1, 1936

435

Figure 148. Salvador Dalí, Window display for Bonwit Teller, "She was aSurrealist Woman like a Figure in a Dream," December 1936

436

Figure 149. Sketch of a Schiaparelli suit with cow buttons, Henri Bendel SketchCollection, Spring 1937

436

Figure 150. George Platt Lynes, Frances Farmer wearing a midnight bluesequined Schiaparelli evening gown, Harper’s Bazaar, November1937

437

Figure 151. Edward Steichen, Copy of Schiaparelli's red evening coat withescargot buttons for Bergdorf Goodman, Vogue, January 1, 1937

437

Figure 152. Man Ray, Elsa Schiaparelli, 1932 438

Figure 153. Salvador Dalí, Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra, 1936

438

Figure 154. Horst P. Horst, "Suits Go Soft," Vogue, March 15, 1936 439

Figure 155. Schiaparelli's pink crin evening coat fastened with two butterflies, worn over a black gown, L’Officiel , May 1937, photograph by Photo Anzon

439

Figure 156. Pascale in the window of Schiaparelli's Place Vendôme shop withJean-Michel Frank's gilded cage, Paris

440

Figure 157. Pablo Picasso, Bird Cage and Playing Cards

, 1933 in Harper’s Bazaar, November 1939

440

Figure 158. Cecil Beaton, "The Future Duchess of Windsor," Wallis Simpson inSchiaparelli, Vogue, June 1, 1937

441

Figure 159. Cecil Beaton, Schiaparelli and Dalí's "Bureau Drawer" suits inVogue, Sept. 15, 1936

441



xx

Figure 160. Cecil Beaton, Schiaparelli and Dalí's "Bureau Drawer" coat, 1936 442

Figure 161. Lobster dress, a Schiaparelli and Dalí collaboration, 1937 442

Figure 162. Cecil Beaton, "The Future Duchess of Windsor," Wallis Simpson in

Schiaparelli and Dalí's Lobster Dress on the left hand page, Vogue,June 1, 1937

443

Figure 163. Schiaparelli's linen beach dress with Dalí's Lobster, "SummerCatch," Vogue, May 15, 1937

443

Figure 164. Schiaparelli's "Vegetarian Bracelet," in Vogue July 1, 1938 444

Figure 165. Jean Moral, Molyneux suit and hat, Harper’s Bazaar, April 1936 444

Figure 166. Photo Anzon, Schiaparelli and Dalí's Mutton Chop Beret, L’Officiel ,January 1938

445

Figure 167. Photo Durvyne, Schiaparelli and Dalí's Inkwell Hat, L’Officiel

, April1938

445

Figure 168. Schiaparelli ensemble, Vogue September 1, 1935 446

Figure 169. George Saad, Schiaparelli's and Dalí's High Heel Hat worn with herLip Suit, L’Officiel , October 1937

446

Figure 170. Marcel Vertès, Illustration of High Heel hat designed by Dalí andSchiaparelli, winter 1937-38, Harper’s Bazaar, November 1937

447

Figure 171. Objet Scatologique à Factionnement Symbolique (ScatologicalObject Functioning Symbolically), 1930

447

Figure 172. Schiaparelli suits and hats in Vogue, September 15, 1937 448

Figure 173. Hats in Contemporary Modes, Spring 1936 448

Figure 174. Schiaparelli house sketch for the High Heel Hat, a collaboration withSalvador Dalí, Winter 1937-8

449

Figure 175. Sketch of a Schiaparelli suit, Fall 1936, Davidow Inc. 449

Figure 176. Schiaparelli, dinner suit with mirror design, Winter 1938-9 450

Figure 177. Marcel Vertès, Schiaparelli jacket with hand mirror closures, Harper’s Bazaar, April 1938

450

Figure 178. Elsa Schiaparelli, blue silk jersey evening coat (now faded to purple) with embroidery designed by Jean Cocteau and manufactured byLesage, Fall 1937

451

Figure 179. Erik Nitsche, accessories spread, Harper’s Bazaar, December 1936 451



xxi

Figure 180. Studio Anzon, Schiaparelli's grey dinner suit embroidered with adrawing by Jean Cocteau, L’Officiel , August 1937

452

Figure 181. Schiaparelli designs from the Fall 1937 collection. From left: dinnerdress and jacket, with 1900 inspired hat, gown with Jean Cocteau

motif, evening gown with pleated tulle cape, waltzing dress withmimosa print. New York Times, May 30, 1937

452

Figure 182. Schiaparelli, Hand Belt, black taffeta with Lucite hands with pinkpainted fingernails at ends, thumbs forming hook and hole closure,Fall 1934

453

Figure 183. Marcel Vertès, Schiaparelli's Claw Gloves, "Spinach is Fashion," Harper’s Bazaar, September 15, 1938

453

Figure 184. Kollar, gloves by Schiaparelli, Harper’s Bazaar, March 15, 1938, p.132-3

454

Figure 185. Kollar, Schiaparelli fur gloves, Harper’s Bazaar

, September 15, 1937,p. 104

454

Figure 186. Kollar, Schiaparelli's long suede gloves with an ermine stripe, Harper’s Bazaar, November 1939

454

Figure 187. Marcel Vertes, Schiaparelli's "Victorian Pouf" hat, blouse andmatching stocking, and gartered gloves, Harper’s Bazaar, January1938

455

Figure 188. Giorgio De Chirico, cover of Vogue, November 15, 1935 455

Figure 189. Raymond de Lavererie, cover of Vogue, February 15, 1937 456

Figure 190. Schiaparelli, "Falsies" evening dress, brown wool crepe with gold braid, 1936

456

Figure 191. Salvador Dalí, Aphrodisiac Dinner Jacket, 1936 457

Figure 192. Schiaparelli's "Sex Appeal" dress, Vogue, September 1, 1937 457

Figure 193. Pavel Tchelitchew, "The essence of all that is Schiaparelli,"Schiaparelli in a fez and "circus tent" veil, Harper’s Bazaar, March15, 1938

458

Figure 194. Christian Bérard, "Circus Parade at Schiaparelli's," Vogue, April 1,1939

458

Figure 195. Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí, Skeleton Evening Dress, 1938 459

Figure 196. ―Tear-Illusion dress,‖ collaboration between Schiaparelli and Dalí,Summer 1938

459



xxii

Figure 197. Schiaparelli house sketch for the ―Tear-Illusion dress,‖ acollaboration between Schiaparelli and Dalí, Summer 1938

460

Figure 198. Salvador Dalí, design sketch for Skeleton Gown, 1938 460

Figure 199. Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí, Skeleton Evening Dress(details), Summer 1938 461

Figure 200. Schiaparelli house sketch for the Skeleton Evening Dress, acollaboration between Schiaparelli and Dalí, Summer 1938

461

Figure 201. Marcel Vertès, "Harper's Folies," on the right hand page: "Designedespecially for Coo Coo the Bird Girl by Schiaparelli," The Skeletondress, a sequined clown‘s hat, the backwards suit, and the Inkwellhat, Harper’s Bazaar, March 15, 1938

462

Figure 202. Thérèse Bonney, Schiaparelli‘s first major shop at 4 Rue de La Paix,1929

463

Figure 203. Schiaparelli's Paris Boutique designed by Jean-Michele Frank withGiacometti's shell light and spiral ashtray, from Shocking Life, 1954

463

Figure 204. Schiaparelli's Window Dolls," Harper’s Bazaar, June 1937 464

Figure 205. Jean Moral, Schiaparelli beach ensembles, Harper’s Bazaar, July1935

464

Figure 206. Cecil Beaton, "Fun at the Openings," Vogue, April 1, 1935 465

Figure 207. Ilse Sing and Gerard Kelly, Schiaparelli Belt, Harper’s Bazaar,October 1935

465

Figure 208. Wols, photographs of Le Pavillon de l'Elégance, in Femina, August1937 466

Figure 209. Wols, Le Pavillon de l'Elégance (Mannequin Row), 1937 466

Figure 210. Wols, Le Pavillon de l'Elégance (Vionnet), 1937 467

Figure 211. Rue Surréaliste, Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, GalerieBeaux-Arts, Paris, 1938

467

Figure 212. Raoul Ubac, Marcel Duchamp's Mannequin "Rrose Sélavy," Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, Galerie Beaux-Arts,Paris, 1937

468

Figure 213. André Masson, Mannequin "Le ballon vert à bouche de pensée," (thegreen gag on the mouth of thought (or pansy) Expositioninternationale du surréalisme, Galerie Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1937

468

Figure 214. detail of Schiaparelli‘s Shocking pink chullo, "Peruvian Magic," Harper’s Bazaar, October 1937

469



xxiii

Figure 215. Kurt Seligmann, Ultrameuble, view with sitter at the Exposition Internationale Du Surréalisme, Galerie Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1938

469

Figure 216. Surrealism in Paris," Vogue, March 1, 1938 470

Figure 217. Salvador Dalí, Mae West’s Face which May Be Used as a Surrealist Apartment, 1934-5

470

Figure 218. Mae West dressed by Schiaparelli in Every Day’s a Holiday, 1937 471

Figure 219. Andre Durst, designs from Schiaparelli's Fall 1937 collection, "Merry Widow Revival," Vogue, June 1, 1937

471

Figure 220. Leonor Fini and Elsa Schiaparelli, Shocking Perfume Bottle andPackaging, 1937

472

Figure 221. Leonor Fini, La Peinture, L'Architecture, 1939 472

Figure 222. George Hoyningen-Huene, Chanel dress with Leonor Fini's Armoire Anthropomorphe and her Corset Chair, Harper’s Bazaar,September 1, 1939

473

Figure 223. Leonor Fini, ensembles by Schiaparelli, Harper’s Bazaar, March 15,1940

473

Figure 224. Bustled evening dresses worn by women at the Gala de la Tour Eiffel.Jean Peltier printed satin with a Mae West inspired figure walking apoodle. Summer 1939.

474

Figure 225. Nina Lean, Model Shari Herbert wearing Schiaparelli's "ForbiddenFruit" evening gown, in Time, October 10, 1949

475

Figure 226. Schiaparelli dress from the Winter 1949-1950 collection in Newsweek, September 26, 1949

476

Figure 227. Miron Wollens ad featuring Claire McCardell dress, Vogue,September 15, 1949

476

Figure 228. First Papers of Surrealism installed at the Whitelaw Reid Mansion,New York City, by Duchamp

477

Figure 229. Charles James, emerald green satin evening gown, 1954 477

Figure 230. Joan Fontaine, Rosalind Russell, Florence Nash, and Phyllis Povah

in The Women (1939) directed by George Cukor, costumes by Gilbert Adrian

478

Figure 231. Model in the fashion show scene from The Women (1939) directed by George Cukor, costumes by Gilbert Adrian

478


479



xxiv


479

Figure 234. Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell in The Women (1939) directed

by George Cukor, costumes by Gilbert Adrian

480

Figure 235. Gilbert Adrian, Silk Day Dress, c. 1942 480

Figure 236. Gilbert Adrian, "Shades of Picasso" evening dress, 1944 481

Figure 237. Gowns by Adrian, using fabric prints by Salvador Dalí, March 1947 481

Figure 238. John Galliano for Christian Dior, Spring-Summer 1997 482

Figure 239. Alexander McQueen, Fall/Winter 2001-2 482

Figure 240. Alexander McQueen, Fall/Winter 2001-2 483

Figure 241. Shaun Leane for Alexander McQueen, Ribcage Corset,Sping/Summer 1998. In "The Deathbed" scene in the exhibition

AngloMania, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

483

Figure 242. Jean-Paul Gaultier, Fall 2010 484

Figure 243. Jean-Paul Gaultier, Fall 2010 484

Figure 244. Isaac Mizrahi, Spring 2011 485

Figure 245. Isaac Mizrahi, Spring 2011 485

Figure 246. Peter Lindberg, Dolce & Gabbana dress and vintage Lilly Daché hat,

in ―Fashion…and All that Jazz,‖ Harper’s Bazaar, September 2009

486

Figure 247. Paraphernalia, New York, 1968 486

Figure 248. Cindy Sherman, Untitled #296, 1994 487

Figure 249. Cindy Sherman, Untitled #122, 1983 487



1

Introduction

Art and Fashion?

A Surrealist is a man who likes to dress like a fencer but does not fence; a Surrealist is also aman who likes to wear a diving-suit but does not

dive… Surrealism is nothing but Dada with adash of Freud. –M. F. Agah, ―SURrealism or the

Purple Cow, Vogue, November 1, 1936

That Surrealist: Move into second place. Thisgent takes to the limelight the way an onion takes

to the frying pan. It doesn’t matter aboutchiaroscuro any more but you have to be up on

the psychological implication of each brushstroke. He likes you chic rather than exotic,

prefers nails brilliant with Revl on’s Hothouse Rose. -―Nail that Man,‖ Glamour, November 1941

This project started while I was flipping through the pages of Man Ray

in Fashion, a catalog for the exhibition MAN RAY/BAZAAR YEARS: A

Fashion Retrospective at the International Center of Photography. Most of

the photographs in the book were unfamiliar to me, but then I turned the page

to a photograph I knew very well, Noire et Blanche (1926) with the caption:

Published in French Vogue, May 1926. (Figure 1) (Figure 2) I knew this

photograph as an example of modernist primitivism, a formal study of

contrasts, tonal values, and textures. Suddenly, imagining the photograph on

the pages of French Vogue, I was drawn to the model, Kiki, her slicked back

hair, perfectly painted bow lips, and flawlessly plucked eye brows. There was

fashion, hiding in plain sight. This opened up a whole new context for Man

Ray‘s work that I had not considered before. What did Modernist Primitivism



2

have to do with fashion in the 1920s? Now I imagined Man Ray not just

among other artists and models, but with flappers, magazine editors, and

fashion designers.

Looking at the images in Man Ray in Fashion—models in the stock

poses of mannequins, solarized photographs, models‘ heads cropped out of

photographs, double and triple exposures—I wondered what these surreal

photographs would have looked like in Harper’s Bazaar, where Man Ray was

a staff photographer from 1934 to 1942. What was happening in fashion in

the 1930s that drew Bazaar’s editor Carmel Snow and art director Alexey

Brodovitch to Man Ray‘s work? Looking through issues of Harper’s Bazaar

from their tenure, it is clear that Man Ray‘s work is not an anomaly in this

context. In the 1930s, artists such as Man Ray, Edward Steichen, Salvador

Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Pierre Roy, and Leonor Fini were doing work for

Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Illustrators and photographers such as Miguel

Covarrubias, Cecil Beaton, Christian Berard, Erik Nitsche, George Hoyningen-

Huene, Horst P. Horst, Marcel Vertès and A.M. Cassandre were all influenced

by modern artistic movements—Surrealism in particular—in their work for

fashion magazines.

The September 15, 1937 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, for example, begins

with a surreal representation of Paris by graphic designer A.M. Cassandre on

the cover and the caption, ―the complete story of the Paris openings.‖1 (Figure

3) Through a trompe l‘oeil hole in the cover, symbols of the city float in an

1 Harper’s Bazaar (15 September 1937), cover.



3

abstract space: the Arc de Triomphe, one of Guillaume Coustou I‘s Marley

Horses, and the obelisk from the Place de la Concorde floating in black space.

An advertisement for Gunther furs appears on page 19: a woman in a

reverential pose wearing a fur coat stands in a barren dreamlike landscape

with electrical wire running backwards in space to a triumphal arch, and two

birds shapes, one in outline, one a in negative space point downwards in the

sky. (Figure 4) This was part of a series of Surrealist ads for Gunther designed

by Paul Smith for the firm Kenyon and Eckhardt that included a number of

Surrealists illusions, such as Man Ray‘s metronome from Object to be

Destroyed (1923-32), and arches of Giorgio de Chirico.2 (Figure 5)

This issue also includes a spread of photographs by Man Ray, some

with playful sketches by Marcel Vertès over-top. (Figure 6) In the spread

titled ―Saints and Sinner,‖ Vertès‘ sketches include a suit by Italian fashion

designer Elsa Schiaparelli with lip-shaped pockets, her new body hugging

bodice style that Vogue called ―Sex Appeal,‖ and a veil, by American designer

Mainbocher with paillettes shaped as lips falling over the wearers mouth.

Later in the issue is another sketch by Vertès of Schiaparelli‘s High Heel hat.

A spread by Jean Cocteau shows gowns by Schiaparelli and Chanel. There is a

story about the Pavillon d’Elegance at the Exposition Internationale des Arts

et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris. Surrealist-inspired photographs

by the German photographer Wolf Schulze, also known as Wols, illustrate the

article, playing up the strangeness of the mannequins with their impasto

2 Frank Caspers, "Surrealism in Overalls," Scribner's Magazine 104, no. 2 (August 1938), 18.



4

surfaces and hysteric gestures. There were also drawings of designer Elsa

Schiaparelli‘s Peruvian-inspired accessories including a Shocking pink knitted

ski mask.(Figure 7) The mask was inspired by a Peruvian chullo (a knitted

hood) that Schiaparelli saw at the Paris Exposition and included in her winter

1937-38 collection. This mask appeared, not only in magazines, but the

following year on the head of a mannequin dressed by Salvador Dalí at the

Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme. In addition, it was worn by

curator Chick Austin during his Surrealist show, ―Magic on Parade,‖ at the

Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut in 1939.

Surrealism was not just evident in the photographs and illustrations in

fashion magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, but in the clothing itself: from

Marcel Rochas‘ 1934 ―Bird‖ dress to Charles James‘ coats and gowns that took

on the appearance of biomorphic sculpture, from Lilly Daché‘s Dalí-inspired

hats in 1937, to Elizabeth Hawes‘ cheeky ―Tarts‖ dress with arrows pointing to

the bust and derriere from that same year.3 These juxtapositions of the work

of Surrealists artists and the Surrealist aesthetic of much of the fashion in

1930s fashion magazines suggest connections between art and fashion that

are much deeper than those acknowledged by scholars of this period.

In this dissertation, I argue that throughout the 1930s fashion was

infused with an aesthetic that I call ―strange glamour.‖ This aesthetic is

3 For illustrations see: Rochas: Richard Martin, Fashion and Surrealism (New York: Rizzoli, 1987),195. James: Ghislaine Wood, ed. Surreal Things : Surrealism and Design (London: V&APublications, 2007), 150. Hawes: Jan Glier Reeder, High Style: Masterworks from the Brooklyn

Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum ofArt, 2010), 122-3.



5

connected to the same visual sensibility and intellectual concerns of

Surrealism creating jarring juxtapositions and displacements meant to shock

viewers. Throughout this project, I will argue that strange glamour engages

with three interrelated aspects of Surrealism: the uncanny, ethnographic

Surrealism, and convulsive beauty. The term glamour insists on the

constructed nature of this aesthetic. There is nothing natural about this

aesthetic. In his book, Glamour: A History, Stephen Gundle ties the

concept of glamour to modernity, precisely because of its connection to the

self-fashioning at the heart of modern capitalism: ―glamour contained the

promise of a mobile and commercial society that anyone could be

transformed into a better, more attractive, and wealthier version of

themselves.‖4 Grundle defines glamour as,

an alluring image that is closely related to consumption…Thesubjects of glamour are very varied. They may be people, things,places, events, or environments, any of which can capture theimagination by association with a range of qualities, includingseveral or all of the following: beauty, sexuality, theatricality, wealth, dynamism, notoriety, movement, and leisure.5

Strange glamour is associated particularly with sexuality, theatricality,

dynamism, and notoriety. In fashion it is a way of dressing often formulated

to shock. It works through disjuncture and juxtaposition to create beauty that

can best be understood in the context of Surrealism. Glamour is key to my

argument because it describes images that can be thought of as both art and

fashion: photographs, films, or even paintings.

4 Stephen Gundle, Glamour: A History (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2008), 6.5 Ibid, 5-6.



6

While strange glamour was an aesthetic that permeated fashion in the

1930s, Elsa Schiaparelli was its most important promoter and her presence

looms large in this project. Schiaparelli and the Surrealists were deeply

engaged in the same questions and concerns, in ways which have yet to be

acknowledged in either art history or fashion history. Dilys Blum‘s excellent

monograph on Schiaparelli has begun to address this absence, and has helped

open up a space to reconsider Schiaparelli‘s importance.6 Studying

Schiaparelli as a member of the Surrealist circle opens up a wider context in

which to understand her work and the work of artists in the years between the

wars. It also establishes the important influence of popular forms of culture,

and their creators on artists. This reconsideration of Schiaparelli, as not

simply a follower but a participant in Surrealism, will establish a way of

looking at fashion in a critical way, as an important form of expression worthy

of study.

Schiaparelli, an Italian, started designing under her own name in 1927,

and quickly rose to fame. By the early 1930s, Schiaparelli has overtaken

Chanel in popularity, particularly in the American market.7 Schiaparelli

explained: ―America had always been more hospitable and friendly to me.

She had made it possible for me to obtain a unique place in the world. France

6 Dilys E. Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 2003),7 Axel Madsen, Chanel : A Woman of Her Own (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990), 198-91.



7

gave me the inspiration, America the sympathetic approval and the result.‖8

Schiaparelli‘s legacy had been completely eclipsed by Chanel because while

Schiaparelli‘s house slowly petered out after World War I, Chanel staged a

triumphant comeback in 1954, the same year Schiaparelli showed her last

collection.

Schiaparelli‘s exuberant and avant-garde creations have often been

dismissed as mere jokes. Particularly famous are her outrageous hats,

especially those on which she collaborated with Dalí: the Mutton chop hat,

the High Heel hat, and the Inkwell hat. These absurdist designs led her

contemporary, fashion illustrator Drian, to ask of Schiaparelli, ―Blague ou

Génie?‖ (―Joke or Genius?‖)9 Schiaparelli‘s humor and use of the absurd in

fashion is perhaps her most important legacy in contemporary fashion.

Designer Christian Lacroix explained that Schiaparelli was ―the first to open

couture to contemporary artistic currents and give it a sense of the ludicrous.

The joy and dynamism, the variety and mix of colors and shape. The lack of

prejudice—in short, freedom—are the most inspiring in her fashion work.‖10

The humor inherent in Schiaparelli‘s fashion should not prevent us from

taking her work seriously. Like the Surrealists, Schiaparelli used humor in

8 Elsa Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli (London: V & APublications, 2007), 112.9 From a song composed by Drian: “Blague ou genie?/En culbutant la mode,/Elle l‟habille en folie/Et

signe —Schiaparelli!” My Translation: “Joke or Genius?/ In tumbling fashion/She dresses her in folly/

And signs —Schiaparelli!” Ibid, 64.10 Valerie Steele, Women of Fashion: Twentieth-Century Designers (New York: Rizzoli International,1991), 69.



8

her clothes to jolt her viewers, encouraging them to look again, and

reconsider.

From the beginning of her career Schiaparelli experimented with the

uncanny and surreal combinations. She also directly collaborated with a

number of Surrealists, including Man Ray, Merit Oppenheim, Salvador Dalí,

and Jean Cocteau. Schiaparelli is often dismissed as merely a clever designer

who adopted, or even exploited the ideas of the Surrealists in her work, taking

their lead. Art historian Dickran Tashjian claims that ―Schiaparelli‘s

contribution lay mainly in transposing Dalí‘s Surrealist ideas to clothing,‖11

yet I argue that Schiaparelli‘s work goes beyond mere appropriation, and is

deeply engaged with Surrealism. The importance of Schiaparelli‘s work in the

art world has been largely ignored and covered over. She was not a follower of

the Surrealists, but was their contemporary, part of their circle. For example,

Man Ray‘s photographs of hats illustrating Tristan Tzara‘s essay, ―D‘un

Certain Automatisme du Goùt,‖ (Regarding a Certain Automatism of Taste) in

1933 are actually photographs of Schiaparelli‘s designs. (Figure 8) She was

never credited in Minotaure as the designer. Had these images appeared in

Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, a credit line would have mentioned not only Man

Ray, but also Schiaparelli, and perhaps even a store where the hats might be

purchased. The photographs are widely known and reproduced in books both

about Surrealism and fashion of the 1930s, yet the disparity between the

11 Dickran Tashjian, A Boatload of Madmen : Surrealism and the American Avant-Garde, 1920-1950 (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 84



9

discourses in these two realms is noteworthy. While the photographs are

always acknowledged as the work of Man Ray, the hats were not

acknowledged as the designs of Elsa Schiaparelli until Dilys Blum published

them in her 2003 book Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa

Schiaparelli.12 Here we see a clear example of Schiaparelli‘s work inspiring

Surrealists Tzara and Man Ray. There was a dialogue going on between art

and fashion that has not yet been acknowledged in scholarship on Surrealism

or fashion.

It is not only Schiaparelli‘s work that is dismissed by scholars, but also

the work of Surrealists who directly engaged with fashion through

collaborations with designers or fashion magazines. Underlying the dismissal

of this work as ―merely commercial,‖ of course, is the gendering of both

fashion and commercial culture as feminine. Implicit in this gendering is a

dismissal of fashion as shallow and unworthy of serious attention. I aim to

reclaim this work as an important part of the Surrealists‘ bodies of work. For

example, Salvador Dalí has often been dismissed as an unserious artist

because of his work in shop window display, jewelry, fashion, Hollywood and

at the 1939 World‘s Fair.13 Dalí was excommunicated from the Surrealist

mo vement by Breton in 1941 for being too commercial, and dubbed ―Avida

12 She also acknowledges this in her essay for the Surreal Things catalogue. Blum, Shocking!: The Art

and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 127. Dilys E. Blum, "Fashion and Surrealism," in Surreal Things:

Surrealism and Design, ed. Ghislaine Wood (London: V&A Publications, 2007), 139.13 Dickran Tashjian calls Dalí‟s shop window for Bonwit Teller “schlock,” and describes Dalí‟s

installation at the 1939 World‟s Fair as having caused him to lose “credibility by virtue of his

publicity-seeking. A decaying Dalí Dream of Venus became emblematic of his decline in the UnitedStates.” Tashjian, A Boatload of Madmen : Surrealism and the American Avant-Garde, 1920-1950, 91 and 65.



11

my propaganda into the enemy‘s camp.‖16 He goes so far as to argue that Man

Ray

vented his contempt for the fashion industry openly in adrawing entitled ‗Couture‘ for Les Mains Libres: a slender woman in the latest gown is sexually assaulted by a pair ofscissors…in so far as Man Ray drew the image, the violenceremains his; yet the image could be taken to expose the violenceperpetrated by the fashion industry on women, turning theminto sex objects, isolating parts of the body for display in aprocess that shares more with the pornographic than with theerotic.17

This is a difficult argument to accept considering that Man Ray‘s own work

regularly puts the female body on display, cutting it up, fetishizing it, and

objectifying it. Tashjian‘s remarks are telling, because of how far he goes in

order to maintain Man Ray‘s position as an artist above commerce. It is clear

how uncomfortable Tashjian is with Man Ray‘s participation in fashion, which

he demonizes as violent in its objectification of women. In order to integrate

Man Ray‘s fashion works as full artistic expressions of a master, he must

argue that Man Ray is critiquing the world of fashion, and by extension

commerce, as opposed to participating in it. Tashjian is forced to

acknowledge the shakiness of his own argument conceding, ― in so far as Man

Ray drew the image, the violence remains his,‖ yet the author maintains that

this is evidence of a critique of fashion.18 Tashjian fails to recognize the ways

in which many of Man Ray‘s photographs, even those that were not for

fashion magazines, are engaged with the conventions of fashion photography.

16 Ibid, 83.17 Ibid, 10318 Ibid,103.



12

It is also clear that Tashjian has a limited and clichéd understanding of the

fashion industry. He is unable to see that what he describes as a violent

objectification occurring in fashion, occurs regularly in art, particularly

Surrealism.

Other art historians have minimized the importance of female artists

within the Surrealist movement as well as the contributions of female artists

in other genres, such as fashion design, that were important to Surrealism.19

Ann Finholt, for example, tries to downplay the agency that James Thrall

Soby attributes to fashion designers in his 1941 book The Early Chirico.

Finholt quotes Soby this way: ―[de Chirico‘s young followers]have also been

partly responsible for the new imaginative elegance in fashion…Their strong

personalities have been reflected in the creations of a Schiaparelli as opposed

to the earlier ones of a Paul Poiret.‖ (italics mine)20 The full quotation,

however, notes Soby‘s reservations: ―I do not mean for a moment that they

[de Chirco‘s followers] have been wholly responsible, or that fashion has

followed them like a lagging, rich child. But I do mean that their strong

personalities have been reflected in the creations of a Schiaparelli as opposed

to the earlier ones of a Paul Poiret.‖21 Clearly Soby gave fashion designers

credit for their innovations that Finholt downplays in order to elevate de

Chirico above the commercial masses. She wants us to believe that

19 See for example Whitney Chadwick, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (London: Thamesand Hudson, 1985).20 Ann Finholt, "Art in Vogue: De Chirico, Fashion and Surrealism," in Giorgio De Chirico and

America, ed. Emily Braun (New York: Hunter College of the City University of New York, 1996), 90.21 James Thrall Soby, The Early Chirico (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1941), 101.



13

Schiaparelli cannot be considered a follower of de Chirco, but is merely a

reflection of his male acolytes. Modernists have always feared art and artists

prostituting themselves for capitalist gain. This fear is embodied in the world

of fashion, which combines women, money and sexuality. Yet Surrealists

willfully engaged the world of fashion throughout their practices, including

the use of mannequins in exhibitions, fashion photography, textile, jewelry,

and fashion design as well as appropriating images from magazines and

catalogues into their work.

Looking at the production of fashion designers in relation to

Surrealism brings the voices of these women into conversation with the

largely male, and often misogynist movement. There are a number of female

artists who were associated with Surrealism whose presence and importance

to the movement has yet to be fully recognized: Leonor Fini, Frida Kahlo, Lee

Miller, Nusch Eulard, Jacqueline Lambda, Gala Dalí, Claude Cahun, and

Meret Oppenheim As fascinating as the work of these women is, I am after a

more elemental shift in the way we examine a movement like Surrealism. I

want to bring fashion into view as a form of expression—cultural, political,

personal and otherwise—that can be read and understood on the same terms

as art has been. This will allow us to consider the personal style of these

women, which was often as unique as their art work, as part of their artistic

output.



14

Defining Fashion

In the context of this project it is important to define fashion as distinct

from clothing or dress. Here I am focusing solely on women‘s fashion, not

because men‘s fashion is not worthy of study, but because in the 1920s and

1930s women‘s fashion is far more dy namically engaged with artistic and

intellectual movements. Fashion is made when an article of clothing is

assigned meaning and value that goes beyond its physical construction and

practical use. Fashion ―is a semiotic language through which cultural

meanings are constructed.‖22 Modern fashion, as it developed in the mid-

nineteenth century, is produced at the nexus of designers, pattern-makers,

seamstresses, magazine editors, writers, illustrators and photographers, as

well as the women who actually wore and wear these clothes. Fashion is not

just a couture dress, but the whole culture that surrounds and disseminates it.

In the 1920s and 1930s, this includes magazines and newspapers, as well as

popular films and plays.

Traditional accounts of fashion have often understood it as reflecting

simplistic constructions, first of class through the seventeenth century, and

then of gender into the present time.23 Kaja Silverman complicates this

notion in her essay ―Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse,‖ in which she

argues that clothing and fashion, ―in articulating the body,…simultaneously

22 Nancy J. Troy, Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion (Cambridge: MIT Press,2003), 11.23 Kaja Silverman, "Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse," in On Fashion, ed. Shari Benstock andSuzanne Ferriss (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 183.



15

articulates the psyche.‖24 She contends that ―every transformation within a

society‘s vestmentary code implies some kind of shift within its ways of

articulating subjectivity.‖25 By examining fashion in concert with art in the

interwar period, I hope to tease out how clothing, particularly women‘s

clothing, relates to the psyche in a more complex way than has been

previously understood.

Here I will work to reimagine how looking might function in fashion. I

believe that looking at fashion is not limited to a standard understanding of a

masculine gaze that objectifies women, nor do women vicariously identify

with this sexualized gaze. There are many more possibilities for the complex

array of ways in which women look at and dress for one another. A full

understanding of fashion must move past notions of voyeurism, narcissism,

and gender as performance. While these are important components of an

understanding of fashion, there is a crucial aspect of fashion that involves

women looking at women in a manner different from assuming the male

gaze.26 Flicking through the pages of a fashion magazine a woman does not

see the model only as an object, but projects herself into the clothes the model

wears, imagining how she will look in them, where she might wear them.

24 Ibid, 191.25 Ibid, 193.26 See Iris Marion Young, "Women Recovering Our Clothes," in On Fashion, ed. Shari Benstock andSuzanne Ferriss (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 197-210, for a traditionaldiscussion of women looking at women as men. Young attempts to analyze women‟s interactions with

women through fashion, but ignores what I think is a particular dynamic and look that goes on betweenwomen through fashion, or at least between men and women who make themselves part of thediscourse on fashion that is much different than a traditional understanding of a male gaze asvoyeuristic.



16

Even if this woman never buys these clothes or ever sees them in the flesh, she

has consumed fashion.

By examining fashion as revealing something about the historically

constructed psyche of the woman wearing it, we can also move past many of

the false assumptions that have been made about the industry. Some authors

have assumed that fashion is imposed by men on women, but in the early

twentieth century this is not the case. It is crucial to note that most of the

producers of fashion in the years between the wars were women. A

significant number of fashion and beauty companies were run by women in

the 1910s and 1920s.27 As we will see, Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli

created significant businesses; Chanel‘s house is still an important luxury and

couture brand. Other women such as Jeanne Lanvin, Nina Ricci, Madame

Grés, and Madeline Vionette built important fashion houses in Paris, some of

which are still active. In the US, women such as Elizabeth Hawes and Claire

McCardell were designing important ready to wear lines, and Hattie Carnegie

pioneered high end ready-to-wear and imported important Paris designers to

the U.S. Women were also running many of the most important fashion

publications including Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.28

It is also worth noting that images of women in fashion magazines,

whether in ads or in editorial content, were meant for the consumption of

27 Kathy Peiss chronicles the rise of many female beauty entrepreneurs in the early twentieth-centuryincluding Helena Rubinstein, Elizabeth Arden, Annie Turnbo Malone, and Madame C.J. Walker.28 Carmel Snow took the helm of Harper’s Bazaar in 1934, and Edna Woolman Chase had been atVogue since 1914. Vogue has had a long history of being edited by women. Both publicationsemployed many women on the editorial and writing staffs, as well as women artists and photographers.



19

good things about fashion is that its commerce is blatant. The art world

generally likes to be very discreet about commerce. Fashion is about

manifestation—it‘s always out in the open.‖33 This comment gets to the root

of the problems art historians have had in including fashion in a Surrealist

lexicon.

Yet art is commercial too. It is a commodity. It is given monetary

value, bought and sold, even advertised. Artists in the interwar period

especially, were grappling and experimenting with art‘s role as a commodity.

In part, my interest in leveling the art/fashion hierarchy is an interest in

reasserting these commercial qualities of art, qualities that are often hidden.

Only through abolishing these false hierarchies, can we conduct a truly

interdisciplinary study of social, historical and artistic contexts of this period.

My work will reveal the ways in which Surrealism infused many parts of daily

life in the 1930s, and had many more practitioners than the few men, and

even fewer women, whom Andre Breton admitted to his circle. Andre Breton

was the main arbiter and theorist of Surrealism in Europe. His manifestos

and novels outlined the mainstream Surrealist aesthetic and he retained the

right to excommunicate those artists he felt were not living up to his

standards.

In her study of fashion and art at the turn of the twentieth century,

Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion, Nancy J. Troy writes,

―it is safe to say that dominant accounts of early twentieth-century art have

33 Darryl Turner, "Couture De Force " Artforum International 34 (March 1996 March 1996), 16.



20

failed to see the relevance of fashion for their object of study. Typically,

fashion has been regarded as superficial, fleeting, and feminized.‖34 Building

on Troy‘s important work, I plan to argue that far from being superficial and

incidental to Surrealism, fashion played an integral role in this artistic

movement. Fashion is as relevant to the study of other artistic movements, as

other modes of popular culture that have been accepted as vital to the

understanding of these movements.

Nancy Troy argues that most accounts by art historians have dealt with

artists who designed clothes, such as the Russian Constructivists, or Sonia

Delaunay. She claims that,

settling for a narrow definition of the relationship between artand fashion in terms of garments designed by artists or clothingthat qualifies as art, [art historians‘] approach privileged formalsimilarities that are often visually powerful but, nevertheless,generally lack substance when it comes to the exploration ofdeeper, structural relations which, in turn, do not necessarilyresult in any stylistic or formal resemblances between particularitems of clothing and specific works of art.35

Troy is referring to Richard Martin‘s work on Surrealism as well as on Cubism

and Fashion when she talks about privileging formal similarities.

The same is true of much of the scholarship on Surrealism and fashion.

The only serious book-length study, Richard Martin‘s ―Fashion and

Surrealism‖ (1987), focuses mainly on affinities between Surrealism and

fashion from the 1930s to the present. His book looks at shared operations in

Surrealism and fashion: ―Metaphor and Metamorphoses,‖ ―Bodies and

34 Troy, Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion, 2.35 Ibid, , 3.



21

Parts,‖ ―Displacements and Illusions,‖ ―Natural and Unnatural Worlds,‖ and

―Doyenne and Dandy.‖36 Even Martin, a fashion scholar and the curator of

The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1990s,

succumbs to the view that Surrealist art was the agent of trends: ―Only later,

primarily through the premier Surrealists working in Paris in the 1930s, did

Surrealism finally seize the fashion arts… Overtaking the fashion arts with

zeal, Surrealism has never left…Surrealism remains fashion‘s favorite art.‖37

Martin describes his own understanding of visual culture, particularly

in relation to his work on Fashion and Surrealism: ―I probably do have a

dream of visual culture, whole and thrilling. And I look for it, long for it, and

sometimes find it…I admit that my belief in a powerful, persuasive,

comprehensive visual culture has a degree of faith and yearning to it –I want

to believe in the cross-pollination between all these fields.‖38 Martin‘s own

work, including the book Fashion and Surrealism, hints at the potential for

this cross pollination but does not go far enough. Martin‘s focuses on

affinities— juxtaposing objects that look alike, as in the infamous MoMA

primitivism show of 1984. Finding influence and understanding a more

complex and nuanced relationship between art and fashion demands further

inquiry.

Moving beyond affinities and formal similarities, there are clear

structural similarities between art and fashion. In Couture Culture, Nancy

36 Chapter titles from: Martin, Fashion and Surrealism.37 Ibid, 11.38 Turner, "Couture De Force " 116.



22

Troy considers the common commercial structures of art and fashion. Troy

argues that in the early 20th century art and fashion shared a driving concern

with intellectual property and ideas of originality and reproduction. Artists

such as Duchamp and Picasso, Troy contends, depended on the same balance

between originality and mass-market reproduction as did fashion designers.

Both artists and couture designers depended on being able to differentiate

their high end work from mass reproductions, whether they were authorized

or not. Artists such as Duchamp played with ideas of mass reproduction and

originality in art very consciously. He explored these ideas most forcefully in

his ready-mades which, Troy notes, refer to ready-made clothing, the opposite

of couture and high-end made-to-order clothing.

In the inter-war years, both fashion and art were striving to redefine

themselves. Troy chronicles the rise of the modern gallery system along-side

the rise of haute couture. Haute couture refers to the fashions produced by

the exclusive fashion businesses in Paris, begun by Charles Frederick Worth

who, in 1868, opened the first couture house. Couture houses produce high-

end luxury fashion in limited amounts, often utilizing a great deal of work

done by hand as opposed to machine. These fashions were often copied by

ready-to-wear companies for mass market.

Couturiers were beginning to expand their businesses, not only

supplying painstakingly handmade garments to the very wealthy, but also

selling ready-to-wear garments as well as perfume to the middle classes.



23

Fashion was beginning to penetrate all classes in Europe and the United

States, through mass marketing, fashion magazines, and department stores.

While not everyone could afford a designer dress, many could afford a copy,

or could make one themselves. While couture houses were diversifying,

couturiers were increasingly defining themselves, and being defined by

others, as artists. Worth, and particularly Paul Poiret—a designer who opened

his own couture house in 1903—popularized the concept of the ―fashion

designer as artist/genius,‖ as opposed to a tailor or dressmaker.39 This

distinction was important to bring stature and value to their brands in the

face of rampant copying.

The issue of copying and authenticity also became a problem for the

Surrealists. When Andre Breton began to worry about the dispersion of

Surrealism into the realm of capitalism Man Ray suggested, only half-jokingly

for a ―trademark label to be placed on the bottom of all ‗authentic‘ works:

‗C‘est un objet surréaliste.‘‖40 The trademark label is precisely the way fashion

designers had been tackling the problem of copying since the beginning of the

twentieth century. The labels often used the designer‘s signature, linking

them to the practice of the artist affixing his or her signature to a piece of art.

In the wake of increasing democratization of fashion, designers were

working to codify a new relationship between art and fashion, as well as

39 Bonnie English, A Cultural History of Fashion in the Twentieth Century: From the Catwalk to the

Sidewalk (New York: Berg, 2007), 8. See also Troy, Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and

Fashion, 46-7.40 Krzysztof Fijalkowski, "Black Materialism: Surrealism Faces the Commercial World," in Surreal

Things : Surrealism and Design, ed. Ghislaine Wood (London: V&A Publications, 2007), 112.



25

Krzysztof Fijalkowski outlines Surrealism‘s responses to modernist,

and particularly shopping and consumer culture in his essay for the 2007

Surreal Things exhibition catalogue. He charts two different responses:

One was to chart the fascination, and often the absurdity, of thenew…If celebration seemed a risky venture for Surrealists,however, a second and more radical tack was also available: tocomprehend and critique the emerging consumer world byconducting an archeology of the very things against which thenovelty of commerce kicked: yesterday‘s modernity.45

Fijalkowski understands the Surrealists as either celebrating the absurdity of

the constant change inherent in consumer culture, or a critique of thatobsession with the new by referencing outmoded objects of mass production.

I would add that Surrealists also directly participated in this culture of

commerce and shopping, particularly in their frequenting of flea markets and

their often obsessive collecting of non-western art.46

Not only did Surrealists participate in this popular visual culture, but it

shaped their artistic practices. Ad Reinhardt described Surrealism as being

anti-art, perhaps because of its association with popular culture:

Intellectually and aesthetically the important thing was thatthere was absolutely no relation between the abstractionists andthe surrealists [sic]. The main idea and the whole tradition ofabstract art centered pretty much around art-as-art or that arteither had to involve with aesthetic essence or not. Whereas thesurrealists were involved with everything else. I suppose evenprogrammatically they were anti-art. They were involved in, Idon‘t know, life or love or sex or I don‘t know what. They wereliving it up. I remember Mark Rothko saying he liked the

45 Fijalkowski, "Black Materialism: Surrealism Faces the Commercial World," 103. Also see Foster‟s

chapter “Outmoded Spaces” in Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 157-191.46 Breton and Max Ernst are good examples of these practices.



26

surrealists because they gave better parties than the abstractpainters. [italics mine]47

The ―everything else‖ that Reinhardt refers to is everything that is not art, that

it life. This examination of the interactions between Surrealism and fashion

will demonstrate the ways in which these artists and designers strove to blur

the lines between art and life.

Examining Surrealism in fashion is important because it inserts

Surrealism in the everyday lives of the women wearing the garment, and those

who see her. This examination understands Surrealism as a crucial part of the visual culture of the interwar years. A garment can change a woman‘s walk,

or her shape; it can reveal or conceal; it can confound the viewer or wearer

with textures that don‘t look like they feel. We can see how this plays out in

the lives of the Surrealists themselves in the photo of Jane Clark (wife of

Kenneth Clark, then director of London‘s National Gallery of Art) and Gala

Dalí wearing Schiaparelli gowns at a 1939 opening at the Museum of Modern

Art. (Figure 9) Whether they were producing it, wearing it themselves, (Frida

Kahlo‘s favorite perfume, after all, was Schiaparelli‘s Shocking!), or their

wives were wearing it, fashion was a part of the lives of Surrealists, a part of

the visual culture that surrounded them.

47 Isabelle Dervaux, "A Tale of Two Earrings: Surrealism and Abstraction, 1930-1947," in Surrealism

USA, ed. Isabelle Dervaux (New York: National Academy Museum, 2005), 51.



27

Dada and Surrealism

World War I accelerated changes already occurring both in art and

fashion. The war helped to propel the progress of mechanized clothing

manufacture, with the need to produce uniforms quickly in large numbers. It

not only led to a rise in industrialized production, but also revealed the

horrifying potential of mechanized warfare. The war wrought terrifying

casualties: between 10 and 13 million men in the armed forces and between 7

to 10 million civilians died, and 20 million were wounded. Moreover, the

economies and infrastructures of Europe were in ruins.48 World War I

spawned several artistic movements including Dada, which began as a

response to the horrible rationalism of the war. For Dada artists, and later for

the Surrealists, the war was the ghastly culmination of modernity and

progress. Scientific and industrial innovation had automated many processes

that had promised to make life easier, and better, but it had also mechanized

war. This new warfare with aircraft, aerial bombardment of cities, land

mines, poison gas, and machine guns made killing efficient and war even

more devastating both to the military and civilians.

Dada artists used chance and the absurd in their art to respond to this

absurd rationalism and empiricism of war and death. Dada also grappled

with the meaning of art in a world increasingly populated by mass produced

objects. Chapter one begins with an exploration of Dada, and particularly

48 Thomas F. X. Noble et al., Western Civilization : The Continuing Experiment , Third ed., vol. II(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 866.



28

Marcel Duchamp, as they set the stage for the developments of Surrealism, a

movement that would also grapple with modern life and consumer culture.

The chapter considered Duchamp and Coco Chanel as two key figures who

revolutionized the role of the artist and fashion designer respectively. Chanel

redefined the role of fashion designer as a celebrity rather than an artist, as

Poiret and Worth had fashioned themselves. Her designs were associated

with her own body and lifestyle and were marketed to women who longed to

live the glamorous life Chanel herself lived. Likewise, Duchamp refigured the

artist as someone who does not rely on aesthetic taste, but instead chooses at

random, objects which become art. Both Chanel and Duchamp used their

radical re-conceptualizations of their roles in order to negotiate the increasing

importance of mass production and the growth of celebrity culture.

The following chapters will consider how the Surrealists and fashion

designers used these new models to work within their own aesthetic and

ideological parameters. Andre Breton, in particular, capitalized on the new

celebrity model of the artist. He constructed the Surrealist circle with himself

at the center, as arbiter of who was an ―authentic‖ Surrealist. Writing about

and publicizing the movement, he became the public relations director for a

circle of burgeoning art/celebrities. Breton had participated in the Dada

movement, but felt the need for a change in the early 1920s. Instead of using

the absurd to resist the terrifying logic that spawned the war, Breton favored

delving into the unconscious. Breton held onto the ideas of the chance



29

encounter and the incongruous from Dada, but extended this exploration with

the addition of modern psychoanalytic ideas. Breton and his cohorts were

working in opposition to artists and theorists who favored a return to

classicism after the war. Pre-war France had come to represent decadence;

through the war France had been ―purged of these afflictions to emerge true

to its real self: disciplined, strong, organized and clear-minded. In the

cultural rhetoric of reconstruction, this latter cluster of terms was brought

together under the single unifying heading—Classicism.‖49 Le Corbusier and

Amédée Ozenfant, the artists who founded the Purist group, used ideas of

modernism and progress in the service of rebuilding France and the rest of

Europe after the War. These artists wanted to move forward through rational

progress towards a peaceful modern world, a modern vision of classicism.50

They stressed logic, order and control, three concepts which the Surrealists

would strongly oppose in their work.51

Breton and the Surrealists turned away from notions of classical order

and rational progress. In his 1924 Surrealist manifesto, Andre Breton wrote:

―I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which

are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if

49 Briony Fer, David Batchelor, and Paul Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism : Art between the

Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, in association with the Open University, 1993), 17.50 I am drawing some of these ideas from Amy Lyford, Surrealist Masculinities : Gender Anxiety and

the Aesthetics of Post-World War I Reconstruction in France (Berkeley: University of California Press,2007), 1-14.51 Fer, Batchelor, and Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism : Art between the Wars, 20.



31

Surrealism, one that emphasizes abstraction as a mode through which to tap

into the subconscious, and another that uses realism to make the uncanny

images of dreams and the subconscious visible.

Equally important to defining Surrealism are the two quotations that

serve as the epigraph of this introduction. In defining Surrealists in Vogue

and Glamour, these statements emphasize the absurdist nature of Surrealism

in the public imagination. Dalí‘s fall through a shop window while he was

decorating it with a bath tub, or his lecture at the 1936 Surrealist Exhibition in

London delivered in a diving mask, or Merrit Oppenheim‘s furry teacup

(Objet, 1936) shown at the 1936 MoMA show Fantastic Art, Dada,

Surrealism, cemented the movement in the mind of the American public as

an art form loosely connected to the serious study of psychology, but mostly

as a group of strange and humorous artists hungry for the spotlight. They

emphasize the role of fame and notoriety, as well as costume in self-

performance of the Surrealist. The fact that these definitions use the terms of

fashion and celebrity culture to define an artistic movement, is not merely

coincidence. The movement was clearly linked to fashion in the popular

imagination.

The last three chapters in this project will take as their subject a strain

in Breton‘s Surrealist aesthetic. Each of these strains will be examined in the

context of a comparison of Surrealist artists and fashion designers. Chapter

painted surface. Ernst also used frottage, in which a textured surface such as wood or plaster is used tocreate a rubbing on paper.



32

two takes the concept of the uncanny as its subject, drawing on Breton‘s own

writings as well as Hal Foster‘s analysis in Compulsive Beauty of the uncanny

as the central organizing principal of Surrealism. The psychological

experience of the uncanny can be evoked through the conflation of things that

are irreconcilable: reality and fantasy, the actual world and the dream world.

A classic example of the uncanny is a familiar image in the world of fashion,

the mannequin—a figure that conflates human and non-human, animate and

inanimate.

This chapter focuses on the early work of Elsa Schiaparelli and her

collaborations with Man Ray. The 1930s are often seen as a period in which

femininity returns to fashion, a retreat from the freeing androgyny of the

1920s. Waistlines were brought back up to actual waist level, bias cut gowns

clung to the body‘s curves, and romanticism pervaded many of the looks

shown in this period. 55 Looking at Schiaparelli‘s early designs in the context

of the Surrealist uncanny, however, reveals a more complex turn from the

styles of the 1920s. These designs, rather than being androgynous, create

uncanny conflations of masculine and feminine, which Man Ray helped to

expose in his photographs. I look at Man Ray‘s photographs of Schiaparelli

and her work as collaborations between the artist and designer that reveals

their shared interest in the uncanny.

55 Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (New Brunswick, N.J.: RutgersUniversity Press, 2003), 43.



33

In chapter three, I compare the work and collecting practices of Man

Ray and Andre Breton to two milliners, Madame Agnès and Lilly Daché, all of

whom were interested in objects coming to Europe from Africa. Between the

1920s and 1930s, there was a shift in Modernist Primitivism from an abstract

interest in African forms reflected in Cubist art, to what James Clifford calls

―Ethnographic Surrealism.‖ According to Clifford, Ethnographic Surrealism

is a way of engaging with African (as well as Oceanic and Native American)

objects that acknowledges that they had a meaning in their original setting

and attempts to evoke this meaning by placing them in dialectical

relationships with other objects. I argue that this same shift occurs in what I

term ―fashionable Primitivism.‖ In the 1910s and 1920s designers were

creating garments that seamlessly incorporated African-inspired colors,

motifs and materials. In the 1930s, Lilly Daché and many other designers

were creating dialectical images with their designs. Looking at these

dialectical fashions alongside the dialectical images created by Man Ray in his

photographs, and Breton in his collections shows not only the shared

aesthetic between fashion and Surrealism, but also the ways in which Man

Ray and Breton‘s practices engage with fashion and shopping.

Chapter 4 explores Breton‘s concept of ―convulsive beauty‖ in both art

and fashion. In this chapter I argue that strange glamour, particularly

Schiaparelli‘s vision of it is connected to Andre Breton‘s concept of Convulsive

beauty, a beauty meant to evoke a visceral reaction of shock from the viewer.



35

modern life and the ominous expansion of mass culturethroughout the social realm are always already inscribed intothe articulation of aesthetic modernism. Mass culture hasalways been the hidden subtext of the modernist project.56

The aim of each chapter of this project is to reveal this ―hidden subtext‖

within Dada and Surrealism. Huyssen describes the way in which mass

culture has been gendered feminine, because it has been understood as

seductive, illusory, shallow, and passive, involving consumption rather than

production.57 This gendering has devalued mass culture, along with the

women who are often described as its primary consumers. While Huyssenacknowledges the misogyny inherent in gendering mass culture as feminine,

he still hangs on to the devaluing of mass culture: ―the problem is not the

desire to differentiate between forms of high art and forms of depraved forms

of mass culture and its co-optations. The problem rather is the persistent

gendering as feminine of that which is devalued.‖58 In my work, by

eliminating the hierarchy specifically between fashion and art, the gendering

of these areas can also be troubled. This allows creativity to be ascribed to

male and female producers and consumers of both mass culture and art.

More troubling, however, is the way in which Huyssen buys into the

passive structuring of mass culture. He argues that, ―certain forms of mass

culture, with their obsession with gendered violence are more of a threat to

women than to men. After all, it has always been men rather than women

56Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1986), 47.57 Ibid, 55.58 Ibid, 53.



36

who have had real control over the productions of mass culture.‖59 While this

is certainly true in certain realms of mass culture, Huyssen simply transforms

women from being the victimizers—threatening to take over modern culture

with base mass culture—into victims assaulted by the mass cultural products

of men. The story that I wish to tell here is far more complicated. There are

many true victims in the fashion system, as it existed in the early twentieth

century and as it exists now, from sweat shop laborers to women starving

themselves to fit into a designer gown. There is also an important way in

which fashion, particularly in between the wars, broke out of this cycle of

female victim and male victimizer, female consumer and male producer.

Women were vital cultural producers in all areas of fashion, and fashion was

one of the few industries in which women could rise to power. For example,

Victoria Billings charted the ride of a ―Woman‘s Elite‖ that radically changed

the production and consumption of fashion in the America.60 She argues that

American women who moved into the fashion business brought their own

experience as fashion consumers into the role of producer.61 This suggests

that consumption has the potential to become a generative act. I want to

insist that this is the case particularly in fashion. I will argue in this project

that the kinds of consumption women participated in are precisely the same

kind of consumption that Andre Breton and other Surrealists engaged with as

59 Ibid, 62.60 Victoria Billings, "Altered Forever: A Women's Elite and the Transformation of American Fashion,Work and Culture, 1930-1955" (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1990), 404-6.61 Ibid, 402.



37

they trolled the Paris Flea Market and staged exhibitions that looked more

like boutiques than galleries. Their collecting has been understood as part of

their artistic practices, and by looking at it alongside of the self fashioning of

women, we can see women‘s consumption as a creative act as well.

The dialogue that takes place between the female designer and the female

wearer contributes to a space of homosocial exchange. Fashion is both an

expression of the designer and the wearer, as well as being a commodity. A

designer creates a particular vision, but once it is worn it becomes a

collaboration between designer and wearer. In her autobiography Shocking

Life, Elsa Schiaparelli explained the complex relationship that she as a

designer had with the clothes she created:

The interpretation of a dress, the means of making it, and thesurprising way in which some materials react—all these factors,no matter how good an interpreter you have invariably reserve aslight if not bitter disappointment for you. In a way it is even worse if you are satisfied, because once you have created it thedress no longer belongs to you. A dress cannot just hang like apainting on the wall, or like a book remain intact and live a longand sheltered life.

A dress has no life of its own unless it is worn and as soon asthis happens another personality takes over from you andanimates it, or tries to, glorifies it or destroys it, or makes it intoa song of beauty. More often it becomes an indifferent object, oreven a pitiful caricature of what you wanted it to be—a dream,an expression62

Schiaparelli alludes to the collaboration inherent in the process of design,

referring to the drapers, pattern-makers, seamstresses, fabric manufacturers,

and embroiderers who worked with her on each of her designs as

62 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 42.



38

―interpreters,‖ noting that their work can change her original ideas. Once this

group creates a finished garment, it is changed yet again by the woman who

wears it.

Fashion and the Changing Lives of Women

Underlying my research is the conviction that fashion—and by extension

consumerism and consumption—can be transformative. A new style of

dressing can open up new possibilities for the woman wearing it. This is

particularly relevant in the 1920s and 1930s when the lives of women were

changing radically after their mobilization into the workforce during the war.

Many accounts of fashion in the years between the Wars have understood the

1920s to be a period when fashion helped to liberate the bodies of women,

who had begun taking on new roles in public life during World War I.

Sportswear was an increasingly important part of women‘s wardrobes in the

years after World War I, and was one of the key influences on women‘s

fashion in the 1920s.63 As in the art world, fashion also took two distinct

tracks in the post-war years. Some designers, such as Paquin and Jeanne

Lanvin, represented a return to order, designing romantic feminine clothing

emphasizing a nipped-in waist with curvy hips. Other designers, such as

Chanel and Patou, were proponents of the garçonne look, a revolutionary and

androgynous style featuring short haircuts with low tight fitting cloche hats

63 Madge Garland, "The Twenties: Sport and Art," in Couture: An Illustrated History of the Great

Paris Designers and Their Creations, ed. Ruth Lynam (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc.,1972), 76-77.



41

Certain women (mostly upper and upper middle class) with more disposable

income, were increasingly mobile and were demanding a wardrobe to match.

Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue featured articles on what to wear while

piloting or flying as a passenger in a plane, including an article by Amelia

Earhart in 1929. By then she was a pilot and was well known as the first

female passenger on a transatlantic flight.69 She describes what she wears as

both a pilot and passenger.70 (Figure 10) The magazines also featured

photographs of women dressed for summer and winter sports. (Figure 11)

(Figure 12) These were often not models, but society women who were

dressed for free by designers with the condition that they wear only that

designer‘s clothes.

In a short article appearing below a photograph of a model in a graphic

Vionette sweater, Harper’s Bazaar exclaimed: ―A journey by car…should be

colored by adventure. Highroads being nowadays devoid of any romantic

atmosphere, romance should be replaced by sport—the sport of Speed.‖71 The

article goes on to suggest an appropriate wardrobe for speeding down the

road in an open car, whether as a driver or a passenger. This should include a

leather cap, goggles and a lined leather coat, with ―scarves securely fastened,

tucked inside one‘s coat, with nothing allowed to fly in the wind. Anything

not pinned or strapped flies. Especially at over sixty miles an hour. One, of

69 It is interesting to note that many female fashion editors and fashion magazine staff, by the 1930s,were regularly passengers on transatlantic flights to see the Paris collections, as were the sketches and

photos, flown back on planes from Paris to New York.70 Amelia Earhart, "Plane Clothes " Harper’s Bazaar (January 1929), 95.71 “The Black and White Sweater," Harper’s Bazaar (December 1927), 60.



42

course, resembles a mummy tightly wound and bound.‖72 The article notes

that one need not worry about her mummy-like appearance as she is unlikely

to be recognized while traveling at top speed.

As sportswear came into fashion, lines began to blur between morning,

afternoon and evening dress. This blurring had already begun during World

War I when fabric was scarce as was the domestic labor required to maintain

a complex wardrobe of four changes of clothes a day.73 By 1928 Lenglen-style

tennis dresses were marketed in Vogue as appropriate ―for golf, for tennis, for

the picnic, [or] for the river.‖74 (Figure 13) Chanel promoted an increasingly

casual wardrobe for women, helping to popularize trousers, among other

menswear, for women. She famously introduced jersey fabric as a suitable

material for women‘s dress and promoted what Paul Poiret called, ― pauvreté

de luxe,‖ poor look that was luxurious.75 Chanel used simpler and straighter

cuts in her handling of jersey. Her long lean dresses and ensembles without

cinched waists matched perfectly the fashionable short haircuts of the 1920s.

Chanel‘s fashion began a trend to a kind of elegance in dressing that appeared

simple, minimal and effortless, even if it took hours of effort to create.76

Because the look stressed simplicity, it was in some ways easy to copy and

72 Ibid 60.73This had been the norm for wealthy women before the war. Mendes and De La Haye, 20th Century

Fashion, 51-2.74 Cited in, Horwood, "Dressing Like a Champion: Women's Tennis Wear in Interwar England," 51.75 Mary Louise Roberts, "Sampson and Delilah Revisited: The Politics of Fashion in 1920s France," inThe Modern Woman Revisited : Paris between the Wars, ed. Whitney Chadwick and Tirza TrueLatimer (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 72.76 Ibid, 82.



43

spread throughout France and the world through magazines, ready to wear

copies, and department store copies.

In her essay ―Sampson and Delilah Revisited: The Politics of Fashion

in 1920s France,‖ Mary Louise Roberts discusses the response to the

androgynous look of post war women‘s fashion. She writes that many critics

found the short bobs and slim figures of ―modern‖ women in the 1920s

profoundly disturbing. These critics often believed that this androgynous look

implied that women were no longer interested in being mothers, or taking on

their traditional roles in society in the post war era. It was feared that women

were not only dressing like men, and smoking like men, but acting like men,

potentially being mistaken for them, or becoming lesbians. Contemporary

supporters of these new fashions, however, declared that this new way of

dressing was liberating, allowing women freedom of movement:

Defenders of the new look created a vivid image of a new kind of woman who leads a mobile, athletic, and independent life. To doso, they adopted two discursive strategies. First, they aligned thenew styles with the aesthetic of modern consumer culture,defined in terms of mobility and speed. Second, they conflatedphysical and psychological qualities in their logic of human behavior: how one dressed encouraged behaviors analogous tothe visual image produced.77

Roberts is discussing this in a French context, but American magazines

certainly bear her argument out, featuring women engaged in modern

pursuits such as sports, driving or flying. Images of new technological beauty

treatments are also a part of this notion of the modern woman whose beauty

77 Ibid, 77-78.



46

As we will see, Schiaparelli‘s clothes, while they did bring more emphasis to

the female figure, never shied away from the shocking, and in many ways

deconstructed traditional notions of female beauty.

This project will reconsider the work of Schiaparelli, as well as Chanel,

Lilly Daché, and Mme Agnès, as a part of a vital visual culture engaged with

art. I will demonstrate the contributions of these women to visual culture,

and specifically to art. Their work did not simply ape the aesthetic of the

Dadaists and Surrealists, but rather negotiated this aesthetic on the new

terms of fashion. Schiaparelli, in particular, found ways to transform the

ideas of a movement that often objectified and marginalized women, into

tactics which empowered them. By leveling the hierarchy that places eternal

art over fleeting fashion, we can see the ways in which both men and women

responded to the changes taking place in the 1920s and 1930s.



48

the guise of Selavy between 1920 and 1921. Amelia Jones argues, as do many

scholars, that these photographs disrupt notions of bourgeois femininity and

the commodified woman. Nancy Ring sees Man Ray‘s photographs and Belle

Haleine, Duchamp‘s perfume readymade, as instances of Duchamp

renouncing a secure masculine authorial identity. This is certainly part of the

significance of these works, but it ignores their full participation in celebrity

culture. Both Ring and Jones consider the radical effects World War I had on

gender. Ring puts Duchamp, along with Man Ray and Francis Picabia, in the

context of what she terms a ―crisis of masculinity,‖ brought on by the

mechanization of soldiers in World War I.82 She reflects on the ways that

these artists created images of masculinity in their work in a period when

gender was in tremendous flux. Jones considers Duchamp‘s position

specifically as a man who did not participate in the war, and left behind his

family and country for the duration.83 Building on their work, I will examine

Duchamp‘s images of Rrose Selavy in the context of the fashion and beauty

culture which, I argue, they respond to.

Art Historian Nancy Troy has argued persuasively in Couture Culture:

A Study in Modern Art in Fashion, that Duhamp‘s readymades are reacting to

the crisis of authorial originality brought on by mass production, a crisis

82 Nancy Ring, "New York Dada and the Crisis of Masculinity: Man Ray, Francis Picabia, and MarcelDuchamp in the United States, 1913-1921" (PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, 1991), 8-9.83 Amelia Jones, "Equivocal Masculinity: New York Dada in the Context of World War I," Art

History 25, no. 2 (April 2002), 162-205.



49

which also plagues fashion designers. Troy compares Duchamp‘s approach to

this crisis with designer Paul Poiret, arguing:

Duchamp and Poiret operated not in two entirely differentsphere hermetically sealed off from one another, as thedominant discourses of fashion and art history might lead us to believe. Rather, each in his own way, in his own intellectual orprofessional arena, confronted the same problem, one that wasarguably among the most recalcitrant (and compelling) of themodern period: the instability of the authorial subject faced with the collapse of distinction between originality andreproduction, the work of art and the object of massproduction.84

Troy offers a structural comparison between Poiret and Duchamp, looking atthe way these two figures engage with mass production. Poiret continually

attempted to assert himself as an artist, attempting to use his label as a

signature that would assure buyers of the originality of his creations.

Duchamp, on the other hand, created the readymades, which existed on the

shaky ground between art and commodity. Unlike Poiret, Chanel embraced

mass production, in a way remarkably similar to Duchamp. While Poiret

relied on a traditional image of the designer as a fine artist, both Duchamp

and Chanel rethought the identity of the artist and fashion designer in the

midst of mass production.

Valerie Steel has argued persuasively in ―Chanel in Context,‖ that the

kind of clothing that Chanel was designing was not as new and radical as her

biographers would have us believe, but rather was very similar to the designs

84 Troy, Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion, 292.



50

of her contemporaries.85 Steele writes that Chanel, ―represented the new type

of fashion designer, who combined in her person the hitherto masculine role

of the fashion ‗genius‘ with the feminine role of fashion leader (not the

dressmaker, but the celebrity).‖86 Chanel not only represented this new type;

I would argue that she created it. Her significance does not reside in the

attitude or style of her clothes as much as it is the way in which she marketed

this attitude to women, using herself as the model. Chanel‘s life story of a

kept woman who managed to earn financial independence and build a fashion

empire represented the upward mobility at the heart of the fantasy of modern

capitalism. Chanel‘s fame allowed her to break down the class distinctions

between a dressmaker and her clients. Troy writes that,

Chanel‘s life story become indistinguishable from her clothing, jewelry, and perfume. Chanel, as well as her early biographer,acted as a catalyst to this process by equating changes in the styleor material of her clothing with changes in her love life, therebyencouraging the collapse of distinctions between her professionaldevelopment on the one hand and the wealthy men with whomshe has affairs on the other.87

The modernity of Chanel‘s life as a single woman was embodied in the

minimal shapes and simple materials of her clothes. Chanel gave her clothes

meaning by connecting them to her own famous life and lifestyle. This

meaning gave clothes with a Chanel label a higher value than the copies that

flooded the market. In fact the proliferation of copies only make the genuine

85 Valerie Steele, "Chanel in Context," in Chic Thrills : A Fashion Reader , ed. Juliet Ash and ElizabethWilson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 125.86 Ibid, 123.87 Nancy J. Troy, "Chanel's Modernity," in Chanel (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,2005), 19.



51

article more desirable. She created, self consciously, a persona that fit

perfectly into the tenor of the times and never shied away from taking credit

for fashion innovations later in her life. Neither did her biographers. About

her ―little black dress,‖ she proclaimed, ―Before me, no one would have dared

to dress in black.‖88 It was Chanel‘s celebrity image, which she carefully

constructed, that sold her clothes.

While Poiret fought the copying of his works in the U.S., Chanel

welcomed it, realizing that any use of her name was good publicity. She

adopted mechanical reproduction, using machine-made jersey and

industrially-produced plastics to create fake pearls and other costume jewelry.

Nancy Troy explains that Chanel, ―more than any of her contemporaries,

embraced the idea that her designs, like Marcel Duchamp‘s readymades,

flourished at the interstices between the unique couture creation and the

mechanical reproduction destined for the masses.‖89 Duchamp, like Chanel,

also took the model of the female fashion celebrity —in the form of Rrose

Selavy —to author some of his works. Duchamp is both the male artistic

genius and the female celebrity, autographing photographs and readymades.

Working from Troy‘s suggestion that Duchamp and Chanel are both work ing

on the edge between art and commodity, this chapter will examine the way in

which Chanel and Duchamp fashion identities and alter egos in the 1910s and

88 Danièle Bott, Chanel: Collections and Creations (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 175.89 Troy, "Chanel's Modernity," 20.



52

1920s. Chanel and Duchamp used celebrity culture to radically alter the role

of the fashion designer and artist in the twentieth century.

Performing the Flapper and Garçonne

Constantin Alaov‘s cover for the October 2, 1926 issue of the New

Yorker presented to the readership of the magazine a puzzling image. (Figure

16) The cover shows what at first looks like a man dressed for the hunt. Upon

further inspection, it becomes clear that the figure is, in fact, a woman dressed

in a riding habit, applying a last touch of lipstick as a man in the lower corner

sounds a horn. This incongruous image in many ways sums up some of the

crucial development in the social lives of women in the years after World War

I. Women participated in public life more than ever before, and in particular

through sports such as biking, tennis, golf, and hunting. The clothing they

wore for these sporting pursuits was often inspired by menswear. Chanel

herself epitomized this trend. She had become famous, even before she was a

designer, for the unique ensembles she wore while riding with her lover

Ettienne Balsan. While most women were still wearing skirts and riding side

saddle, Chanel had jodhpurs made from the pattern of a pair borrowed from a

stable boy so she could ride astride.90 These ensembles were well known by

Balsan‘s circle of wealthy friends and their lovers. When Chanel began her

relationship with Boy Capel, the famous polo player, her sartorial experiments

90 Madsen, Chanel: A Woman of Her Own, 40.



53

became even more well know as she paraded on the polo grounds of Deauville

wearing sweaters from Boy‘s closet.91

The terms ―flapper‖ and ―garçonne” were the American and French

labels applied to ―new women‖ like Chanel, who expressed their liberated

status in large part through fashion. Unlike the more generic term ―new

woman,‖ these labels referred more distinctly to a way of dressing that

suggested the new political and social position of such women, who were

increasingly independent and part of public life. The clothing of the garçonne

and flapper emphasized a straight streamlined silhouette, and a slim ―boyish‖

figure. Waistbands were worn low around the hips, and short haircuts were

often topped with low slung cloche hats. A Berley Studios sketch of a Miller

Soeurs pleated sheath dress with a modernist asymmetrical cardigan, and a

cloche hat over perfectly cropped hair, exemplifies this style.92 (Figure 17)

Like a number of other designers of the period, Chanel adopted the menswear

styles she took from her lovers‘ closets in her own designs, including a suit

and tie from her spring/summer collection in 1923. (Figure 18)

91 The trend continued when Chanel was in a relationship with the Duke of Westminster. She oftenraided his closet and was inspired by the tweeds and other English country garb for her own designs.Edmonde Charles-Roux, Chanel and Her World: Friends, Fashion, and Fame, revised and expandeded. (New York: The Vendôme Press, 2005), 245.92 The Berley Studios was a subscription service for fashion sketches owned by Ethel Rabin.American manufacturers and design rooms subscribed to get sketches of the latest Paris fashions aswell as original designs. Sketches are held in the Fashion Institute of Technology Library‟s special

collections. Miller Soeurs was a small fashion house in Paris which started out making copies ofdesigners clothing and, “After they'd copied for a while, they got so they could design well enough

themselves so they set up a model house of their own.” Elizabeth Hawes, Fashion Is Spinach (NewYork: Random House, 1938), 63.



54

Makeup was a key component in these androgynous flapper and

garçonne styles. By the 1920s the spectacle of applying makeup in public was

an integral part of modern fashion. These public acts exposed the

masquerade of femininity. Makeup had been identified with women of ―loose

morals‖ for decades, but by the 1920s and 1930s, its use had become common

for many women in Europe and America. The public application of makeup

had also become widespread in this period. In the 1910s and 1920s cosmetics

were moving from the vanity table to the streets: ―designed to be flourished in

public, compacts flashed silver and enamel finishes, imitated golf balls and

cigarette cases, and were even turned into belt and shoe buckles.‖93 The

artifice of the feminine masquerade was being revealed. This public act of

making up was especially important for the flapper and garçonne, the

compact becoming a crucial prop for their gender performance.94 As the New

Yorker cover demonstrates, the lipstick became a key prop for the garçonne,

confirming her femininity within the dandified dress of a huntsman.

Kathy Peiss argues that these public acts of applying makeup at work

or ―in restaurants, on commuter trains, and in movie houses drew attention to

the fabrication of appearance... As they put on a feminine face, these women

briefly claimed public space, stopping the action, in a sense, by making a

93 Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture, 130. See also, Woodhead, War

Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden: Their Lives, Their Times, Their

Rivalry, 129-130.94 Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture, 186.



55

spectacle of themselves.‖95 This new presence of cosmetics in everyday life

and in public spaces helps to explain Duchamp‘s use of Rrose Selavy and the

perfume bottle in his work. Cosmetics and perfume were even more visible to

both men and women in the 1920s. They were no longer relegated to private

spaces and modest understated application.96 While at first these public acts

of making-up were controversial, by 1933 Vogue ―proclaimed, putting on

lipstick [in public] had become one of the ‗gestures of the twentieth

century.‘‖97

These gestures, which exposed the feminine masquerade, form the

context in which Marcel Duchamp experimented with such performances. In

Man Ray‘s 1921 photographs of Duchamp as Rrose Selavy, Duchamp takes on

the trappings of the flapper or garçonne. Using the performativity of flapper

style, Duchamp plays on its inherent androgyny dressing as a fashionable

woman for Man Ray‘s camera. Their photographs create the image of a

fashionable celebrity as the author of Duchamp‘s works. Rrose Selavy mixes

the masculine role of creator and the feminine role of celebrity spokeswoman.

Duchamp‘s performance not only mixes genders but also conflates art and

commodity. Like Chanel, Rrose both creates and markets readymades.

Duchamp‘s masquerade is inspired by women such as Chanel who

connected her personal life to her professional production. Chanel, more than

95 Ibid, 186.96 See Woodhead, War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden: Their Lives,

Their Times, Their Rivalry, 129-130.97 Peiss, Hope in a Jar : The Making of America's Beauty Culture, 155.



56

any other designer in the 1920, became inextricably linked with her own

designs; she was her own best model for the kind of ―costly simplicity‖ that

she was marketing. Her glamorous lifestyle was the best advertisement for

her clothes, and fashion magazines often talked about and illustrated the

clothes that she herself, not just her famous clients, wore. A sketch by Drian

in Harper’s Bazaar is just one of many examples of Chanel modeling her own

clothes. Chanel‘s casual pose and black dress are not so far away from

Duchamp‘s dark coat and seductive pose, and their hats are nearly the same

shape. These images of Duchamp and Chanel exemplify the performative

celebrity culture of the 1920s.

Celebrity Culture and the Aspirational Womanin the 1910s and 1920s

In the wake of World War I, a new kind of mass culture fixated on

personalities was developing.98 Taking advantage of the new visibility of

women of all social classes since the War, Chanel became the most famous

fashion designer of the 1920s. Unlike the other designers of the period, whose

lives were not of interest to the public, Chanel banked on her celebrity to

make her designs unique. Even before she was a designer, Chanel was

surrounded by celebrity culture. Actresses, courtesans, and the famous

mistresses of wealthy men had been the main celebrities of the period before

World War I. Chanel entered the celebrity realm of the demi-monde when

98 Gundle, Glamour: A History, 145.



58

women were rising to prominence in celebrity culture. Chanel was just such a

self-made woman.

Crucial to this development is the growth of illustrated magazines, such

as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Time, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker,

L’Illustration in France, as well as the many magazines that grew up around

the Hollywood film industry such as Photoplay. Vogue, owned by Condé

Nast, launched a British edition in 1916 and a French one in 1921. This

branching out of the magazine gave it a broader international audience for its

fashion and celebrity content. Both Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar covered the

lives of the wealthy and famous, from debutantes to stars of the stage and

screen. These magazines photographed such figures, particularly women on

vacation, at the race track, or traveling by car, plane or boat. (Figure 19) They

reported on where famous women were going, what they were doing, and

most importantly, what they were wearing while doing it. Amelia Earhart

wrote an article for Harper’s Bazaar in 1929 on what to wear while flying.

(Error! Reference source not found.) For Vogue, Actress Ina Claire modeled the

newest fashions available in American department stores. (Figure 20) A

Vogue article from 1922, ―Paris Turns its Face toward Saint Moritz,‖ describes

the ―smart world,‖ and what they are wearing while spending the winter in

Saint Moritz.101 The article notes that Chanel‘s designs are worn by several of

the famous vacationers in the resort, including the influential interior

101 J.R.F., "Paris Turns Its Face toward Saint Moritz," Vogue (January 15 1922), 30.



59

decorator and society figure Miss Elsie de Wolfe, also known as Lady

Mendl.102

Fashion was central to the reporting of this burgeoning field of the

press. In France, for example, the magazine Les Modes featured photographs

of actresses and singers dressed in the latest fashion. Their reporters wrote

about what women of the upper class and the demimonde were wearing to

sporting events and the most fashionable events of the season.103 Gradually

these personalities become more and more international in scope. For

example, the American dancers Vernon and Irene Castle were famous both in

Europe and the United States.

Irene Castle was one of the first women to bob her hair around 1914.

She is also credited with encouraging women to stop wearing corsets through

her patronage of the British designer Lucile.104 These are two of the fashion

revolutions that Chanel is often mistakenly credited with. Castle, though not

from the upper class, created a stir with her fashion sense on the dance floor.

In 1939 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers starred as the couple in the film The

Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. A long montage in the middle of the film

shows the growing fame of the Castles and how their fame was commodified.

Three women going through a revolving door find themselves in identical

copies of an ensemble worn by Irene. A hatbox appears with an Irene Castle

102 Ibid 31.103 Amy De La Haye and Shelley Tobin, Chanel : The Couturière at Work (London: Victoria & AlbertMuseum, 1994), 12.104 Woodhead, War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden: Their Lives, Their

Times, Their Rivalry, 116.



60

Hat label. Castle bonbons, beauty cream, Vernon Castle shoes, and cigars

then appear in quick succession.

The film is no exaggeration. Not only did everyone want to dance like

the Castles they wanted to live like them too. The most potent sequence in

this montage comes when Irene is shown cutting off her own hair, followed by

a newspaper with the banner headline ―Irene Castle Cuts her Hair!,‖ and a

montage of women getting the ―Castle bob.‖ The Castles were in Deauville

(helping to popularize the tango) in 1913, as Chanel was opening her shop.

They represented a new kind of celebrity used to market a wide range of

products. The public was fascinated with all aspects of their private lives, and

the same would soon be true of Chanel.

Chanel was a particularly new breed in Europe, a self-made woman.105

After World War I, the aristocracy began to be less and less important. The

revolutions across Europe, and in particular the recent Russian revolution,

had proven how quickly aristocrats and royalty could be overturned. World

War I had thrown together men and women of all classes, beginning the

process of leveling the powerful class distinctions that had governed before

the war. Before World War I, a designer would never have socialized with his

or her clients, but by the end of the war such rigid class distinctions were

fracturing.106 Chanel, in particular, is responsible for changing the role of the

105 I say this with some restraint since her first investors were her lovers, but they were repaid, and withthe exception of their monetary support, Chanel really did build her business mostly on her own.106 Designers such as Charles Worth were not a part of high society. Designers had been seen on thesame level as dressmakers and tailors, as servants to their upper-class clients. Chanel broke that mold,



61

designer, from paid servant to glamorous celebrity.107 Nancy Troy argues that

through her connection to wealthy and titled men, and her style, ―Chanel

attained a degree of celebrity that allowed her to overcome, or at least ignore,

the class distinctions that had previously prevented dressmakers from

achieving acceptance among wealthy and powerful elites.‖108

“Simplicity, Costly Simplicity”109

Chanel began constructing her public persona from her very early years

as the live-in lover of Étienne Balsan, a wealthy man with a passion for horses.

Chanel used clothing to distinguish herself from the other live-in mistresses

and kept women who favored decadent and highly adorned clothing. Chanel

preferred to wear simple clothes, including men‘s britches or jodhpurs for

riding, a favorite activity at Royallieu. Her unconventional style, which

favored men‘s clothes and simplicity over adornment, caught the eye of the

beau monde. She began selling hats after many of the women in her circle

wanted the same simple hats she was wearing. Her next lover, Boy Capel, set

her up with a shop in Paris. His fame as a polo player got Chanel‘s unique

style noticed at the clubs where he played. Chanel‘s presence on the polo field

“„Society‟ had never before opened its doors to couturiers, however talented they may have been, and

these creative women had been elegated to the status of faiseuses or „dressmakers‟…Then, suddenly,

for Chanel everything changed.”Charles-Roux, Chanel and Her World: Friends, Fashion, and Fame,203. Madsen, Chanel : A Woman of Her Own, 70.107 English, A Cultural History of Fashion in the Twentieth Century: From the Catwalk to the

Sidewalk , 31.108 Troy, "Chanel's Modernity," 19109 Baron Adolf de Meyer, "Drian Shows the Silhouette from Head to Heels," Harper’s Bazaar (August 1922), 51.



62

is caricatured in a 1913 drawing by Sem of Chanel embracing Capel who is

represented as a polo playing centaur. Capel has one of Chanel‘s chic hats

balance on the top of his mallet. The drawing was a part of Sem‘s book,

Tangoville sur la Mer.

Perhaps this simple and masculine way of dressing came quite

naturally to Chanel. She was looking for comfortable and affordable clothes

for her active life. Eventually, however, her style took on a far more calculated

and self conscious attitude, which caused many scholars and critics to think of

her as a dandy. The dandy, exemplified by Beau Brummell in the early

nineteenth-century, dressed in a deceptively simple style. The minimal

esthetic required exacting precision to pull off. The result of the demanding

toilette of the dandy was an effortless look that suggested superiority over the

fussy decadent displays of wealth worn by other men. Chanel style engaged in

a similar self-conscious display of sartorial superiority. Her expertly styled

minimalism flew in the face of the traditional displays of wealth present in

women‘s fashion at the turn of the century. A 1935 photograph of Chanel

taken by Man Ray exhibits this carefully constructed persona.(Figure 21)

Valerie Steel explains that the courtesans of the demi-monde, ―unconstrained

by issues of modesty or propriety, perhaps also motivated by hostility towards

the established order…pioneered the newest styles.‖110 Chanel wished to

distinguish herself from the gaudily dressed kept women, but also from the

wealthy, whom she began to regard with a certain amount of contempt.

110 Steele, "Chanel in Context," 119.



63

As a girl who had grown up poor and then existed on the outskirts of

society as a kept woman, Chanel grew to despise many of the habits of the

very wealthy. She particularly hated their dishonesty, fickleness, and habit of

purchasing clothing through a private account that was sometimes only

settled yearly.111 It was widely known that Chanel preferred the company of

artists and musicians to the rich. In 1931, The New Yorker reported on

Chanel: ―Picasso says she has more sense than any woman in Europe and is

almost the only one he can talk to with comfort…Picabia, Chirco, Cocteau,

Christian Bérard, Bakst, Stravinsky [with whom Chanel had an affair], and

Diaghileff (sic) are among the important contemporary talents who have been

her familiars.‖112 Biographer Axel Madsen concludes that ―it was as if deep

down she rejected the glittering society that had made her rich.‖113 She was,

however, happy to take men from this society as lovers: Arthur ―Boy‖ Capel a

wealthy (but untitled) polo player, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch, a grandson

of Czar Alexander II who escaped the revolution, and the recently divorced

Duke of Westminster, just to name the most famous. Despite a personal

ambivalence towards the upper echelons of society and to those who occupied

these spheres, Chanel knew that her popularity among the wealthy and titled

would guarantee the success of the rest of her business.114

111 Madsen, Chanel : A Woman of Her Own, 130, 126.112 Janet Flanner, "31 Rue Cambon," The New Yorker (14 March 1931), 27-28.113 Madsen, Chanel : A Woman of Her Own, 146.114 Her typical origin story was that she was born poor and when her mother died she was raised in thecountry by an aunt. See for example: Flanner, "31 Rue Cambon," 25.



64

Chanel‘s fame was cemented when she introduced simple jersey

ensembles in her Deauville shop around 1915. Jersey, a simple machine-knit

fabric, had previously only been used for men‘s underwear and sportswear

and was notoriously difficult to work with because of its stretch. Through

her celebrity image as a modern woman, and the power that gave to her label,

Chanel turned jersey from a ―poor‖ fabric into one that signified modernity,

luxury, and youth. B y 1917, Chanel‘s name was synonymous with jersey.

While she was not the only designer to use this material, she was the designer

whose aesthetic was most associated with it. In 1917, Vogue reported that:

―Mlle Chanel is still devoted to jersey, which she has rendered as smart as the

classic serge in which we have frocked ourselves all our mortal lives.‖115 A

caption for a Chanel ensemble claims that ―this designer made jersey what it

is to-day —we hope she is satisfied.‖116 Vogue noted that Chanel herself wore

these jersey designs.117 Not only did Chanel launch jersey-style, she herself

embodied it.

One of the origin stories Chanel told for her use of jersey maintains

that she took one of Boy Capel‘s old sweaters and cut it down the front so she

wouldn‘t ha ve to pull it over her head. Adding some ribbon trim, a collar, and

tying it at the waist, Chanel claimed that she created a sensation among the

women in Deauville who demanded to know where she had gotten the dress:

―M y dear, my fortune is built on that old jersey that I‘d put on because it was

115 A.S., "Paris Stays at Home," Vogue (15 May 1917), 48.116 Ibid 50.117 idem, "The Fashions of Paris Lead the Simple Life," Vogue (1 August 1917), 31.



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cold in Deauville.‖118 This story, whether true or not, exemplifies the minimal

and androgynous style that got Chanel noticed even before she began to

design clothing. Once she extended her millinery business to include

sportswear, she ―became a young woman to watch. But her celebrity was

based on very little. Others might be famous by reason of their wealth or their

extravagance. When it came to Chanel, however, one simply said: ‗She is like

nobody else.‘‖119

According to another Chanel legend, she bought a large amount of

jersey (which had remained unsold for its intended purpose, men‘s

sportswear, because of the War) at a deep discount from the Rodier fabric

manufacturer. In a different version of this origin story, Rodier refused to

produce any more jersey for Chanel since he never imagined women would

buy dresses made from it. Chanel‘s stubbornness led her to prove him wrong

and convince him to produce more jersey for her.120 These stories, however

apocryphal, illustrate the ways in which Chanel attached her own personal

story to jersey fabric. They portray her as a modern iconoclast flying in the

face of conventional fashion, despite the fact that, in reality, fashion was

already moving in this direction. According to fashion historian Bonnie

English, ―Chanel‘s working-class background allowed her to respond

pragmatically to the shortage of fine textiles by replacing them with

pedestrian fabrics. More importantly the material symbolically represented a

118 Madsen, Chanel : A Woman of Her Own, 69.119 Charles-Roux, Chanel and Her World : Friends, Fashion, and Fame, 118.120 Madsen, Chanel : A Woman of Her Own, 81.



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revolutionary —and at the same time bourgeois—response to the previous use

of expensive haute couture fabrics.‖121

A vest sketched by Max Meyer exemplifies Chanel‘s casual and simple

jersey style.122 (Figure 22) Many of Chanel‘s early designs were based on this

simple low necked shawl collar. In one Max Meyer sketch, a low cut red coat

is worn over a dress with the same neckline worn over a blouse. (Figure 23)

Similar jersey designs were featured in Les Elegances Parisiennes in March

1917 and Vogue for January 15, 1917. (Figure 24)(Figure 25) These simple

designs were popular during the war, a time when women were dressing

somewhat more soberly. They had the added benefit of making the wearer

look casual and young. Instead of using luxurious fabrics and rich detailing to

show off a woman‘s wealth, these garments relied on simple lines and casual

style to create a clean, youthful, and sporty aesthetic. Chanel‘s personal style,

which reflected her antagonism towards the upper classes, was tailor made for

the War years. Her glamorous image gave this style a life after the war,

making it signify the youth and modernity that she embodied. Using her own

public image as a young glamorous and sporty New Woman, Chanel was able

to make simple clothes highly desirable.

121 English, A Cultural History of Fashion in the Twentieth Century: From the Catwalk to the

Sidewalk , 2-3.122 Max Meyer worked for A. Beller and Co., a high-end company that made women‟s ready-to-weargarments in New York based on the work of designers in Paris. Meyer sketched the work of Parisdesigners for the company from roughly 1915-1929. Many of these sketches are held in the FashionInstitute of Technology‟s Special Collections Library.



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Chanel had been in the right place at the right time to start her

business. In 1913, she returned to Deauville, and with the help of Capel,

opened a shop on the rue Gontaut-Biron. At some point she expanded her

business in this shop beyond just hats, to include sportswear. A New York

Times article from 1913 described Deauville as a place where new fashions

originated: ―what goes at Deauville is very apt to be considered fashionable

until December.‖123 The article also confirms that the rue Gontaut-Biron had

lately become the most fashionable street in Deauville, and mentions Chanel

coats as being frequently seen there in the morning.

Both pragmatically and symbolically, jersey was a perfect choice for

Chanel in building an image of a young and somewhat revolutionary fashion

brand. The novelty of using jersey was that it was not a luxury fabric, but

Chanel used it like one, selling her jersey garments for high prices, ―at 3,000

or 7,000 francs in 1915, today the cost of a typical dress would be well over

$2,000.‖124 Chanel knew that to get wealthy women to accept new materials

she needed to create a sense of luxury about them with high prices.125 In early

collections she used fur trim to enhance the jersey. (Figure 26) These jersey

ensembles led to her famous ―invention‖ of the ―little black dress.‖

123 "What Fashionable Folk Are Wearing at Deauville," New York Times, 21 September 1913.124 Troy, "Chanel's Modernity," 20.125 Interestingly in 1916 the New York Times reported that many American companies were copyingChanel‟s designs because they were so popular, but were changing the material from jersey to serge,

taffeta, or satin: the average woman does not want to pay $100 or more for a coat and skirt of Jerseycloth, because she has the right perception and feeling that this material is not for the city. BettinaBedwell, "Paris Frees Sports Styles," Chicago Daily Tribune, 30 April 1933, X2.



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Like almost every other innovation with which Chanel was credited,

she was not the first designer to create a little black dress. Rather she codified

the style of casual dress embodied by the design.126 Chanel, in large part

through her personal style, gave meaning to the little back dresses already on

the market. The simplicity of the little black dress fit perfectly with Chanel‘s

ethos of simple streamlined dressing. It was the polar opposite of the

overworked, gaudy ensemble of the generation before. The little black dress‘

closest kin was a maid‘s uniform or a shop-girl‘s dress. Chanel‘s biographers

frequently credit the nuns habits Chanel saw in the convent school she

attended as the precursor to the style. Others claim that the dress was a result

of the death of Boy Capel, her version of mourning clothes.127

Having made a name for herself as an individual with a distinctive

style, Chanel‘s name in turn became representative of that style, lending

simple garments like a little black dress a new level of cultural currency.

Similarly, Duchamp‘s artistic production depended on the many artistic and

authorial identities he created. The ―readymades,‖ such as Belle Helene were

created—ostensibly with complete aesthetic indifference— when Duchamp

chose an object, removed it from the context of everyday life and placed it ―in

the context of art through the operations of labeling (as in titles and

126 Steele, "Chanel in Context," 125.127 Alice Mackrell, Coco Chanel , Fashion Designers (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1991), 30.Edmonde Charles-Roux, Chanel: Her Life, Her World — and the Woman behind the Legend She

Herself Created , trans. Nancy Amphoux (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 43.



69

inscriptions and/or display)‖128 The readymade had to be inscribed, or

framed artistically by an artist to make it legible as art. As in the infamous

case of Fountain (1917) for example, Duchamp turned a urinal into a work of

art by inscribing it with the signature of one of his alter-egos, R. Mutt, and

placing it on a pedestal in an art exhibition. Even then the status of the

readymade was not secure. It still resides in the liminal space between

individual art object and mass-produced commodity. Duchamp‘s adoption of

multiple artistic alter-egos called attention to the role of the artist as

authenticator of the avant-garde masterpiece.

Chanel‘s production worked in the same way. It was her labelthat

conferred value on the clothes she designed. Her label marked these clothes

as fashionable because they were designed and approved by her. Chanel

understood that by creating dresses that were easily reproducible, either by

the home sewer or a mass market manufacturer, she would only make her

own dresses more valuable. In The New Yorker, Janet Flanner says as much

in 1931:

Chanel was the only one to find (or at any rate to say) that copyistsfurnished excellent publicity since they popularized models amongpeople who otherwise could never afford them and in her case,anyhow, demonstrated the vast difference between an imitation andthe genuine article.129

In 1926 Vogue published a drawing of what would become one of

Chanel‘s famous little black dresses, proclaiming ―Here is a Ford signed

128 Janine A. Mileaf, Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist Objects after the Readymade (Hanover:Dartmouth College Press, 2010), 26.129 Flanner, "31 Rue Cambon," 26.



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‗Chanel‘.‖130 (Figure 27) Ford was famous for saying in 1909 that "Any

customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is

black"131 Chanel‘s dress functioned in much the same way. Her dictatorial

control over the colors in fashion was similar to that of Ford. Ford decided to

focus his manufacturing on one single model in 1909, the Model T. He

developed mass production techniques that made automobiles affordable for

―the great multitudes.‖132 Like Chanel he used simplified, streamlined

designs, but unlike Chanel, Ford wanted to make a car that any ―man making

a good salary,‖ would be able to buy.133 Ford wanted the Model T to be

ubiquitous. Chanel allowed copyists to make her little black dress ubiquitous,

but through her marketing of her own little black dresses she associated the

style with herself. This marketing was largely accomplished by dressing the

staff of her boutique in little black dresses, and wearing them herself. Buying

a Chanel little black dress then ensured true chic and quality. Troy explains

that through copying, Chanel‘s little black dress was able to move ―beyond

mere fashion to embody style itself.‖134 Like Duchamp, it was the act of

inscribing the garment, in Chanel‘s case with the house label, which conferred

the value of her personal style and celebrity on a simple black jersey dress.

The label on the dress transferred the style that Chanel embodied onto the

130 Charles-Roux, Chanel and Her World : Friends, Fashion, and Fame, 226.131Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work (Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company,1923), 72.132 Ibid, 73.133 Ibid, 73.134 Troy, "Chanel's Modernity," 20.



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wearer of the dress. The presence of copies only made the genuine article

more valuable.

By the time of Janet Flanner‘s 1931 profile in The New Yorker, Chanel

had been firmly established as an ―iconoclastic designer,‖ who since her first

simple sailor dresses

has brought the essential items of most of the other humblertrade costumes into fashionable circles. She has put the apache’s sweater into the Ritz, utilized the ditch-digger‘s scarf, made chicthe white collars and cuffs of waitresses, and put queens intomechanics‘ tunics… By shrewdly sensing the Zeitgeist , Chanel

began turning out matrons and debutants on whomunornamented, workmanlike, though expensive, gowns and glass jewelry were exciting, chic, and becoming.135

Flanner praises Chanel‘s ―subversive‖ style and recognizes that the ways in

which Chanel‘s clothes turned traditional displays of wealth on their head.

She also notes the way that Chanel used high prices to encourage an air of

exclusivity about her clothes. She created a minimal style that was costly and

demanded a close attention to detail.

While Chanel pioneered the practice of the designer as muse, in the

beauty industry Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein were also building

their own public personae as a way of building their brands.136 They were

pioneers of public relations and while they would eventually have staffs to

promote their public images, these women started out as their own press

135 Flanner, "31 Rue Cambon," 25.136 Annie Turnbo Malone and Madame C.J. Walker were also hugely successful businesswomenmaking cosmetics for African American women, but are beyond the scope of this project since they donot participate in the world of high fashion in the way that Rubinstein and Arden do. Peiss, Hope in a

Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture, 61.



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agents.137 Like Chanel, Arden and Rubinstein carefully constructed celebrity

identities themselves to market their products, creating mythic pasts to sell

lipstick and face cream. Arden had her signature color ―Arden pink ,‖ which

was used everywhere in her salons and on her packaging. She had changed

her name from Florence Nightingale Graham to Elizabeth Arden.138 Arden

tended to create romantic myths about her childhood which, like Chanel‘s,

was marked by poverty and the loss of her mother. Both Arden and Chanel

loved cheap romance novels and probably picked up some of their talent for

spinning dreamy tales of their lives from these books. Arden started a rumor

that she was the daughter of a Scottish jockey, and ―‗grew up, with a whinny in

her ear‘ from the many horses her father kept on their farm in Woodbridge,

outside of Toronto.‖139 This story, which obscured the poverty of her youth, fit

in well with Arden‘s interest in horse racing. She used much of her wealth to

buy horses and create the Maine Chance Farm where she bred thoroughbreds.

Like Chanel, Arden also told stories about herself that fit perfectly with

the zeitgeist. For example, she joined a suffrage march on May 6th, 1912, less

for political reasons and more for promotional ones. The beautiful suffragette

137 Arden for example controlled all advertising copy for her products, even when advertisements were being made by outside agencies. Rubinstein traveled across the country in 1916 to scout retaillocations to stock her products, and had their staff sent to New York to be trained and outfitted inRubinstein uniforms. Woodhead, War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden:

Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry, 113-118. See also Peiss, Hope in a Jar : The Making of

America's Beauty Culture, 79.138 Rumor has it that Arden changed her name after parting ways with her business partner, ElizabethHubbard to avoid changing both the first and last names on her salon‟s sign.139 Lindy Woodhead writes that Arden must have started this myth herself, feeding it to the press, thequotation is from a New Yorker profile from April 6, 1935. Woodhead, War Paint: Madame Helena

Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden: Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry, 55.



73

Inez Milholland led the march on horseback bedecked in bright red lipstick,

making it the perfect opportunity for Arden to connect her own business with

a famous woman and modern political cause, not to mention the upper class

supporters of that cause. After this one march she would always claim to

have been at the forefront of the suffrage battle.140

Helena Rubinstein used her exotic image as a Polish woman with a

secret recipe for face cream to build her business. Rubinstein claimed that the

famous Polish actress Modjeska had shared the recipe for face cream that had

come to her from Polish chemists, the Lykusky brothers. Modjeska had

moved to the United States in 1870, and was famous enough to have several

cinemas named after her.141 In reality, born to a middle class Jewish family in

Krakow, Rubinstein didn‘t meet Modjeska until much later in her career. Her

famous cream, which she called Valaze, was more likely a formula handed

down through the women in her family; pine bark was probably the secret to

this cream‘s power.142 Adding celebrities and scientists to the pedigree of her

cream gave it an air of modernity, as opposed to the heirloom quality of a

family hand-me-down. Laden with her signature cabochon rubies and black

and white pearls, there was no mistaking her wealth. Like Chanel, Rubinstein

cultivated friendships with artists, and even more than Chanel, Rubinstein

used these artists to lend glamour and a new kind of worldly modernity to

140 Ibid, 98.141 Ibid, 27.142 Ibid, 25-27.



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herself and her business.143 Her first husband, Edward Titus, was an

important publisher of avant-garde books, and her salons were filled with

African and Oceanic art, as well as the work of Man Ray, Leger, Brancusi, and

Elie Nadelman.144 In 1937, Rubinstein even borrowed Man Ray‘s painting

Two Lovers (1932-36 depicting a giant pair of lips floating in a surreal

landscape) to use in a window display of lipstick.145

Chanel, Rubinstein, and Arden were just as aspirational as their

customers and the readers of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.146 These women

came from humble beginnings and created business empires that brought

them the wealth they had sought. All three women sensed a change in

popular culture in the early twentieth century. They realized that the public

was interested in products endorsed by celebrities. Arden, Rubinstein and

Chanel made themselves into the kind of women they wanted to buy their

products: wealthy, cultured and elite. Arden and Rubinstein knew that in

order to convince shop-girls and stenographers to buy a new face cream or

shade of lipstick they had to associate their products with glamour. They used

143 For an excellent overview see, Marie Joann Clifford, "Brand Name Modernism: HelenaRubinstein's Art Collection, Femininity, and the Marketing of Modern Style" (PhD dissertation,University of California, 1999), 179-215, and idem, "Helena Rubinstein's Beauty Salons, Fashion, andModernist Display," Winterthur Portfolio 38, no. 2/3 2003), 83-108.144 Rubinstein was a major lender to the important 1935 MoMA exhibition, African Negro Art . Herhusband Edward Titus also loaned some of her African pieces to Man Ray to use in photographs,including a famous image of Kiki de Montparnasse with an African mask. Woodhead, War Paint:

Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden: Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry, 16,134.145 The painting was borrowed just after it was shown prominently in MoMA‟s 1936-27 exhibition, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. Clifford, "Brand Name Modernism: Helena Rubinstein's ArtCollection, Femininity, and the Marketing of Modern Style", 44-45.146 The aspirational woman is a crucial demographic to consider in studies of fashion and beauty, sinceit this group of women who help to spread trends beyond the upper classes, and find ways of applyinghigh fashion to their everyday, middle-class lives.



75

themselves and their own lives to connect their products to a fantasy of

glamour, wealth, and leisure. These women not only marketed products, but

also ways of living.147

Rrose Selavy and the Artist as Celebrity in the 1910s and 1920s

Duchamp‘s alter ego Rrose Selavy first appeared as the copyright

holder on Duchamp‘s work Fresh Window in 1920.148 In early 1921 Man Ray

made the first photographic portraits of Rrose. A second sitting later that year

produced a second set of portraits of Rrose, which Duchamp used on the

bottle for his perfume readymade, Belle Haleine.(Figure 28) This readymade

was an empty Rigaud perfume bottle that Duchamp created a new label for

with one of Man Ray‘s photographs. The object was photographed by Man

Ray and appeared on the cover of the journal New York Dada (April 1921). In

the fall of 1921 while in Paris, Man Ray took the final set of images of Rrose

Selavy. (Figure 29) All of the photographs of Rrose are clearly based on

fashion and beauty images. They show Man Ray in a standard portrait

format. The set used on Bell Haleine shows Duchamp looking away from the

camera in short wig with a fussy feathered hat and a coat or cape with a

ruffled collar. The old fashioned ensemble is finished with a pearl choker and

147 Woodhead, War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden: Their Lives, Their

Times, Their Rivalry, 6.148 At this point her name is spelled Rose. Anne Collins Goodyear and James W. McManus,"Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture," in Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The

Dynamics of Portraiture, ed. Anne Collins Goodyear and James W. McManus (Cambridge: The MITPress, 2009), 152.



76

a brooch. In the last set of photographs, Duchamp‘s ensemble is much more

modern, a simple black hat with a printed band of fabric similar to the designs

of Sonia Delaunay. He wears a coat with a fur collar pulled up closely around

his face.

Many scholars have seen Rrose Selavy as a parody of the fashion and

cosmetics advertisements that were flooding Europe and the United States in

the 1920s. These scholars have often focused on the meanings of Rrose Selavy

in the relation to ideas about gender as a masquerade, or as part of

Duchamp‘s larger project of questioning authorship. While these

interpretations may be accurate, I am interested in looking at these images

from a different perspective. I want to move from these more general and

theoretical arguments, to one which tends specifically to visual

representations of Rrose Selavy in the context of fashion and beauty images in

1920 when they were created. This will illuminate the ways in which

Duchamp was specifically engaging with fashion culture in order to negotiate

the evolving relationship between art and consumer culture.

Amelia Jones writes that, ―Duchamp specialists are surprised by the

femininity of this authorial mark, its difference from the expected signature:

‗Marcel Duchamp.‘‖149 If we look at Duchamp‘s creation of Rrose in the

context of 1920 consumer culture (in particular fashion), however, the choice

of a woman as creator is perfectly clear. Rrose should be aligned with Chanel,

149 Amelia Jones, Postmodernism and the En-Gendering of Marcel Duchamp (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994), 155.



77

as well as Rubinstein, Arden, and other fashion designers and beauty

entrepreneurs, significant and famous women who were creators. These

women signed their names to products— be they skin cream, lipstick, or

dresses— whose meaning and value was determined by their names. Jones

does align Man Ray‘s photographs of Rrose Selavy with advertising images

and celebrity photography —precisely the kind of work Man Ray was also

taking on at the time, as we will see in the next chapter. Jones argues that in

these photographs, ―by mimicking the advertising format, [Duchamp] unveils

its seductions, while producing new ones based specifically on his identity and

the photograph‘s subject and object.‖150

James McManus also acknowledges the role of advertising images in

Duchamp and Man Ray‘s depictions of Rrose. A recent catalog of Duchamp

portraits, Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture, for

example, argues that Belle Haleine,

mocks advertising and marketing campaigns aimed atstandardizing notions of taste and beauty. Lending her image tothe project, Rrose, corporate figurehead (whose gender identity isquestionable), appears as Belle Haleine, spoofing celebrity figures(e.g. Coco Chanel) who were transforming their identities intoproduct brand names.151

While it is certainly instructive that McManus chooses Chanel as his example

of a 1920s celebrity, this analysis is rather narrow. Both McManus and Jones

150 Ibid, 168.151 James W. McManus, " Rrose Selavy (Recto) and Duchamp Looking through the Brawl at Austerlitz

(Verso)," in Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture, ed. Anne Collins Goodyearand James W. McManus (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009), 146. This idea is reiterated in idem, "NotSeen and/or Less Seen," in Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture, ed. AnneCollins Goodyear and James W. McManus (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009), 75.



78

connect the images of Rrose to fashion and beauty culture on the level of

―parody,‖ and without doubt this is a part of the meaning of these images. Yet

I want to think about how these images, and their adoption of the tactics of

fashion marketing, also reflected changes in the art world, and Duchamp‘s

own refiguring of the role of the artist. What Duchamp did with these Rrose

Selavy images and his reuse of them, commented on the ways that this

personal ―branding,‖ or what we might today call ―lifestyle marketing,‖ had

taken over the art world as well as the world of consumer culture, with artists

as its willing accomplices.

It is well established that Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and other Dada

artists were responding to the horrific mechanization of violence during

World War I, a crisis of masculinity, the rapid expansion of mass production,

and consumerism.152 With the rise of celebrity culture through an

increasingly global (or at least transatlantic) network of media, a new cult of

celebrity was developing around certain artists as it was around eccentric

women. Duchamp was one such artist. His Nude Descending a Staircase had

made such a splash at the 1913 Armory show that he was famous in America

even before he arrived. While the painting had created a scandal, and had

been mercilessly mocked by the press, Duchamp was treated ―with respect, if

not reverence…these articles inducted Duchamp into a new culture of

152 See: Jones, "Equivocal Masculinity: New York Dada in the Context of World War I," 164.Caroline A. Jones, "The Sex of the Machine: Mechanomorphic Art, New Women, and FrancisPicabia's Neurasthenic Cure," in Picturing Science, Producing Art , ed. Caroline A. Jones and PeterGalison (New York: Routledge, 1998), 151. Ring, "New York Dada and the Crisis of Masculinity :Man Ray, Francis Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp in the United States, 1913-1921", 14.



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celebrity.‖153 Nancy Ring points to Vanity Fair as a key site for the promotion

of the artist as celebrity, as did fashion magazines for fashion culture.154 The

September 1915 issue ran an article announcing, ―Marcel Duchamp has

arrived in New York! You don‘t know him? Impossible! Why he painted the

‗Nude Descending a Staircase‘.‖155 Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar also

participated in this phenomenon with regular columns on art that often

covered contemporary artists. In 1922 Reginald Marsh depicted the artists

and bohemians of Greenwich Village for a Harper’s Bazaar spread, "So This

is that Greenwich Village Where All Those Queer Artists Live." Duchamp is

shown ―descending the staircase (subway) in the middle of Sheridan

Square.‖156 (Figure 30)(Figure 31)

Nancy Ring argues that Duchamp worked to upset the belief among the

editorial staff at Vanity Fair that ―access to the artist, conceived of as an

individual at some distance from commercial culture, was the basis for a

comprehension of modern art.‖157 Instead Duchamp

willingly inserted himself into New York‘s culture of celebrity, but refused in his early interviews to comply with its many codesfor representing artists. Most obviously, he problematizes theidea of the artist as a distinctive individual with a rich interior lifeand a scandalous character by concealing his thoughts and

153 Ring, "New York Dada and the Crisis of Masculinity: Man Ray, Francis Picabia, and MarcelDuchamp in the United States, 1913-1921", 199-200.154 Ibid, 206.155“ Marcel Duchamp Visits New York," Vanity Fair (September 1915), 57.156 “So This Is that Greenwich Village Where All Those Queer Artists Live," Harper’s Bazaar (October 1922), 152.157 Ring, "New York Dada and the Crisis of Masculinity: Man Ray, Francis Picabia, and MarcelDuchamp in the United States, 1913-1921", 210.



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emotions and steering away from making definitivepronouncements.158

Many of the short-lived avant-garde magazines of this period also participated

in this celebrity culture, though sometimes in jest. New York Dada, which

featured Belle Haleine on its cover, had an article titled, ―Pug Debs Make

Society Bow,‖ which engaged with the blending in the 1920s of celebrity and

fashion. The article describes a coming-out party planned by Mina Loy to

―introduce the Marsden Hartleys and the Joseph Stellas to society...everybody

who is who will be who-er than ever that night.‖159

The sarcastic articlemimics the language of society pages and fashion reporting, describing what

Hartley and Stella will wear to the ball. Unlike Vanity Fair, publications such

as New York Dada were meant for a small audience of artists and intellectuals

in the Dada circle. New York Dada’s anarchic and absurd content employed

fashion discourse to mock Dada‘s ow n celebrity culture. Baroness Elsa von

Freytag-Loringhoven was also a celebrity among the Greenwich Village crowd,

and two portraits of her are included in New York Dada.160 Her unusual

ensembles made from found (and sometimes stolen) objects made her a

notorious character. Florine Stettheimer‘s paintings of the New York art

scene in the 1920s show the luminaries of the period and the important

158 Ibid, 210.159 Pug Debs Make Society Bow," New York Dada (April 1921), n.p.160 Interestingly, the Baroness remains somewhat of a celebrity. A fictional account of her life has

been written, Holy Skirts by René Steinke and actress Brittney Murphy posed as the Baroness for afashion spread in the New York Times Magazine. René Steinke, "My Heart Belongs to Dada," New

York Times Magazine (Fall 2002), 190-198. Rene Steinke, Holy Skirts (New York: William Morrow,2005).



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salons. Stettheimer‘s diaries refer to her paintings of Duchamp as

―advertisements‖ for him.161 While Francis Naumann is baffled by this

remark, it seems clear that Stettheimer thought of her paintings as publicizing

the avant-garde circle of which she was a part. It is clear from Naumann‘s

confusion that he is uncomfortable blurring the lines between art and

advertisement, but in essence this is what Duchamp‘s work was always doing.

Nauman is not the only scholar uncomfortable with the relationship

between Duchamp‘s art and commerce. As we have seen, when commerce is

acknowledged by art historians examining Duchamp‘s work, it is often seen as

the object of mockery by the artist. Duchamp comments on advertising and

fashion, but these subjects apparently have no bearing on his own work.

Janine Mileaf rightly counters this argument, writing that the readymade

ackno wledges, ―the close allegiance between art and commerce without giving

in to either side of the equation.‖162 It is precisely this precarious allegiance

that is at play in Duchamp‘s work that makes it so difficult for his critics.

Duchamp does not solve the problem, but rather leaves both sides—art and

commerce—exposed for his audience to recognized. Mileaf and Matthew

Witkovsky go so far as to identify Dada, in Paris at least, as a ―brand name,‖

writing that, ―Of all the Dada cities, it was Paris that most emphatically made

Dada into a recognizable brand name. With crowds of thousands and a steady

161 Francis M. Naumann, New York Dada, 1915-23 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 151.162 Mileaf, Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist Objects after the Readymade, 28.



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stream of press chatter, the movement became en Vogue in Paris more than

anywhere else.‖163

By attending specifically to the marketing strategies of a fashion

designer such as Chanel, it is clear the she and Duchamp worked in

remarkably similar ways. Chanel and Duchamp created brand identities that

they embodied that gave their work currency, both in terms of cultural

meaning and monetary value. As we can see from the continued importance

of the Chanel label and business and Duchamp‘s continued importance in the

art world, the ways in which these two figures embodied modernity are still

incredibly powerful.

1921: Belle Haleine and Chanel No. 5

In a 1921 work, Duchamp makes his ultimate comment on artists as

celebrities by giving his alter-ego, Rrose Selavy, her own perfume, Belle

Haleine (Beautiful Breath). Duchamp created this ―perfume readymade‖

from an empty bottle of a Rigaud perfume called Un Air Embaumé (Scented

Air) that had been designed by Julien Viard, a sculptor who was known for

creating perfume bottles with figural stoppers. Un Air Embaumé was first

released in the United States in 1915. Rigaud had already been selling

perfumes in the Unites States, including the ―Grand Opera‖ range, which

included perfumes named for famous opera singers. In Mary Garden for

163 Janine Mileaf and Matthew S. Witkovsky, "Paris," in Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne,

New York, Paris, ed. Leah Dickerman (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2005), 361.



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example, ―M. Rigaud has visualized through perfume, for our eternal delight,

the very spirit of the great artiste, Mary Garden,‖ and with Carolina White,

Rigaud had created a scent ―as elusive and appealing as the delightful

personality of the artiste herself.‖164 Duchamp may have been referring to

these scents when he personified the artiste Rrose Selavy in a perfume.

Meanwhile in France, Coco Chanel had also developed her own scent,

Chanel No. 5, and launched it in 1921 the same year Duchamp made Belle

Haleine.165 This was the first scent to be named for a fashion designer.166

Chanel, of course, was also famous for her style and glamorous life in 1921

and this certainly accounted for the popularity of her new scent. She

developed the fragrance with Ernst Beaux, a perfumer who was experimenting

with synthetic scents. Chanel wanted to make a perfume abstract and

modern.167 She supposedly told Beaux, ―I don‘t want hints of roses, of lilies of

the valley …I want a perfume that is composed. It‘s a paradox. On a woman a

natural flower scent smells artificial . Perhaps a natural perfume must be

created artificially.‖168 The artificiality of the scent was crucial for Chanel.

164 Riker and Hegeman Drug Stores Advertisement, Washington Post , 16 Febuary 1913.165A few sources give different dates for Chanel No. 5, but most agree on 1921. See for example, DeLa Haye and Tobin, Chanel : The Couturière at Work , 36. Kenneth E. Silver, "Flacon and Fragrance:The New Math of Chanel No. 5," in Chanel (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), 31.Richard Howard Stamelman, Perfume : Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin : A Cultural History of

Fragrance from 1750 to the Present (New York: Rizzoli, 2006), 244.166 Paul Poiret had a line of fragrances, but they were named for his daughters.167 Silver, "Flacon and Fragrance: The New Math of Chanel No. 5," 31.168 Madsen, Chanel : A Woman of Her Own, 133.



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Her perfume was the first high end scent to use synthetic aldehydes.169

Chanel and Beaux used a synthetic scent which, in combination with the scent

of real jasmine, created a perfume that lasted much longer than natural

scents. Chanel chose a simple flacon for the perfume that looked like a

pharmaceutical bottle and gave the scent a number instead of a flowery name.

Some say she chose five because it was her favorite number, or because the

scent she chose was the fifth sample Beaux created. No matter why she chose

the number five, the name Chanel No. 5 certainly played up the modernity

and scientific chemical content of the perfume.

The Rigaud bottle that Duchamp had chosen for his perfume, while

quite simple, was radically different from Chanel‘s geometric one. The Rigaud

bottle, an Art Nouveau design, was a bit out of step with new Art Deco trends,

exemplified by Chanel‘s minimal bottle. The bottle‘s simple and generic

shape provided the ideal platform for him to change the label. According to

Richard Howard Stamelman, Rigaud‘s Un Air Embaumé was heavily

advertised and popular at the time Duchamp made Belle Haleine.170 It would

have been a bottle that many women would recognize.171 A 1920 issue of

Harper’s Bazaar, for example, included an ad for the perfume calling it ―the

169 Aldehydes are a class of chemicals often described as giving perfume a sparkling, or champagne-like quality. Ernst Beaux also used benzyl acetate in the perfume, a chemical which in combinationwith jasmine extract creates a longer lasting fragrance.170 Stamelman, Perfume: Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin : A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to

the Present , 194.171 This strikes me as potentially interesting in relation to the Mad Caps, and the idea of maybe acounterpublic for this art, the idea of what women saw when they were looking at this work.



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exclusive perfume with a touch of the Orient.‖172 (Figure 32) Many Rigaud

advertisements used orientalist imagery to market the brand. Duchamp, on

the other hand, uses a photograph of himself as Rrose Selavy as a part of the

label, which reads: ―Belle Haleine/Eau de Voilette/RS/New York/Paris.‖

Duchamp‘s use of a modern ―celebrity‖ name to market his readymade

perfume, rather than vague exoticism, falls more in line with Chanel‘s

marketing strategy than Rigaud‘s.

The image of Rrose Selavy however was not nearly as modern and

forward looking as Chanel‘s image in the early 1920s.(Error! Reference

source not found.) Shot in New York, Man Ray‘s photograph of Duchamp

as Rrose was rather dowdy. Chanel would not have approved of this ensemble

with its fussy old fashioned hat. Her hats were much simpler and more

modern. For example, she topped a bright orange hat with a similar shape to

Rrose‘s hat, not with a gaudy array of plumes, but with a single black feather.

(Figure 33) The coat shown with this hat also has a much simpler line than

the ruffle that Rrose wears. Rrose‘s sartorial choices in this image make her

appear older and out of fashion. It was not until later in 1921 when the two

artists arrived in Paris, that Man Ray created the more chic portraits of

Rrose.(Error! Reference source not found.) Notably, this was after Man

Ray had been taking fashion photographs for Paul Poiret.173 Man Ray, it

seems, had learned a few things about fashion, and managed to make Rrose

172Rigaud Perfume Advertisement," Harper’s Bazaar (September 1920), 17.173 McManus, "Not Seen and/or Less Seen," 75.



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into a bit more of a garçonne. Man Ray‘s first photographs of Duchamp as

Rrose, with no makeup and an old fashioned pearl choker and brooch, call

attention to the transvestite performance. The fussy feathered hat and ruffled

collar threaten to take over the images, fashion crowds out the face of the

celebrity. Man Ray‘s highly focused image reveals Duchamp‘s rough skin, not

the soft skin of a beautiful woman. Duchamp and Man Ray created an image

that fails to seduce the viewer, calling attention to the function of the

advertising image.

Chanel‘s advertising images, on the other hand, are highly seductive.

She was depicted as young and modern. Caricaturist Sem (George Goursat)

made advertising posters for Chanel, using the distinctive square bottle of

Chanel No. 5 centrally in the ads. Chanel‘s bottle is often said to look like a

man‘s bottle of cologne, perhaps adapted from one of her lover‘s bottles.174

Wherever the idea came from, Chanel‘s bottle evoked a sense of masculinity

that made her perfume different and sexy. This is apparent in one of Sem‘s

posters in which a young woman with a chic garçonne haircut and low-

waisted dress throws her head back, looking back longingly to the Chanel No.

5 bottle above her. (Figure 34) Another advertisement shows Chanel in her

atelier watching a fitting. (Figure 35) Chanel sits languorously on a couch,

cigarette in hand, adorned with a long string of her signature pearls. While

she seems to be touching some fabric bolts draped across the couch, this is the

174 "Temptation, Joy & Scandal: Fragrance & Fashion 1900-1950 ", ((Exhibition Pamphlet) NewYork: The Museum at FIT, 2004) n.p. Edwin T. Morris, Fragrance: The Story of Perfume from

Cleopatra to Chanel (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1984), 203.



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only hint of work. To the right, the real work is being done by a seamstress

with pins in her mouth, who kneels in front of a glamorous client, pinning her

dress.

This image projects precisely the image that Chanel was cultivating

early on. Chanel famously kept herself out of the public spaces in her shop.175

In order to make her presence more mysterious, she limited the time that she

spent in her shop. This added to the idea that Chanel was less a working

woman than a woman of leisure who happened to run a fashion house. From

the time that Chanel had opened her first maison de couture in Biarritz, she

was said to stay at her couture house only until 2 or 3 in the afternoon before

retiring to her private drawing room to entertain or prepare for the events of

the evening.176 A 1931 New Yorker profile claimed that ―Chanel remains

inviolably invisible. Her friends state that she is shy. This legendary shyness

is probably a mixture of diffidence, indifference and perhaps disillusion.‖177

Constructing an image of mystery and glamour was key to Chanel‘s

marketing. Wealthy women wanted to wear the clothing of a woman who was

alluring and famous for throwing parties, not running a business.

While Chanel‘s persona was carefully and seamlessl y constructed,

Duchamp called attention to the construction of his alter ego, not least by

dressing in drag, but also by creating a woman who was hopelessly out of

style. Duchamp admitted that even the name he chose for his alter ego was

175 Madsen, Chanel: A Woman of Her Own, 126.176 De La Haye and Tobin, Chanel: The Couturière at Work , 19-20.177 Flanner, "31 Rue Cambon," 26.



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out of fashion: ―Rrose was an awful name in 1920,‖ yet was typical of the kind

of words used by cosmetics makers. 178 In addition to flower names, using

French words was also a key marketing tactic used by American beauty

companies to make their products seem exotic and fashionable.179 For Belle

Haleine, Duchamp carefully chose typesetting to mimic that of the original

Rigaud perfume. The name of the perfume, Belle Haleine is often noted as a

double entendre, sounding in French like both beautiful Helen, and beautiful

breath, which Richard Howard Stamelman notes evokes the idea of bad

breath, a strange pairing with perfume.180 Belle Hélène evokes the famous

mythic beauty Helen of Troy, and almost certainly an operetta by Jacques

Offenbach, La Belle Hélène (1864) that enjoyed a successful revival in Paris at

the Gaieté in 1920. The show landed on the pages of Vogue in the United

States in a spread on fashions in the theater. The revival of the operetta

apparently included an updated version of a procession of manikins, featuring

some very modern dresses including one illustrated in Vogue. (Figure 36)

Duchamp‘s wordplay continues in calling his perfume not eau de toilette, but

Eau de Voilette (veil water).181 While Duchamp‘s perfume is named for Belle

178 Janine A. Mileaf, "Bachelorettes," in Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture, ed.Anne Collins Goodyear and James W. McManus (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009), 49.179 Ring, "New York Dada and the Crisis of Masculinity: Man Ray, Francis Picabia, and MarcelDuchamp in the United States, 1913-1921," 231-232.180 Stamelman, Perfume : Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin : A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to

the Present , 196.181 There is a complex wordplay going on here Duchamp conflates the French words for violet, rapeand veil. Stamelman connects Voilette to Duchamp‟s acts of veiling in this work. Veiling his own

gender in the photograph as Rrose and veiling the original perfume bottle, giving it a new name andcelebrity endorsement. There are a number of readings for this wordplay that go beyond the scope ofmy particular interest in this object. Ibid, 198



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Haleine, Rrose is still present in her initials on the bottle above the cities of

―origin‖ for the perfume, New York and Paris.182 These cities are of course the

cities of Duchamp and Rrose. As with Duchamp‘s cross-dressing, the use of

perfume in this readymade in particular evoked the artificial and self

consciously theatrical aspects of the celebrity. While perfume and especially

cosmetics had a dubious history, associated with women of loose morals

precisely because of their artificiality, by the 1910s and especially 1920s they

were gaining widespread acceptance.

Duchamp‘s interest in self transformation also made the beauty

industry a perfect subject for his work. In addition to the use of makeup by

consumers to enact transformation, many of the women who ran beauty

businesses, like Chanel, were adept at creating public personae to market

their products. Marie Joann Clifford argues that this practice of self

promotion, and what I would call self-making was unique to women

entrepreneurs particularly in the fashion and beauty industries, because it

was one of the only options available to them.183 I would argue that artists in

the same period, particularly Duchamp, adopted these tactics as well to

market themselves. Duchamp was responding to the way in which the art

world was increasingly becoming a world like fashion with its celebrities and

tastemakers. Artists were being written about in magazines such as Vanity

Fair and The New Yorker. They were also creating their own magazines and

182 Ibid, 198.183 Clifford, "Brand Name Modernism: Helena Rubinstein's Art Collection, Femininity, and theMarketing of Modern Style," 46-47.



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writing about each other. While Duchamp was clearly critiquing the new

status of the artist as celebrity, his art also depended on this new structure.

The fame Duchamp had achieved through his controversial painting Nude

Descending a Staircase conferred avant-garde value on his other works. His

readymades depended on his construction of himself as an artist, and his

construction of alter-egos in order to be understood as art.

Chanel and the Dandy

Likewise, Chanel had to create a structure in which her minimal clothes

could be understood as chic, luxurious, and modern as opposed to simple and

―poor.‖ By creating a striking persona, and wearing her designs herself,

Chanel gave her brand name meaning. Her clothes were associated with her

persona, allowing her to make simple chic clothes stand not just for wealth,

but also good taste. In recent literature, Chanel has often been associated

with the dandy, precisely because the stance of the dandy emphasized that

wealth often did not guarantee taste.184 The aesthetics of the dandy at the

beginning of the 19th century, as championed by Beau Brummel, embraced a

restrained masculine elegance.185 A dandy should look perfectly put together

and effortless at the same time. They were responding to what they saw as the

184 See for example, Steele, "Chanel in Context," 119. Or Evans and Thornton, Women & Fashion : A

New Look , 122-123.185 The idea of the “dandy” has taken on many meanings since it was first coined at the turn of the 19 th century. It often simply refers to a man who takes a particular interest in dressing, or who isexcessively ornamented. It begins to refer to roughly the same man as the more recent and perhapsunfortunate term “metro-sexual.” I‟ve chosen to focus on the early Brummell incarnation of the dandyas it is the most relevant to Chanel.



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over-dressed and over-ornamented man of the turn of the 19th century who

was a slave to fashion‘s whims wearing bright colors, and gaudy jewelry. The

dandy‘s clothes were ordinary, but the way in which he wore them was

anything but ordinary. It required a certain talent, fastidiousness, and plenty

of time to dress. Men often came to watch Brummell‘s ritual of dressing,

attempting to learn the craft of dressing as a dandy. The same kind of

snobbery that is part of Brummell‘s early dandy style is integral to Chanel‘s.

Both Brumell and Chanel created minimal styles that looked casual and

effortless but were anything but easy to put together. Caroline Evans and

Minna Thornton describe Brummel‘s dandy as, ―at once élitist and

democratic: democratic because it was relatively ‗ordinary‘ and élitist because

very few men could get it right—that depended on the coexistence of money,

leisure and, that odd one out, skill…Brummell‘s kind of dandyism instigated

‗the idea of a new kind of aristocracy, an aristocracy based on talent.‘‖186

Chanel‘s style worked the same way: it seemed ordinary on the surface, but

the importance of details, in particular the designer label, was the crux of

getting the style ―right.‖ It took both money and skill to get the Chanel look

right, it involved more than just putting on her designs. Like Brummell,

Chanel found ways to maintain a system of status even as she streamlined and

186 Evans and Thornton, Women & Fashion : A New Look , 122-3.



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simplified clothing.187 Chanel made perfectly tailored, but casual clothes the

epitome of wealth and class.

Brummell‘s dandy also emphasizes the construction and artificiality of

fashion—in particular through the painstaking ritual of dressing. Many of

Chanel‘s styles worked in this way, her use of costume jewelry as well as the

use of synthetic chemicals in her perfume emphasized the construction of

codes of wealth. They also demonstrated the malleability of the signs of

wealth and stylishness. Paul Poiret famously called Chanel‘s early style

―miserabilisme de luxe,‖ meaning ―deluxe poverty.‖188 This was an apt name

for a style that mimicked the uniforms of maids, shop-girls, and stable boys

but through the power of Chanel‘s celebrity came to signify glamour, wealth

and luxury.189 One didn‘t just dress like a maid in a black dress, a woman had

to wear the black dress in just the right way, with just the right accessories for

the look to be high fashion.

Chanel introduced simple clothes that became a uniform for style, but

the art came in wearing them perfectly. She was the ultimate model of her

clothes, demonstrating how they were to be worn properly, and often making

pronouncements in the press about how her clothes ought to be worn.

Newspapers often reported the clothes that Chanel herself was wearing, to

187 It is also worth noting that both Brummell and Chanel created styles which resisted the changingwhims of fashions. Both believed in a sense of timeless style. Steele, "Chanel in Context," 126.188 Evans and Thornton, Women & Fashion: A New Look , 125.189 Paul Poiret claimed that women in the 1920s, “now…resemble little undernourished telephone

clerks.” Ibid, 130.



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parties or in the fashionable resorts.190 In another instance Mary Brush

Willams spends over half of her column, ―The Last Word in Paris Fashion,‖ on

October 29, 1922 describing Chanel and wondering what makes her so chic.191

The article also includes an illustration of Chanel in one of her own creations,

alongside three other ensembles on unnamed models. William‘s description

of Chanel certainly fits the profile of the dandy:

She has a lot of chic…and much of it comes from her look of greatindifference, almost of insolence…the gown she wore was almostnothing…of course she enwound it w ith pearls—for she is rich

and jewel loving. Who is not that has succeeded in art?...Hercoiffeur was awfully chic and typical of the Parisian hairarrangement of the present. It was done close to her head, andleft a little shaggy…there was not any sense of carelessness as ifthat unkemptness had just happened. It had been studied,mapped out, and practiced on in advance.192

Chanel is described as rich and perfectly but simply dressed with every detail

done right, but at the same time looking indifferent—as if the look came about

accidentally. Williams goes on to describe how Chanel‘s deportment teaches

women to ―spend your entire life getting ready, and look as if you never

thought about such a thing.‖193 Chanel had carefully created a look of

effortless chic that she was willing to share with customers, for the right price.

Chanel‘s public persona, and the way she dressed herself defined this fashion

and set her apart from other designers whose clothes were not as closely

linked to their personal style or lives.

190 Evening Gowns Worn at the Ritz in Paris," Washington Post , 19 March 1922, 59.191 Mary Brush Williams, "The Last Word in Paris Fashions," Chicago Daily Tribune, 29 October1922, C1.192 Ibid C1.193 Ibid C1.



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Shopping with Duchamp

The indifference of Chanel‘s style, the casualness of her taste, has a

parallel in Duchamp‘s work too. Duchamp emphasized the idea of

indifference or ambivalence in the way he chose the objects for his

readymades. Jane Mileaf explains, ―the readymade was thus intended to

oppose what modernist critics have long considered a fundamental

component of an artist‘s activity—the exercise of aesthetic taste.‖194 Mileaf

argues that Duchamp‘s indifference is only a posture, ―fully recognizing the

seductive nature of objects, their attraction ad commodities, Duchamp

worked against this power while ultimately failing to neutralize its effect.‖195

Duchamp‘s could never actually achieve aesthetic indifference, but like Chanel

and Beau Brummell before her, he could act the part. Just as Chanel‘s looks

appeared casually put-together, easy, and nonchalant, but were actually the

result of a carefully calculated effort, Duchamp‘s readymades appeared to

embrace random chance, but were in fact a result of a very particular kind of

taste. Mileaf enticingly describes Duchamp‘s taste as one that, ―resides in the

body —it is a sensory, habit forming activity that emphasizes the emotive over

the intellectual.‖196 This could easily be a description of the kind of taste

exercised in shopping, particularly for clothing, where the sense of touch is

194 Mileaf, Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist Objects after the Readymade, 21.195 Ibid, 25.196 Ibid, 25.



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particularly central. Of course shopping is central to the creation of the

readymade, Duchamp begins with the purchase of an object that is then

transformed or inscribed, but it is the purchase that is central to this art

making process. Not only does the name ―readymade‖ connect these objects

to fashion, but so does Duchamp‘s method of choosing the specific o bjects.

Through Belle Haleine, Duchamp specifically connected his

readymades to fashion, particularly though the integration on Man Ray‘s

photograph of Rrose on the bottle. Many scholars who have grappled with

Rrose Selavy have chosen to embrace the indeterminacy and slipperiness of

the image, accepting Duchamp‘s supposed indifference.197 Amelia Jones

focuses on Rrose as pointing to the performativity and slipperiness of gender,

drawing on the work of Judith Butler. While David Joselit does point to Rrose

Selavy as having to do with the commodification of the self, he makes no

attempt to situate this commodification in the context of the 1920s.

These writers have thought of Rrose in the abstract sense, as a man

posing as a woman and authoring as a woman. Rrose, though is not just any

woman. She is clearly a woman of fashion. While I would not go so far as to

argue that she was based on Coco Chanel herself, she is certainly based on the

kind of fashion celebrity that she models. Taking Man Ray‘s photographs on

their own, it is easy to see Rrose as simply as fashionable drag persona—she

could be any ―new woman.‖ When we consider the other spaces in which

197 See the introduction to David Joselit‟s book for more on Duchamp‟s plurality, David Joselit, Infinite

Regress: Marcel Duchamp, 1910-1941 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 3-7.



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Rrose appears, however, it becomes clear that she is an author in the same

sense that a fashion designer is an author. Rrose signed things, works of art,

letters, her photograph. The signature was crucial to fashion designers, many

of them such as Poiret and Vionnet used their own signatures on their

labels.198 Rrose also copyrighted the 1926 film Anémic Cinéma, a

collaboration between Duchamp, Man Ray, and Marc Allégret. As Nancy Troy

illustrates in Couture Culture, Paul Poiret made it his mission to protect

French couturiers by allowing them to copyright their designs.199 Most

importantly, perhaps, Rrose lends her face and signature (in the form of

initials) to the fake perfume Belle Haleine.

Rrose is clearly a fashion author, in precisely the same vein as Chanel.

Duchamp chooses to make this alter ego a fashion author because of the

tenuous position of fashion on the edge of art and commerce. Troy explains,

―Haute couture was developed and promoted in the late nineteenth century

and early twentieth century by dress designers who regarded the commercial

world with disdain. These men and women carefully constructed their

personas as great artists,‖ in order to distinguish themselves from the banality

of mass culture.200 As mass production began to play a greater role in

clothing manufacture, distinctions had to be created between haute couture

and readymade clothing. Mass production, and new technologies in

photography and filmmaking were challenging old practices of art making.

198 Troy, Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion, 323.199 Ibid, 269-275.200 Ibid, 193.



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Both Chanel and Duchamp found ways of working on the line between art and

commerce, blurring the already fuzzy boundary.

Romanov Pearls and Westminster Tweeds

Chanel redefined the role of the fashion designer, ushering in a era in

which women dominated the industry. She created the model of a female

designer as her own muse. She was seen as designing for herself as much or

more so than her customers. This is a model that would be used by Elsa

Schiaparelli, and would reemerge after World War II with women such as

Mary Quant and Betsy Johnson in the 1960s, Diane Von Furstenberg in the

1970s, and Vivienne Westwood in the 1980s. Essential to the success of this

model was the way that trends that Chanel advocated were connected to her

personal life, and particularly the men she was seeing. For example when she

began seeing Grand Duke Dmitri in 1922 he gave her Romanov pearls. She

had a fake copy of the pearls made, and began wearing the real and fake

pearls as a signature style. Flanner wrote that ―the only thing she‘s really

interested in wearing is pearls.‖201 Other stories claim that Chanel got her

first string of pearls in exchange for a Cartier tiara that Boy had given her, but

which Chanel found too ostentatious. Whether or not Chanel created this

look, it came to be associated with her.202 Many American ads touted pearls

201 Flanner, "31 Rue Cambon," 28.202 The famous American costume jewelry designer Miriam Haskell was said to have sold her own jewelry alongside Chanel‟s to attract more business. Deanna Farneti Cera, The Jewels of Miriam

Haskell (Woodbridge Suffolk: Antique Collector's Club, 1997), 17.



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in ―Chanel Pink‖ or ―Chanel‘s newest pearls—in pastel tints.‖203 An

advertisement for Bullock‘s in the Los Angeles Times tells readers that ―all

European Marts were searched for fashionable Jewelry Accessories for the

costume complete idea that is a present Vogue,‖ and features ―Many pearls

(simulated of course) after those made famous by Chanel in Paris.‖204

Wanamaker‘s advertised, ―New pearl necklaces as introduced by Gabrielle

Chanel, presented by the Bijoux Shop where Mlle Chanel‘s distinctive jewelry

was first introduced to America..‖ for $25.205 Bettina Bedwell reported in the

Chicago Daily Tribune that the Parisienne woman,

is often content to wear the simplest of dresses and the plainestof clothes, but she will not forgo that carefully studied trifle ofher toilette which is the insignia of individuality. Just now thefancy of the Parisienne is completely held by artificial jewelry anda favorite is the necklace introduced by Chanel, composed ofimitation pearls the size of large marbles sparsely strung upon aslender chain and fitted close to the throat.206

The Vogue for fake pearls represented another way in which Chanel mixed

high and low, and changed old ideas about displays of wealth. In this case it

was not the value of the pearls themselves but the value of the Chanel name

that gave the wearer cachet. Chanel found masses of real jewels to be an

obscene show of wealth, but masses of fake ones were perfectly stylish.207 Of

course Chanel charged lavish prices even for her costume jewelry. Even the

203 Bonwit Teller & Co. advertisement, New York Times 5 October 1924, 5. Best & Co.Advertisement," New York Times 11 September 1924, 4.204 Bullock's Advertisement, Los Angeles Times 12 October 1924, C33.205 The John Wanamaker Store News, New York Times 3 April 1924, 7.206 Bettina Bedwell, "The Last Word in Paris Fashion," Chicago Daily Tribune, 20 July 1924, C4.207 Evans and Thornton, Women & Fashion : A New Look , 125.



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name of Chanel‘s costume jewelry, ―vrais bijoux en toc,‖ (―real fake jewelry‖),

emphasized the dandiacal sense of artificiality in fashion that she was

courting:208 Costume jewelry caught on in Europe and in the United States.

In Anita Loos‘ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Lorelai Lee reports that ―quite a lot

of the famous girls in Paris had imitations of all their jewelry and put the

jewelry in a safe and they really wore the imitations, so they could wear it and

have a good time.‖209 Lorelai naturally cannot see the point, and prefers the

real thing.

In the mid 1920‘s, Chanel began to exploit the Vogue in Paris for all

things Russian. At the time she was seeing the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch,

a grandson of Czar Alexander II. In this so called ―Slav‖ period, she also

created copies of many other pieces of Russian jewelry, often from the Grand

Duke‘s collection, and adapted lavishly embroidered Russian peasant styles to

her collections. (Figure 37) These styles were being used by many designers at

the time, in large part due to the influx to Paris of Russian nobility who were

fleeing the revolution.210 These aristocrats became a sensation in Paris.211

The Washington Post reported in a headline, ―Hungry Paris Shop Girls Once

Graced Czar‘s Court: Russian exiles in French capital reverse legend of

208 Farneti Cera, The Jewels of Miriam Haskell , 13.209 Anita Loos, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes": The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady (NewYork: Boni & Liveright, 1925), 97.210 Eleanor Gunn, "Russia and Her Vivid Colors," Washington Post, 26 April 1922, 8.211 The vogue for deposed Russian aristocrats in Paris was also reflected in several films, including Roberta (1935), a musical about a former Russian Princess, and couturier whose partner dies leavingher half of the business to her nephew, an American football player. Much like Chanel‟s business

Madame Roberta‟s fashion house is also populated by former Russian aristocrats who work as models,doormen, and chauffeurs. Ginger Rodgers plays an American singer posting as Comtesse Scharwenka,telling Huckleberry Haines (Fred Astaire) “You‟ve got to have a title to croon over here.”

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0037472/

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0037472/



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became known as the ―Chanel slouch.‖218 This casual pose, like many of

Chanel‘s gestures, flew in the face of conventional manners.

Evans and Thornton argue that Chanel‘s adoption of men‘s styles are a

part of the upwardly mobile language of the dandy, ―informed by the attack on

individual social restrictions in the interest of self advancement.‖219 They

conclude that ―her design practice suggests that, for women, dressing for

power involves the adoption of a masculine cult of distinction. At once

revolutionary and conservative…‖220 Chanel used masculine clothing to build

her celebrity persona. Whatever significance her adoption of men‘s styles had

in the realms of gender politics, it was certainly memorable. The clothes that

Chanel was making in the 1920s were not nearly as mannish as the clothes she

wore. While Chanel‘s designs did follow a rigidly boyish line, they never really

verged into the cross-dressing territory that she did in her personal style.

(Figure 46) Chanel‘s personal wardrobe paved the way for her designs. For

example, when Chanel came to the United States in the early 1930 to work in

Hollywood, Janet Flanner reported that her ―trousseau contains a half -dozen

of the little jersey coats-and-skirts for which she is famous and a half-dozen

evening gowns, made to look as much as possible like the famous little coats-

and-skirts.‖221 In all of these cases—her adoption of Russian motifs, pearls,

English tweeds, menswear—she was not creating clothes that were radically

218 Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton, Chanel (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005),201.219 Evans and Thornton, Women & Fashion : A New Look , 124-126.220 Ibid, 132.221 Flanner, "31 Rue Cambon," 28.



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different from her contemporaries. Yet these particular styles became closely

associated with her because of her public persona, the men she was seen with,

the places where she was vacationing. Chanel‘s lifestyle perfectly fit the

clothes that were popular in the 1920s.222

When Chanel arrived in Hollywood in February of 1931, she was

already a well known figure in the United States. Vanity Fair nominated her

to their ―Hall of Fame‖ in June. As they wrote, she

was the first to apply the principals of modernism to

dressmaking; because she numbers among her friends the mostfamous men of France; because she combines a shrewd businesssense with an enormous personal prodigality and a genuine, iferratic enthusiasm for the art; and finally because she came to America to make a laudable attempt to introduce chic toHollywood.223

Like Duchamp, Chanel had constructed an image of herself as a glamorous

woman, who was more like her clients than a typical dress designer. It is clear

from the press coverage surrounding her arrival in the United States that, like

Duchamp, her reputation preceded her.

The Celebrity Personas of Duchamp and Chanel

Duchamp created outlandish personas that were rather detached from

himself, and designed to create scandal. Chanel‘s public persona, though

highly constructed, was closely coupled with herself and her life. Chanel‘s

designs were not detached from her, in the way that the work of her

222 Troy, "Chanel's Modernity," 19.223 “We Nominate for the Hall of Fame," Vanity Fair (June 1931), 66.



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contemporaries was. She wore her own clothes. They were in many ways

designed for her. She was her own muse, rejecting the model of the male

fashion genius, or the invisible work of the dressmaker. Her works were

intimately tied to herself and her body. She was seen by the public as

designing clothing for herself. Chanel‘s choice to make a break between

fashion and art was a conscious and calculated decision at a time when art

was making its own radical break with art itself, as embodied by Duchamp.

Just as Duchamp was radically experimenting with questions of what counted

for art, Chanel attacked the question of what counted for fashion. Both of

these figures created work that existed on the boundaries of art and

commodity. They used the public personas that they constructed to give their

works meaning beyond its value as a commodity.

Returning to the two images of Duchamp and Chanel that opened this

chapter, it is clear that both figures used similar tactics to shape their

personas for the public. In Man Ray‘s 1920-21 photograph of Duchamp as

Rrose Selavy, Duchamp poses as an alluring and androgynous woman

wearing a fur wrap and a black hat with a printed fabric band.(Error!

Reference source not found.) The fabric is not unlike Sonya Delaunay‘s

modernist printed fabric. (Figure 47) Here Rrose looks modern, and yet

explicitly feminine. Duchamp‘s‘ posture borrowed from fashion models who

used the gesture of touching both fabrics and fur to emphasize the material‘s

sensuality. A model at the bottom right of a 1921 Harper’s Bazaar spread on



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sportswear is a possible source for Duchamp‘s pose.224 (Figure 48) This

photograph certainly aligns Rrose with modern fashion, even if it is a bit

down-market. She is certainly no match for the full fledged flapper or

garçonne of the same period such as the one in a 1920-22 Berley Studios

sketch of a Miller Soeurs pleated sheath dress with a modernist asymmetrical

cardigan, and a cloche hat over perfectly cropped hair.225 (Error! Reference

source not found.) It is clear that Duchamp is directly appropriating fashion

imagery. He is engaging directly with fashion‘s position in between art and

commodity.

In a fashion illustration from Harper’s Bazaar’s August 1922 issue,

fashion illustrator Drian shows Chanel‘s new silhouette for the season. (Figure

49) This drawing shows the designer herself in her own design. The drawing

is labeled simply ―Mademoiselle Chanel,‖ while the other dress on the page is

labeled ―The Callot Silhouette.‖ (Figure 50) Photographer Baron Adolf deMeyer explains in the captions,

Chanel conceives clothes from an entirely different angle: theindividuality of the woman predominates, the gown is designedas but a background… Although skirts and waists daily growlonger, Mademoiselle Chanel still remains a delightfulexception. She clings to her short and narrow styles, which she

224 Or perhaps it was Duchamp‟s friend Grace Ewing‟s inspiration since she lent Duchamp the hat and

her hands for this photograph according to Susan Fillin-Yeh, "Dandies, Marginality and Modernism:Georgia O'Keeffe, Marcel Duchamp and Other Cross-Dressers," Oxford Art Journal 18, no. 2 (1995),33.225 The Berley Studios was a subscription service for fashion sketches owned by Ethel Rabin.American manufacturers and design rooms subscribed to get sketches of the latest Paris fashions aswell as original designs. Sketches are held in the Fashion Institute of Technology Library‟s special

collections. Miller Soeurs was a small fashion house in Paris which started out making copies ofdesigners clothing and, “After they'd copied for a while, they got so they could design well enoughthemselves so they set up a model house of their own.” Hawes, Fashion Is Spinach, 63.



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herself wears—how well, I hardly need say, as everyone knowsher, if only by sight. These suit her youthful type, especially asshe generally relieves the extreme simplicity and girlishness ofher appearance by adding many gorgeous strings of pearls of

dazzling luster. Chanel has succeeded in making simplicity,costly simplicity, the keynote of the fashion of the day.226

This drawing reflects the typical and iconic representation of Chanel in the

early 1920s. Dressed simply in black with her signature pearls, striking a

powerful pose with her hands on her hips, Chanel looks away from the viewer.

Her hat in this drawing is quite like that of Rrose, but even simpler, without

the modernist patterned band. Standing in her familiar relaxed slouchedpose, Chanel is strong and in control, thinking her own thoughts, and denying

the viewer‘s gaze. As the caption makes clear, Chanel was famous enough by

1922 that ―everyone knows her.‖

Chanel created a signature style associated with her own body. This

style is clearly connected to Chanel herself in a manner different from that of

her contemporaries. She designed clothes that she herself wore, clothes that

expressed the youthful and sporty image of herself that she had created.

Through this image, Chanel made her jersey clothes desirable because they

expressed the youthful and casual lifestyle that she embodied. In an essay

originally published in Marie Claire in 1967, Roland Barthes argues that ―the

creations of Chanel challenge the very idea of fashion,‖ because fashion relies

on ever changing tastes and trend, while ―Chanel always works on the same

model which she merely ‗varies‘ from year to year… The very thing that

226 de Meyer, "Drian Shows the Silhouette from Head to Heels," 51.



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negates fashion, long life, Chanel makes into a precious quality.‖227 Chanel‘s

rebellion against the traditional system of fashion with its cycles, trends, and

ephemeral qualities is, according to Barthes, a rejection of ―the vulgarities of

petty bourgeois clothing.‖228 She was also rejecting the intricate and

mannered styles of the upper classes in her use of jersey, fake pearls, and

synthetic scents. Returning to Nancy Troy‘s original comparison with which

this chapter opened, we can see that both Chanel and Duchamp flourished ―in

the interstices between the unique couture creation [or art object] and the

mechanical reproduction designed for the masses.‖229 Chanel‘s constructed

public persona was the key to her success in promoting her style of dressing

and her designs.

Duchamp and Chanel exploited the celebrity culture of the 1920s to

market themselves. Both relied on their images to give their products value.

Steele writes that ―Chanel was typical of the entire modernist movement. To

the extent that she stands out, it is because she most successfully synthesized,

publicized and epitomized a look that many other people developed.‖230

Could the same be said of Duchamp? Man Ray, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

Loringhoven, and even Picasso were creating sculpture from everyday objects

in the same v ein as Duchamp‘s readymades, but it is Duchamp who is most

closely associated with this practice. More than Chanel, Duchamp was

227 Roland Barthes, "The Contest between Chanel and Courrèges," in The Language of Fashion, ed.Andy Stafford and Michael Carter, trans. Andy Stafford (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 106.228 Ibid, 107.229 Troy, "Chanel's Modernity," 20.230 Steele, "Chanel in Context," 122.



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creating a new artistic practice, one which in many ways stemmed from the

commercial world that she worked in. Duchamp‘s reference to the world of

fashion and beauty culture, his performances as Rrose Selavy and in Belle

Haleine, do not simply mock these industries, nor do they critique art‘s

relationship to commerce. Duchamp is explicitly connecting his practice to

fashion. He re-imagines the artist as a fashionable tastemaker whose work is

made in part though the act of shopping, as in the readymades.

Rrose Selavy reveals the important relationship between Duchamp‘s

work and the commercial world of fashion. Mileaf describes ―the readymade

[as] a genre that ultimately rejects representation and places the object in an

unmediated relationship with its viewer. The readymade speaks of

consumption and production as if art, distilled to its elemental functions,

were nothing more than yearning, or possibility.‖231 She argues that through

his engagement with mass-produced commercial objects, Duchamp

condenses the experience of art into to the experience of desire. I would argue

that this is precisely the desire elicited by the fashion image, an image like

Drian‘s illustration of Chanel, or even Man Ray‘s photograph of Rrose Selavy.

Minna Thornton and Caroline Evans explain that,

The [fashion photograph] is not constructed to satisfy hunger but to articulate one. Fashion imagery generates images of women for women that both evoke depth and deny meaning.Does the way in which one ‗animates‘ these images characterizea specifically female desire? In being unable to fulfill itspromises, the fashion image replicates an absence or a loss, and

231 Mileaf, Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist Objects after the Readymade, 45-7.



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points towards whatever it is that one doesn‘t have or can‘t get,towards desire itself.‖232

This description applies not only to the fashion photograph, but to any

fashion image. It can be applied to the fashionable image Chanel created of

herself. Through her style and self presentation, she articulated a desire

among women in the 1910s and 1920s to live modern lives dressed in modern

clothes. Through her own embodiment of the spirit of the ―new woman,‖

Chanel connected the modern clothes being made by many designers in the

1910s and 1920s with the new kinds of lives that many women yearned for:glamorous, fast paced, sporty, and independent.

Duchamp, in the creation of Rrose Selavy, articulated the ways in

which art, like a bottle of perfume or a little black dress, elicits desire in its

viewer. Duchamp‘s readymades, and Rrose Selavy suggest that the

consumer‘s cravings and the longing to consume art are closely related. By

engaging directly with consumer culture, and specifically fashion and beauty

culture, Duchamp created a new kind of art that revealed the kinship between

these realms. He also created an enigmatic set of personalities and alter-ego

that has allowed his work and image to remain central to contemporary art.233

Chanel‘s image has also had a powerful afterlife. This is evident in her image‘s

continued commercial potency both in her couture house now led by Karl

Lagerfeld and her perfume business that continues to flourish. Two films

232 Evans and Thornton, Women & Fashion: A New Look , 107.233 This is clear in the recent exhibiton Inventing Mardel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture atThe National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. See Goodyear and McManus, "Inventing MarcelDuchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture," 12-21.



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about Chanel‘s life were released in 2009, both supported by Lagerfeld and

the contemporary House of Chanel. Lagerfeld is well aware that keeping

Chanel‘s image as a style icon alive and well is good for business.

Chanel and Duchamp set the stage for the developments in art and

fashion in the 1930s. As we will see, their self-constructions influenced

designers and artists such as Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí. In the years

between the war, in the wake of Duchamp‘s innovative artistic practice the

worlds of art and fashion would become interlinked even further. Art

exhibitions would begin to look more like fashionable boutiques, and avant-

garde designers like Schiaparelli would make their salons into galleries.

Schiaparelli, though a bitter rival of Chanel, relied on the model of designer

which she had created. Schiaparelli designed with herself in mind as the

customer, and as we will see wove glamorous and often surreal tales about her

childhood that connected to her aesthetic. Like Duchamp, Salvador Dalí tread

the path between art and commodity, and even more directly engaged with

fashion through his collaborations with Schiaparelli. Duchamp and Chanel

renegotiation of the boundaries between art and commodity in their

respective fields set the groundwork for all of the artists and designers who

would come after in the years between the World Wars.



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Chapter 2

Trompe l’Oeil Sweaters and Mad Caps:Early Surrealism and Fashion

If texts on Surrealism mention fashion at all, they usually describe it as

either passively adopting Surrealist aesthetics, or blatantly stealing them for

commercial gain.234 I argue that fashion was not a passive receptacle for

Surrealism, nor did it simply appropriate Surrealist imagery for its own profit.

Fashion—through magazine editors, art directors, and designers— was an

active participant in the development of Surrealism. In this chapter I will

discuss the work of one of these designers, Elsa Schiaparelli, whose work was

deeply engaged with the same ideas and themes that the Surrealists were

exploring. In her monograph on Schiaparelli, Dilys Blum writes,

Schiaparelli‘s influence on the Surrealist community has yet to be fully acknowledged or documented. Her contributions havefrequently been dismissed as derivative, and she has even beenaccused of stealing ideas. Rather her fashions should be

understood as another reflection of the zeitgeist of 1930s Paris,a time when a number of Surrealist artists were working in andinteracting with the world of fashion and many couturiers werekeenly aware of developments in the arts.235

This zeitgeist is clearly evident in Schiaparelli‘s work as well as contemporary

fashion magazines, which helped to bring it from Paris to the U.S. and the rest

of Europe.

234 Writers such as Dickran Tashjian, Ann Finholt, and Lewis Kachur tend to date these occurrences tothe mid to late 1930s. Tashjian, A Boatload of Madmen : Surrealism and the American Avant-Garde,

1920-1950, 67-68. Lewis Kachur, Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and

Surrealist Exhibition Installations (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 41. Finholt, "Art in Vogue: DeChirico, Fashion and Surrealism," 85.235 Dilys E. Blum, Shocking! : The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli (New Haven, Conn.: London,2003), 171.



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This chapter will explore Schiaparelli‘s early connections with the

Surrealists, particularly the photographer Man Ray. I will argue that the work

of Schiaparelli and indeed fashion as a whole is intimately tied to the

psychological principal of the uncanny, one of the central organizing

principals of Surrealism.236 Schiaparelli made specific use of the uncanny in

her designs by conflating the irreconcilable: fabric and flesh, inside and

outside, skirts and trousers, and using trompe l‘oeil techniques similar to

Surrealists such as Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. By the early 1930s, she was

producing clothing that was a radical response to the garçonne look of the

1920s and, through this engagement with the uncanny, created a new look for

women in the 1930s, which I will be calling ―Strange Glamour.‖ I will be

discussing this particular aesthetic, its reworking of gender and sexuality, and

its intersections with the philosophical underpinnings of Surrealism, which

are especially apparent in Man Ray‘s photographs of Schiaparelli and her

designs. These photographs visualize this argument, making clear the

Surrealist presence of the uncanny in Schiaparelli‘s strange glamour.

The Uncanny

In Compulsive Beauty Hal Foster argues that the uncanny is the

unifying concept of Surrealism, def ining it as: ―events in which repressed

material returns in ways that disrupt unitary identity, aesthetic norms, and

236 See Foster, Compulsive Beauty, xvii.



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social order.‖237 Foster then goes on to demonstrate that Breton‘s concept of

the marvelous is actually the uncanny.238 Both the mannequin, which

conflates the human and non-human, and the ruin, which conflates the

natural and the historical, confuse the animate and the inanimate, a hallmark

of the uncanny‘s reminder of the immanence of death in life.239 Foster notes

three effects of the uncanny,

(1) an indistinction between the real and the imagined, which isthe basic aim of surrealism as defined in both manifestos ofBreton; (2) a confusion between the animate and inanimate, as

exemplified in wax figures, dolls, mannequins, and automatons,all crucial images in the surrealist repertoire; and (3) ausurpation of the referent by the sign or of physical reality bypsychic reality, and here again the surreal is often experienced,especially by Breton and Dalí, as an eclipse of the referential bythe symbolic, or as an enthrallment of a subject to a sign or asymptom, and its effect is often that of the uncanny: anxiety.240

This description also resonates with Breton‘s examples of ―the marvelous‖:

the mannequin, the ruin, or a glove.241 Foster argues that the Surrealists,

through their work with the marvelous attempt to master the traumatic events

represented by the uncanny and to aestheticize them, ―to transform the

anxious into the aesthetic, the uncanny into the marvelous.‖242

237 Ibid, xvii.238 Ibid, 20.239 Ibid, 21.240 Ibid, 7.241 For example Nadja‟s glove in Breton‟s novel of the same name, becomes a simulacrum for Nadja

herself, ultimately more interesting and important than the woman herself. See Ibid, 33.242 Ibid, 48.



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Fashion, as we have seen in the previous chapter, constantly disrupts

the social order and therefore often engages with the uncanny.243 In addition,

on a structural level, fashion is connected to ―the marvelous‖ because of its

relationship to the repetition compulsion and the death drive. Fashion

endlessly cycles through changes, every season demanding something new

and depending on the death of old styles in order to create new ones. Caroline

Evans has linked fashion‘s cycles to the psychological notion of the return of

the repressed, examining the ―haunting of contemporary fashion by images

from the past.‖ The past, however, is present in fashion throughout the

twentieth century, and even before. Trends and fashion come into Vogue in

particular periods and then fall out of favor, and often eventually come back

into fashion, returning like the repressed in Foster‘s formulation of the

uncanny. Fashion also enacts the death drive, because for a new fashion

death is always immanent— just as quickly as something comes into Vogue, it

has gone out again.244

Walter Benjamin, a contemporary of Schiaparelli and the Surrealists,

pushed fashion‘s connection to the death drive beyond the structural.

Benjamin saw fashion as existing on the thin barrier between the subject and

243 Caroline Evans describes how at the end of the 20th century repressed issues of mortality and theabject bubble up in fashion. The uncanny and the return of the repressed is a consistent theme infashion, at least since the 1930s. On the return of the repressed see: Caroline Evans, "Yesterday'sEmblems and Tommorow's Commodities: The Return of the Repressed in Fashion Imagery Today," in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations, and Analysis, ed. Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson(London ; New York: Routledge, 2000), 93-113. On the uncanny and deathliness see: idem, Fashion

at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 163-190.244

I am drawing this understanding of the uncanny and the repetition compulsion from Foster‟s first

chapter, “Beyond the Pleasure Principal,” Foster, Compulsive Beauty, 1-17.



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object, the boundaries between life and death. He writes that fashion is ―the

dialectical switching station between woman and commodity —desire and the

dead body.‖245 The presence of fashion at the boundary between living

woman and manufactured (deathly) commodity is precisely what makes it

appealing to the Surrealists. This explains the presence of shoes, gloves, hats

and other articles of fashion in the work of artists and writers such as Breton,

Tzara, Ernst, and Dalí. As we will see in this chapter and in chapter 4,

Schiaparelli engaged with fashion as a kind of liminal space between body and

commodity, literally on the boundary of the body, the boundary of life. She

exploited this in designs that mimicked and reshaped the body. Schiaparelli

was creating fashion that toyed with the boundaries between subject and

object, just as the Surrealists were creating art and literature that blurred the

boundaries between the conscious and the unconscious mind to aff ect, ―the

liberation of the mind.‖246

Trompe l’Oeil in Surrealism

One method of visually bringing together the conscious and

unconscious worlds was to use the old academic style of trompe l‘oeil, which

245 I‟m quoting Susan Buck -Morss‟ translation of this line which for me is more evocative of fashion‟s

position as a boundary between life and death. In Eiland and McLaughlin‟s translation the line reads:“Here fashion has opened the business of dialectical exchange between woman and ware— betweencarnal pleasure and the corpse.” Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and

the Arcades Project , Paperback ed. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), 101. Walter Benjamin, The

Arcades Project , trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge: Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press, 1999), 62.246 André Breton, "What Is Surrealism?," in What Is Surrealism, trans. David Gascoyne (New York:Haskell House Publishers, 1974), 48. Originally published in 1936.



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literally means trick of the eye, referring to art that represents its subject so

realistically that on first glance the subject looks ―real.‖ Dalí wrote in his 1935

text Conquest of the Irrational ,

My whole ambition in the pictorial domain is to materialize theimages of my concrete irrationality with the most imperialistfury of precision.—In order that the world of the imaginationand of concrete irrationality may be as objectively evident, of thesame consistency, of the same durability, of the samepersuasive, cogoscitive and communicable thickness as that ofthe exterior world of phenomenal reality…—The illusionism ofthe most arriviste…art, the usual paralyzing tricks of trompe-l’oeil , the most…discredited academism, can all transmute into

sublime hierarchies of thought…247

Dalí therefore turned academic methods of painting and rational perspective

on their heads to depict the bizarre and often disturbing images of his

unconscious. For him, trompe l‘oeil is crucial in creating surreal worlds or

dreamscapes that are so vivid, viewers feel they can step into them. He argues

that he transforms the cold, technical, and academic qualities of trompe l‘oeil

painting into the sublime, the marvelous.

For the Surrealists, then, trompe l‘oeil was a way to create convincing

images of dreams from the unconscious. In his 1966 catalogue for the

Museum of Modern Art show, Dada, Surrealism, and their Heritage, William

Rubin defines two poles of Surrealism:

Automatism (the draftsmanly counterpart of verbal freeassociation) led to the ―abstract‖ Surrealism of Miró andMasson, who worked improvisationally with primarily biomorphic shapes in a shallow, Cubist-derived space. The

247 Dalí quoted in William Stanley Rubin et al., Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage (New York:Museum of Modern Art; distributed by New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, 1968), 111.



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―fixing‖ of dream-inspired images influenced the more academicillusionism of Magritte, Tanguy, and Dalí.248

In the pole that Rubin terms ―oneiric illusionism,‖ the realism of trompe l‘oeil

was used to ―fix‖ the dreamscapes of the Surrealists making them believable.

These were the two poles that Breton identified in his 1941 essay, ― Artistic

Genesis and Perspective of Surrealism.‖ Breton, however, cautioned those

painters who chose the path of trompe l‘oeil: ―the stabilizing of dream images

in the kind of still-life deception known as trompe-l’oeil (and the very word

‗deception‘ betrays the weakness of the process), has been proved by

experience to be far less reliable and even presents very real risks of the

traveler losing his way all together.‖249

Despite Breton‘s cautionary remarks, many Surrealists chose this path,

even pointing to the technique‘s classical and academic past. The most

famous practitioners of trompe l‘oeil in the classical world mythically created

works that were so convincing that they fooled birds into pecking at painted

grapes, partridges into calling to painted partridges, and an artist into

mistaking a painted curtain for a real one that could be drawn.250 Later artists

often repeated the motifs of grapes, curtains, and partridges (though often as

dead game birds) to recall the mastery of these artists and suggest that their

works demonstrated a similar virtuosity.

248 Ibid, 64.249 André Breton, "Artistic Genesis and Perspective of Surrealism," in Surrealism and Painting , trans.Simon Watson Taylor (Boston: MFA Publications, 2002; reprint, 1972), 70.250 For a more detailed account, see: Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, "Trompe l'Oeil: The UnderestimatedTrick," in Deceptions and Illusions : Five Centuries of Trompe L'oeil Painting (Washington: NationalGallery of Art, 2002), 19-20.



118

The Surrealists themselves often repeated these motifs. Elizabeth

Legge, in her essay on Max Ernst‘s photogravure portfolio Histoire Naturelle

(1925), points out the many ways in which Ernst references that tradition of

trompe l‘oeil. This series of prints began with drawings created through a

technique called frottage. Ernst rubbed his pencil over different textured

surfaces including his wood floor and would then interpret these chance

images to produce the final drawing.(Figure 51) Ernst used the rubbings to

create images of leaves, feathers, and wood in Histoire Naturelle. He chose

subjects that were popular with 19th century academic painters who worked in

a trompe l‘oeil style: game birds strung up on a wood board, sheets of paper,

and leaves.(Figure 52)

While Ernst used the chance technique of frottage that suggested

trompe l‘oeil images to him, other Surrealists—including Rene Magritte,

Pierre Roy and Salvador Dalí—used trompe l‘oeil as a means to represent

images and ideas from their subconscious. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer argues

that: ―trompe l‘oeil was a dangerously subversive art form that— by

compelling us to contemplate its object-ness, the conditions of its making, and

the mechanics of human perception—profoundly shattered our faith in our

ability to recognize truths.‖251 The way that trompe l‘oeil plays with a viewer‘s

perception of reality is key to this style of Surrealist painting. Using academic

techniques of illusionism, Surrealists were able to subvert the expectations of

the viewer; instead of providing an exact representation of the ―real,‖

251 Ibid, 18.



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surrealist artists provided a convincing representation of the unconscious.

The technique of academic trompe l‘oeil allowed viewers to experience the

uncanny: something familiar, which is made unfamiliar. The viewer

experiences an uncanny vacillation between the real and the unreal—the paint

on the canvas and the illusion of the subconscious world it creates—in

Surrealist paintings. There is an anxious quality about these images.

These paintings, however, lacked the kind of spontaneity that Breton

advocated. They were carefully calculated illusionistic images, windows onto

the subconscious, rather than a visual record of the subconscious at work.

Breton claimed that ―Dalí‘s undertaking [was] spoilt by an ultra-retrograde

technique.‖252 No matter how radical their content may have been these

paintings were using some of the most academic and conventional stylistic

techniques possible. While these painting destabilized the materiality of the

canvas, creating uncanny images, they did not engage with the chance

practices that Breton advocated. Breton explained, ―I will concede that it is

possible for automatism to enter into the composition of a painting or a poem

with a certain degree of premeditation. But the converse holds true that any

form of expression in which automatism does not at least advance under

cover runs a grave risk of moving out of the Surrealist orbit.‖253

According to Breton, artists such as Salvador Dalí rationalized the

irrational images filling their subconscious with trompe l‘oeil. Through

252 Breton, "Artistic Genesis and Perspective of Surrealism," 76.253 Ibid, 70.



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academic techniques, Dalí made ideas from his subconscious into concrete

images on canvas. In her inaugural design, Elsa Schiaparelli also adopted

trompe l‘oeil to meld the decorative and the practical. I will argue that in

Schiaparelli‘s hands, however, trompe l‘oeil lived up to its subversive

potential. As we will see, by applying trompe l‘oeil to clothing, Schiaparelli

found a way to enhance the uncanny effects of this technique. The novelty of

her designs, and the fact that they are on sweaters, not a canvas, manages to

override the academicism of trompe l‘oeil, making the viewer question what is

real and what is not.

The Bowknot Sweater

As early as her very first sportswear collection in 1927 Elsa Schiaparelli

worked in a Surrealist vein. The first garment that truly made Schiaparelli a

name in fashion was her ―Bowknot Sweater.‖(Figure 53) Schiaparelli tells the

story of this garment‘s genesis in her autobiography Shocking Life. She met

an American friend who was wearing a chic and unusual sweater. Schiaparelli

asked her about it and found out that it was made by a unique method of

knitting practiced by Armenian women, in which two layers are created by

knitting two stands of yarn together. Schiaparelli tracked down the knitter,

Aroosiag Mikaëlian (Mike) and asked her if she could possibly knit up a

pattern into one of her sweaters. Schiaparelli devised a simple black and

white pattern of a knot made to look like a white scarf tied around the



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wearer‘s neck. After a few failed prototypes Schiaparelli and Mike hit upon

the right look. The pattern was formed by knitting together a strand of black

yarn with one of white yarn. This created a pleasing heathery, tweed-like

background to the sweater. Schiaparelli felt that the Armenian technique

created a fabric that held its shape with a bit of give, but did not stretch out of

shape like regular knits. The pattern and knitting technique resulted in a

sturdy garment with a light flecked look and the advantage of having an

accessory, the scarf, knit right into the fabric. This garment was practical for

sport since the wearer did not need to add any bulky accessories to it.

Schiaparelli writes:

Trying courageously not to feel self conscious, convinced deep within me that I was nearly glamorous, I wore it at a smartlunch—and created a furor. [sic] Women at this time were verysweater-minded. Chanel had, for quite a few years, mademachine-knitted dresses and jumpers. This was different. Allthe women wanted one, immediately. 254

A buyer for Strauss in New York ordered the first forty sweaters, and also

wanted forty skirts. Schiaparelli and Mike scoured Paris for other Armenian

knitters to make the sweaters. Schiaparelli and her personal seamstress made

skirts out of bargain material simply and slightly below the fashionable knee

length hemline.

The bowknot sweater was so popular that by April of 1928 Macy‘s was

advertising imported hand-knit copies of Schiaparelli‘s bowknot sweater for

$15.75. Macy‘s claimed that similar sweaters sold for $59.50 to $55.00: ―In




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the smartest resorts from the Lido to Palm Beach the hand-knitted sweater

was recognized as the important new note in sportswear for the year. And no

hand-knit sweaters are smarter than those made in Paris by Schiaparelli.‖

Macy‘s was also offering Schiaparelli‘s imported perfume ―especially for

sportswear.‖ 255 Gimbel Bros sold copies of the sweater, showing them in a

window display with golfing equipment.(Figure 54) Glenna Collett, a famous

US. Women‘s golf champion wore the sweater to receive a trophy in

1929.(Figure 55) November 1928 Lady’s Home Journal offered a pattern for

the home knitter to make her own version. The pattern included a method for

catching the lighter thread on every 3rd stitch to create the heathery look of

the Schiaparelli original. The business of copying the original designs of

couturiers was an inevitable part of the business at this time, but also attested

to the popularity and weara bility of a design. Nancy Troy claims, ―in order for

[a] model to become an established fashion, it must first be circulated in the

form of multiple copies.‖256 Troy describes the contradiction inherent in the

haute couture business for designers, who wanted on the one hand to keep

their couture business exclusive, yet sought to take advantage of the mass

market and generate revenue by licensing copies. In order to achieve fame

and status, designers had to negotiate the mass market that includes

255 Macy‟s Advertisement, New York Times April 30, 1928, 7.256 Troy, Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion, 259.



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unlicensed copies. According to Troy, these copies gave the designer‘s name

and label the aura of an artist‘s signature.257

As is evident by the Macy‘s and Gimbel‘s knockoffs, Schiaparelli was no

exception to this; her sweaters were copied, and her name was often used in

advertising for these copies. It was important for advertisers to identify these

sweaters with Schiaparelli herself, in order to authenticate them in some way.

Her many subsequent patterns were also copied in Europe and the United

States:

A large bow was followed by gay handkerchiefs woven round thethroat, by men‘s ties in gay colors, by handkerchiefs round thehips. Anita Loos, at the height of her career with GentlemanPrefer Blondes, was my first private customer, and I was boosted, with her help, to fame. Soon the restaurant of the ParisRitz was filled with women from all over the world in black-and- white sweaters.258

Schiaparelli and the Artistic Legacy of the 1920s

Unlike Chanel— who was linked socially, but not stylistically to artists—

Schiaparelli was associated by the press directly to contemporary artistic

movements. Schiaparelli‘s bowknot sweater burst onto the scene at a time

when Cubism, Constructivism, and Modernist abstraction were the prevailing

artistic themes in fashion: ―at no time in history since David designed the

costumes for Napoleon‘s coronation was the current vernacular of the art

world so familiar in fashionable circles.‖259 Many spreads in Vogue and

257 See especially the conclusion Ibid, 26 and 327-337.258 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 44.259 Garland, "The Twenties: Sport and Art," 87.



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Harper’s Bazaar called such patterns modernistic or geometric.260(Figure 56)

Though the bowknot sweater was engaged with developments in modern art,

its design was entirely different from the streamlined aesthetic of cubist-

inspired sweaters. Schiaparelli‘s pattern was explicitly feminine and

decorative, but in a way that drew attention to the presence of a useless

feminine detail in a utilitarian sportswear garment.

In a column in Vogue, ―Viola Paris Comes Back to Town,‖ the sweater

is described as ―a triumph of colour blending, in which the black and w hite are

so interwoven as to become an artistic masterpiece.‖261 The sweater is

compared to a work of art because of its use of color and the fact that it is

hand knit. In the preceding years, Chanel and many other designers had

made machine knits, such as jersey, the standard. Schiaparelli was

intentionally bringing back the hand knit, which had not been popular for at

least a decade. This hand-made quality separates Schiaparelli‘s work from the

machine aesthetics of Chanel‘s jersey knits, aligning Schiaparelli with the fine

arts. It is worth noting that this is not the only instance in this article in which

the language of fine art is used as a metaphor to elevate fashion. Vogue’s

―first lady of fashion,‖ Viola Paris, is described as a collector of modern art,

and asks ―and who of those who have learned to look at pictures…can help

being conscious that the quality which distinguished good art from indifferent

260 For example: “Smart English Sweaters," Vogue (15 April 1927), 118. “Modernistic DesignsPredominate," Harper’s Bazaar (December 1928), 81.261 “Viola Paris Comes Back to Town," Vogue 70, no. 12 (15 December 1927), 45.



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will also, in its own way, distinguish good from merely expensive clothing?‖262

According to Vogue, art and fashion can be judged by the same criteria. This

comparison between art and fashion is ever-present in magazines of this

period, which often speak of Schiaparelli using artistic discourse. A New

Yorker profile in 1932 claimed that in Paris, ―a frock from Schiaparelli ranks

like a modern canvas in boudoirs determined to be à la page.‖263 That same

year Fortune reported that Schiaparelli was often called a ―genius…she is the

last word in modernism. She is to dressmaking what Léger is to painting or

Le Corbusier is to architecture.‖264 Chanel, on the other hand is usually

spoken about in business-like terms, her little black dress famously being

called in 1926 ―fashion‘s Ford,‖ by Vogue.265 From the very beginning,

Schiaparelli was considered an artist and her sweater a work of art by the

editors of Vogue—and a novel one at that.266

There is no doubt about the popularity of this particular sweater and

the fact that fashion writers connected it to modernist painting. Very little has

been written of this sweater‘s relation to trends in Surrealism. Schiaparelli

herself acknowledged the way that her sweaters fit in neatly with trends in the

art world:

262 Ibid 43.263 Janet Flanner, "Comet," The New Yorker (18 June 1932), 20.264 “The Dressmakers of France," Fortune 6, no. 2 (August 1932), 76.265 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 293. See also “The Dressmakers ofFrance," 75.266 While geometric cubistic designs had been a staple of sportswear in the 1920s, Schiaparelli‟s

trompe l‟oeil designs were completely new. Palmer White, 54.



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It was the time when abstract Dadaism and Futurism were thetalk of the world, the time when chairs looked like tables, andtables like footstools, when it was not done to ask what apainting represented or what a poem meant, when trifles of

fantasy were more taboo and only the initiated knew about theParis Flea Market.267

With this quote, Schiaparelli reveals her awareness of the Surrealist tradition,

referencing the readymade with the Paris Flea Market, but also the tradition

of trompe l‘oeil, and the ―tricks‖ it played on viewers.

Like the Surrealists who melded the real and unreal in trompe l‘oeil,

Schiaparelli was melding the practical and the decorative and the whimsical.In her first forays into trompe l‘oeil, Schiaparelli used the visual tactic to

create playful yet eminently wearable sportswear. The wearer need not be

restrained by wearing a scarf or a tie to accessorize her outfit, as it is built

right in. These sweaters tease the eye, inviting a viewer to get closer and look

more carefully, and—even more provocatively —to touch the material. The

fact that this sweater was hand knit, rather than machine made, was unusual

and added to this sense of touch. M.L. d‘Otrange Mastai writes that

―illusionism is make-believe, very like a theatrical spectacle. It invariably

requires of the viewer a willing participation, amounting to complicity with

the artist.‖268 Schiaparelli uses trompe l‘oeil to make her sweaters theatrical

and in some ways interactive, more than simply practical. The viewer is

engaged in the trickery, looking carefully and perhaps touching the material

267 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 44-5.268 Marie-Louise d'Otrange Mastai, Illusion in Art : Trompe l'Oeil, a History of Pictorial Illusionism (New York: Abaris Books, 1975), 11.



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to see if the bow or scarf is real or not. An uncanny feeling is elicited in the

viewer, who cannot tell whether the scarf her or she sees is real or an illusion.

As we will see Schiaparelli will evoke the uncanny in far more provocative

ways in her next designs.

Tattoos, X-rays, and Divided Skirts

Schiaparelli continued to experiment with the sweater in her next

collections, moving away from the traditional modernist designs that had

dominated the market: ―to the sweaters she added Negro-like designs of her

own, and strange scra wls from the Congo. One was tattooed like a sailor‘s

chest with pierced hearts and snakes.‖269 (Figure 57)(Figure 58) She also

adapted these novel designs to knitted swimwear. According to Marjorie

Howard writing for Harper’s Bazaar in 1929, ―Schiaparelli had the amusing

idea of using real tattoo designs which she collected from a master of this art,

on tricot bathing suits. One may have any conceit one fancies, or choose one

of the classic patterns that have been sacred to deep-sea sailors until now.‖270

A blouse with an anchor appliqué illustrated with Howard‘s articles may be

related to the tattoo group.(Figure 59) The tattooed sweaters and bathing

suits clearly demonstrate how Schiaparelli‘s designs were moving from the

whimsical into a slightly more erotic vein, here conflating skin with cloth and

male with female. These sweaters created the uncanny effect of turning the

269 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 46.270 Marjorie Howard, "High Lights on the Paris Collections," Harper’s Bazaar (April 1929), 96.



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hand-knitted fabric into skin, and the skin of a tattooed man at that.

Schiaparelli had a keen understanding of the uncanny potential of clothing to

shift from body to commodity, alive to deathly. She used the slipperiness

between fashion and the body to heighten the shock value of these designs.

Exploiting the way in which a bathing suit or even a sweater can be a second

skin, Schiaparelli tattooed the flesh of her glamorous customers with the bold

tattoos of a sailor. The bowknot sweater led the way for Schiaparelli to take

trompe l‘oeil off of the canvas and to apply it to the body.

Her designs took the 1920s conventions of men‘s wear as women‘s

wear to the extreme. Playing off the sailor suit, and naval-inspired women‘s

clothing, the tattoo sweaters and swimsuits allowed women to wear men‘s

skins, to transform their bodies as opposed to just masquerading in a sailor

suit. Schiaparelli did offer more traditional naval options in this same

collection: ―a Brittany fisherman‘s blouse,‖ and a ―culottes…finished in an

attached scarf of scarlet jersey that twists twice round the waist, like a French

workman‘s sash.‖271 Schiaparelli is clearly being inspired by menswear: not

that of the upper class man in his tailored suit, but the lower class sailor and

workman. Chanel was also inspired by working-class menswear, but

Schiaparelli used this influence in a different way. By knitting these designs

into the fabric of her sweaters and swimsuits, she allowed them to mesh with

the body of the wearer, since it was that body that gave shape to the largely

unstructured sweater. These early designs hint at the way Schiaparelli will

271 Ibid 194.



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treat the gendered and sexed body as fully connected with gendered clothing.

Her designs mercilessly blurred the boundaries between clothing and skin,

fashion and body.

The tattoo knitwear makes women‘s clothing look like a man‘s body.

These garments confront viewers in an entirely different way than the

androgynous looks of the garçonnes and flappers.272 Schiaparelli‘s clothes did

not make women blend in with men, as did the boyish shapes of Chanel‘s

clothes and the popular short haircuts of the 1920s.273 Instead her clothes

confronted the viewer with men‘s clothing and adornment in a female form,

and men‘s bodies worn by women—feminine figures sporting sailors‘ tattoos.

Schiaparelli insists on showing the curves of the female form though the use

of knitwear, while simultaneously borrowing from men‘s styles of dress and

adornment. In this way her conflation of masculine and feminine does not

have the kind of stability of the androgynous flapper, but rather an anxious

and uncanny vacillation between female body and male clothing or

adornment. Her collections in the early 1930s would continue this trend

creating looks that were not androgynous, but that confronted the viewer with

the uncanny conflation of the male and female.274

272 Flappers represent a somewhat more feminine aesthetic than the garçonne, but still favored thesame boyish androgynous figure.273 For a discussion of gender confusion in 1920‟s fashion see: Roberts, "Sampson and DelilahRevisited: The Politics of Fashion in 1920s France," 72-75. Robert‟s gives examples of popular

stories of mistaken identity in post-war France, and the anxieties around women dressing as men ordisguising themselves as men.274 I hesitate to use Judith Halberstam‟s tern “female masculinity” because I think that it tends to coverover the uncanny vacillation between genders which I am interested in. I think that this term would be



130

The most provocative of Schiaparelli‘s sweaters, at least by her own

account, was ―a skeleton sweater that shocked the bourgeois but hit the

newspapers, which then took little notice of fashion. White lines on the

sweater followed the design of the ribs so that women wearing it gave the

appearance of being seen through an X-ray.‖275 This sweater, which may be

one pictured in a fashion column from the Chicago Daily Tribune and in

Harper’s Bazaar also confrontationally confuses outer with inner and

shockingly suggests clothing that reveals the body as opposed to hiding

it.276(Figure 60)(Error! Reference source not found.) This design is another

example of Schiaparelli‘s insistence on the uncanny relation between clothing

and the body. Schiaparelli continued this theme of transparency in several

designs using a new material called Rhodophane, a transparent synthetic

fabric.(Figure 61) Harper’s Bazaar included a spread on transparent

garments thatused new synthetic materials in a September 1933 spread, ―An

X-Ray of Fashion.‖(Figure 62) Readers could see straight through the dresses

to the undergarments beneath. These garments questioned the function of

clothing and fabric to hide the body. They engage directly with the sexual

fantasy of being able to see though clothing. The skeleton sweater however

teases viewers, providing the illusion of being able to see not only through

better applied perhaps to the flapper and garçonne. Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham:Duke University Press, 1998), 1-9.275 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 46-7.276

It seems to coincide with Dalí‟s own interest in this subject, and his 1938 collaboration with

Schiaparelli on a black Skeleton evening gown. The gown would have paired nicely with MeritOppenheim‟s Skeleton-Hand Gloves (1936) and bone choker (1934-36).



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clothing but also through skin, missing the flesh entirely. Man Ray explored a

similar fantasy in his a photograph Anatomies, though in this case much more

explicit. A nude female torso is wrapped in reflective transparent fabric or

dress. The woman‘s flesh is both revealed by the transparency, and concealed

by the reflection of light off the material.277 Man Ray‘s photograph is typical

of Surrealists‘ objectification of the female body. He cuts off the woman‘s

head and focuses on her anonymous torso. In contrast, Schiaparelli‘s

transparent designs put the control in the hands of the woman wearing the

garment. The x-ray sweater frustrates the male viewer‘s fantasy. Engaging

with the uncanny, all of these garments confused the outside and inside.

Concealing and revealing, toying with viewer‘s expectations. The female

wearer has the ultimate control over what viewers see and do not see.

Schiaparelli also employed trompe l‘oeil in several other designs such

as the divided skirt. Divided skirts, which had been popular since the mid

1920s, became even more visible in the late 1920s, especially at sporting

events. The divided skirt was usually disguised in some way — by a panel over

it, a wraparound skirt, or pleats. In 1931 Schiaparelli herself caused a

sensation wearing one of her own models that was not disguised.278(Figure

63) Spanish tennis player Lili de Alvarez also wore a Schiaparelli divided skirt

277 This photograph appears in a small book on Schiaparelli: François Baudot, Elsa Schiaparelli (NewYork: Universe/Vendôme, 1997), 79. In this book the photograph is credited to Man Ray but as a photograph of Schiaparelli‟s work. I have not come across it in any other books on Schiaparelli, but it

could very well be her design. It is unclear whether the garment is a dress or fabric which the modelholds in place. I am continuing to research this particular photograph and garment.278 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 15.



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in white with a matching tunic to some of her tennis matches including the

ultra-correct Wimbledon.(Figure 64) For some, the divided skirt was cause

for alarm: ―the Daily Sketch saw de Alvarez‘s ‗trousered tennis frock‘ as yet

more evidence that women had ‗a masculine fixation‘… ‗Whether we like it or

not, girls will be boys.‖279 Despite women‘s adoption of bifurcated garments

since the 1910s-- when Poiret was popularizing his ―harem trousers,‖ and

women drafted into the workforce during World War I were choosing pants—

trousers still had gendered connotations. Some critics continued to be

concerned with women trying to look too much like men. Schiaparelli‘s

divided skirt played off of this controversy, as a more positive report of

divided skirts at Wimbledon in the News Chronicle reveals, ―nothing to get

excited about. In fact trousers are so like a skirt that bets were made as to

what exactly they were!‖280 Schiaparelli‘s trousers thus participated in the

same trompe l‘oeil games that her sweaters did. From afar they appeared to

be a normal tennis skirt, but as de Alvarez demonstrates in a photograph

taken at Highbury in 1931, the skirt is in fact trousers.(Error! Reference

source not found.) This transformation is also apparent in a 1931 drawing

by Dorothy Dulin in the Chicago Tribune that shows two views of the ―trouser

skirt,‖ worn by a golfer. Bettina Bedwell notes Lili de Alvarez‘s adoption of

the style in the accompanying article.281(Figure 65)

279 Cited in Horwood, "Dressing Like a Champion: Women's Tennis Wear in Interwar England," 54.280 Cited in Ibid, 54.281 Bedwell Bettina, "Knitted Sports Suits Have Gone Bi-Colored," Chicago Daily Tribune, 20 June1931, 16.



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Schiaparelli continued to use the divided skirt in her collections for

several years, as a practical alternative to a regular skirt or dress. Bettina

Bedwell noted that ―Schiaparelli‘s divided skirts are kind to the unshorn

hipline that goes with a soul yearning for trousers.‖282(Figure 66) The divided

skirt is another example of Schiaparelli‘s use of the uncanny to combine the

practicality demanded by sportswear and decorative feminine touches. Mary

Louise Roberts argues that Schiaparelli‘s designs represent a regression to

femininity and romanticism, in effect a reactionary response to the garçonne

style.283 I argue that rather than being reactionary these clothes respond to

the need for practical yet flattering clothing. Schiaparelli adapts the men‘s

trouser to the curves of a female body. She also favored the pajama in the

early 1930s as an alternative to a gown for entertaining in the home, or as

beachwear. One of her cleverest early designs was a dress for the beach or

resort that was actually two half dresses that wrapped around the body and

tied at the side.(Figure 67) She made the half dresses in four colors of silk, so

that a woman could create several permutations of the same dress. The wrap

style also helped to achieve a better fit in a mass produced garment. In the

early 1930s, Schiaparelli would bring this wrap style into eveningwear and

sweaters as well.284 While more feminine in tailoring, Schiaparelli‘s clothes

emphasized practicality and versatility.

282 Bedwell, "Paris Frees Sports Styles," D1.283 Roberts, "Sampson and Delilah Revisited: The Politics of Fashion in 1920s France," 84.284 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 31.



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Schiaparelli‘s divided skirt created the femininity of a skirt with the

practicality of trousers. Like the bowknot sweater this design uses the

uncanny to mesh feminine decorative qualities with masculine practicality.

For both Schiaparelli and the Surrealists, trompe l‘oeil was a way to create

convincing fantasies:

trompe l‘oeil, then, is devoted not to ―trickery‖ but to therepresentation of pure visual experience with utmostobjectivity…under ideal conditions the result is one of totallyconvincing visual delusion. The differentiation between [artthat tricked the viewer and art that did not] is meaningful, for it

coincided with the important defiant assertion of the artist aspersonal creator instead of as recorder or at best interpreter,however genial.285

The risk for the creator of tromp l‘oeil is always of disappearing behind the

technical qualities of the work. Tromp l‘oeil is not in line with the tenets of

modernism outlined by the impressionists at the end of the nineteenth

century who placed a premium on the artist‘s subjective vision. Instead it

privileges an objective means of representing the world. As we saw in the last

chapter however, Duchamp virtually eliminated the need for the artists‘

hands—even eyes if we are to believe that his choices were made with

aesthetic indifference. Using mass-produced objects as readymade art,

Duchamp refigured the role of the artist, eliminating the role of craft and

technique. Trompe l‘oeil stands in a unique space between the modernism

envisioned by the impressionists and Duchamp. The technical prowess of the

285 Mastai, Illusion in Art: Trompe l’Oeil, a History of Pictorial Illusionism, 15.



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artist is of the utmost importance and yet this skill is in danger of overtaking

the individuality of the artist himself.

Schiaparelli and the Feminine Masquerade

As we have seen, Chanel modeled herself as a celebrity and

businesswoman, while Schiaparelli fashioned herself as an artist. She aligned

herself with art early on, and described herself as an artist, writing ―dress

designing, incidentally, to me is not a profession but an art.‖286 Schiaparelli

responded to the many different movements in art and fashion that emerged

after the First World War. While Duchamp was experimenting with the

readymade in the wake of World War I, other artists such as Emelie Ozanfant

and Picasso were returning to a more classical style of image making that had

more in common with the impressionists than the Surrealists. Their works

emphasized universalism, classicism, order, and beauty. This kind of

classicism and return to order was also present in fashion, and Schiaparelli

responded to it in another of her trompe-l‘oeil designs. In this gown from

1931 Schiaparelli used trompe-l‘oeil drapery hand-painted by Jean Dunand.

The gown poked fun at both the regressive turn of classicism and the sleek

modern surfaces of art deco. Man Ray took a series of photographs of

Schiaparelli in the gown, which from afar, evokes a very popular style of

Greco-roman drapery from the later 1920s and early 1930s.(Figure 68)(Figure

69) Up close, however, the gown mocks the style, creating the same look in a




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modern streamlined way, eliminating the extra yards of fabric necessary to

create the look. On the other hand, this gown also trumps the sleek and

minimal modernist aesthetic by employing decorative painting to adorn the

fabric. Like the Surrealists, Schiaparelli used trompe-l‘oeil to play with ideas

of visuality and reality. Her trompe l‘oeil gown deconstructs the idea of a

traditional gown, creating the visual impression of an elegantly draped silk

dress, while actually being a streamlined modern shape.

By engaging with the decorative, Schiaparelli‘s use of trompe l‘oeil in

this classical gown, and in her bowknot sweater both expose the masquerade

of femininity. Schiaparelli uses trompe l‘oeil to create clothing with a sleek

and simple silhouette, but adds a handmade or painted decorative element.

Unlike Chanel, who cut out any extraneous decoration and made the simplest

garments out of the finest material, Schiaparelli found ways to create simple

and wearable clothing, and reintroduced feminine detailing and decoration in

a practical and distinctly handmade way.287 Schiaparelli also used trompe

l‘oeil to create playful garments that looked different from different distances,

and provocatively encouraged touch to determine the reality of these

garments. Schiaparelli used an academic technique in a uniquely modern way

by applying it to the body. Fashion critics Caroline Evans and Minna

Thornton, in a feminist analysis of Schiaparelli‘s oeuvre, argue that her

―approach to dress centers around an understanding of how it acts

287 “Chanel created the „poor look,‟ the sweaters, jersey dresses and little suits that subverted the whole

idea of fashion as display…the aim was to make the rich girl look like the girl in the street.” Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, 40-41.



137

simultaneously to repress the body and bring it to into the realm of

language—the symbolic.‖288 The masquerade and spectacle that Schiaparelli

embraces in her designs allows ―a woman [to put] a distance between herself

and her observers, a space in which to maneuver and to determine the

meanings of the show. She takes control of the mask, the disguise, that is

femininity.‖289 Schiaparelli‘s trompe l‘oeil makes the masquerade of gender

overt. As with the x-ray sweater these trompe l‘oeil effects make the viewer

aware of his or her own viewing. These garments allow the wearer to turn the

gaze back onto the viewer.

Schiaparelli used the Surrealist technique of trompe l‘oeil and

evocation of the uncanny for her own ends. While the Surrealists often used

these tools to enact their own masculine, and sometimes misogynist fantasies,

Schiaparelli used them to intervene in and disrupt the terms of the feminine

masquerade. This becomes clear when we look at her in the context of her

contemporaries such as Chanel.

Schiaparelli employed both masculine and feminine motifs in her

sweater designs, representing feminine scarves, as well as the masculine

imagery of sailors including tattoos, a French sailor‘s middy, and a

necktie.(Figure 70)(Figure 71) Early on, Schiaparelli was deploying trompe

l‘oeil, like the Surrealists, to create provocative images and strange

juxtapositions such as tattoos and skeletons on women‘s sweaters. These

288 Evans and Thornton, "Fashion, Representation, Femininity," 55.289 Ibid, 55.



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garments use trompe l‘oeil the same way Surrealists did, to create uncanny

unsettling images, which in the case of Schiaparelli, could only truly be

resolved through touch. Was that woman actually wearing a tie? Is that

tattooed flesh or fabric? These provocative garments resisted the aesthetic

impulse of Chanel and other designers in the 1920s, to make women look so

much like men that they blended right in, or to create simple styles that were

only differentiated through the use of fine fabrics.

Schiaparelli‘s style was confrontational, engaging, and often teasing the

viewer with a distinctly Surrealist point of view. She was engaging directly

with Breton‘s conception of the marvelous or the uncanny. This is clear if we

use Foster‘s three elements of the marvelous to analize Schiaparelli‘s early

designs. In this work Schiaparelli 1) created clothes that refuse to distinguish

between the real and the fantasy, the sweater printed with bones and the

ability to see through clothing 2) confused the animate and inanimate,

clothing and skin, and 3) allowed the physical reality, a painted dress, to de

usurped by the psychic reality of pleated drapery, the painted sign for pleating

usurps actual pleating.290 Examining her designs in the context of Man Ray‘s

photographs of them for Minotaure can help to tease out this more complex

understanding of Schiaparelli‘s designs. It will also reveal the way in which

Schiaparelli moves beyond a play with gender that makes gender masquerade

explicit, to engage directly with the sexed body.

290 Here I am referring to the explanation I quoted on page 3. Foster, Compulsive Beauty, 7.



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Mad Caps in Minotaure

Three of Elsa Schiaparelli‘s hats appear in a 1933 spread in Minotaure,

a Surrealist magazine. The photographs are credited to Man Ray, but the

designs in them are not credited to Schiaparelli. Earlier in the same issue

Man Ray used a photograph of Schiaparelli standing behind a headless torso

in one of her notorious lacquered wigs by the famous French hairdresser,

Antoine. In this October-December 1933 issue of Minotaure, Schiaparelli‘s

presence is an important and yet completely unaccredited one.

Schiaparelli had met Man Ray in 1920, before he moved to Paris, and

was one of his first models in his photographic studio in New York.

Schiaparelli moved to New York in 1916 with her then husband Wendt de

Kerlor. On the boat to from Paris, Schiaparelli met Gabrielle Picabia, the wife

of Dada artist Francis Picabia. She became a good friend, introducing

Schiaparelli to Man Ray and his circle. Schiaparelli‘s husband even regularly

played chess in New York with Duchamp.291 Schiaparelli was well ensconced

in the Greenwich Village community of artists in 1920 and 1921.292 She moved

back to Paris in 1922 and lived with Gabrielle Picabia briefly. She also

reconnected with Man Ray. By 1930, after Schiaparelli had had some success

in fashion, Man Ray was photographing her and her clothing regularly.

291 This is according to an interview with Gogo, Schiaparelli‟s daughter: Nuala Boylan, "TheSchiaparelli Dynasty," Harper’s Bazaar (August 1993), 132.292 For more on Greenwich Village in this period see, Andrea Barnet, All-Night Party: The Women of

Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930 (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill,2004). Man Ray, Self Portrait : Man Ray (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1998). Christine Stansell, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century (New York: MetropolitanBooks, 2000). Ross Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village the American Bohemia,

1910-1960 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002).



140

Minotaure was founded by publisher Albert Skira in 1933 with the

support of Andre Breton, just as Breton‘s own Surrealist journal La

Révolution Surréaliste was folding. Skira promised Breton the ―most

luxurious art and literary review the Surrealists had seen, featuring a slick

format with many color illustrations…[covering] poetry, philosophy,

archaeology, psychoanalysis, and cinema.‖293 From 1933-1939, the journal

published fourteen issues and featured the work of many artists including

Dalí, Man Ray, Picasso, Max Ernst, Giacometti, and Hans Bellmer, as well as

the writing of these artists and Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Jacques Lacan, and

others. Rosalind Krauss argues that the magazines, ―more than anything else

are the true objects produced by surrealism,‖ since they merged art and

text.294 These magazines published photographs, like those of Man Ray,

which purported to document the appearance of the surreal in everyday life.

Andre Breton privileges vision in his theorization of Surrealism as

unmediated, with the capability of ―perpetual automism,‖ in contrast with,

―the premeditated reflexive gait of thought.‖295 A camera becomes a

mechanical eye, it purports to show an unmediated image of the world, ―no

matter how artfully constructed or framed, photographs cling to the stubborn

myth of the medium as representing unmediated and transparent reflections

293 Irene E. Hofmann, "Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the MaryReynolds Collection," Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 22, no. 2 1996), 146.294 Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, 101.295 Ibid, 93-94.



141

of reality.‖296 Surrealist photographs reveal the ways in which the

subconscious and the uncanny breakthrough into everyday reality.

At the same time, Surrealist photography, most notably Man Ray‘s

work, was also appearing in fashion magazines. Vogue‘s art director,

Mehemed Fehmy Agha, was revolutionizing the look of all of the Condé Nast

publications including Vogue, House and Garden, and Vanity Fair, bringing

Modernism and Constructivism to their pages. He instituted changes to the

magazine in a wide range of areas including the introduction of sans serif

typefaces, photographs that bled all the way to the edge of the page, and

dynamic layouts.297 Agha brought to Condé Nast artists and photographers

such as Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Miguel Covarrubias,

and Marcel Vertès, many of whom worked in both commercial and

independent artistic contexts, thereby incorporating a new modernist

aesthetic to the magazine.

In 1934 Alexey Brodovitch began to make similar changes at Harper’s

Bazaar. Brodovitch revolutionized the look of Harper’s Bazaar, employing

expressive typography and layout styles. Like Agah, he employed white space

in daring new ways. Yet his changes had a slightly more avant-garde, and

notably Surrealist edge. Along with its editor Carmel Snow, Brodovitch

296 Wendy Grossman, Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens (Washington: International Arts& Artists, 2009), 47.297 Agha also introduced new photographic and printing processes including the first color photographsin April 1932. In the area of design he used diagonals, for example to create exciting layouts, he“banished the use of italic types, changed the shape of headlines, and made greater use of white space.”

R. Roger Remington and Barbara J. Hodik, Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design (Cambridge:MIT Press, 1989), 15-16.



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brought many European artists into the pages of the magazine during his

years as art director: Leonor Fini, Raoul Dufy, Salvador Dalí, A.M. Cassandre,

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, Jean Cocteau, Martin Munkacsi, and later

Richard Avedon. He also signed Man Ray on to an exclusive contract. His

work had already appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, as well as in Vogue since 1925

and Vanity Fair where some of his first ―rayographs‖ and other photographs

were published as early as 1922.(Figure 72) Man Ray‘s muse at the time, Lee

Miller, had also been contributing to Vogue: her first photograph was

published in 1930, and Brodovitch used her as an occasional contributor to

Harper’s Bazaar.

Man Ray figures prominently in Brodovitch‘s first issue of Harper’s

Bazaar, September 1934, leading off several pages on the Paris openings. The

article featured a new technique for the fashion magazine of sending images

through short wave radio (basically an early fax system), which had been

traditionally used for news photographs. Harper’s Bazaar began using the

technique to instantly transmit fashion illustrations and photographs from

the latest Paris collections to New York. Man Ray‘s created a ―rayograph,‖

which used a cutout silhouette of a dress and a piece of fabric to create a

photographic image without the use of a camera.298 The ―rayograph‖ was sent

over the short wave radio system, and Man Ray took advantage of the way

that the radio process distorted the photograph by choosing an abstracted and

Surrealist image to send. The resulting image created an ―impression of a new

298 Rowlands, A Dash of Daring : The Life of Carmel Snow , 183.



143

fashion ‗coming over‘ the short waves.‖299 The image bleeds off two sides,

making the figure seem to float off the corner of the page. Brodovitch lays out

the text at the bottom in the form of a wave, mimicking the appearance of

Man Ray‘s photograph. Man Ray was using the same surrealist techniques no

matter what the purpose of his photography.

Man Ray’s Fashion Photography

Until recently, Man Ray‘s photographic oeuvre has received uneven

attention, with those photographs that represent his supposedly

―autonomous‖ artistic expression more well known than those that are ―work

for hire and thus not worthy of attention.‖300 In her stellar catalogue, Man

Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens, Wendy Grossman argues that the

claim that Man Ray‘s so-called commercial work is irrelevant to his ―artistic‖

output is ―an unsupportable claim, given the blurry lines between Man Ray‘s

commercial and artistic endeavors and the important role his photographs

played in the various contexts in which they circulated.‖301 Grossman

demonstrates these blurry boundaries, tracing the way in which many of Man

Ray‘s photographs, such as Noire et Blanche, appeared not only in gallery

exhibitions, art journals and books, but also in popular magazines such as

French Vogue. Man Ray‘s commissioned works were also an important

proving ground for much of his innovative experimentation with

299 Un-credited caption in Harper’s Bazaar (September 1934) 45.300 Grossman, Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens, 4.301 Ibid, 4.



144

photographic techniques such as solarization and rayographs. It is essential

to consider all of Man Ray‘s photographs as part of his oeuvre.

The ambivalence Man Ray expresses in the development of his

photographic technique speaks to the automatism and chance occurrences

that so intrigued the Surrealists. Man Ray‘s description of how he created his

celebrated portrait of Marquise Casati is a perfect example.(Figure 73) He

writes that he took several photographs of her, but was forced to use a long

exposure since the fuses in her hotel suite could not handle the lights that he

had brought. Man Ray wrote that ―the lady acted as if I was doing a movie of

her.‖302 As a result, the photographs looked like double exposures once they

were developed, creating a bizarre and uncanny image of the Marquise. He

―put them aside and considered the sitting a failure.‖303 But when the

Marquise finally demanded to see them, she loved them. Man Ray often

described his most memorable Surrealist techniques as accidents. He reports

that the photograph of the Marquise was widely seen throughout Paris and

brought in many people from the upper echelons of society who hoped for

similarly uncanny portraits. This fits neatly in with the Surrealist demand to

find the bizarre and marvelous lying dormant in the world of the everyday and

the mundane.

302 Ray, Self Portrait: Man Ray, 131.303 Ibid, 131.



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Schiaparelli in Minotaure

Man Ray‘s photographs of Schiaparelli and her designs, however, are

anything but images of the mundane. Schiaparelli herself must be considered

a collaborator in the context of these photographs. She brought the clothes to

Man Ray‘s studio, and in several of these photographs she appears as the

model. It is not a stretch to assume that Schiaparelli had some hand in styling

the photographs. Though it is not clear who instigated these photographic

sessions and who chose the garments to be photographed, I argue that the

status of Schiaparelli‘s garments as designed objects must be taken into

account in these photographs. Schiaparelli is not identified within

Minotaure, nor is she given credit for her designs, as an artist would have

been for a work of art that Man Ray might have photographed. This is a

critical omission that reveals the gendered hierarchy at work in the Surrealist

circle and the art world at large in this period. Schiaparelli‘s presence was

erased both because she was a woman and a fashion designer, not a man or an

artist. Insisting on Schiaparelli‘s presence in Minotaure will enable more

complex and interesting readings of Man Ray‘s photographs.

The first image of Schiaparelli in Minotaure appears in Man Ray‘s

essay ―L‘Age de la Lumière,‖ a general introduction to Man Ray‘s ideas about

art and photography. In the article, Man Ray describes how his images, which

were reproduced in Minotaure, represent his efforts at automatism:

It‘s in the spirit of an experience and not of experiment that thefollowing autobiographical images are presented. Seized in



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moments of visual detachment during periods of emotionalcontact, these images are the oxidized residue, fixed by light andchemical elements, of living organisms.304

Man Ray describes his work as indexical traces of his own experiences that

connect to the viewers‘ subconscious through ―strangeness and reality.‖ Thus,

it is both the verisimilitude of the photograph, its clear visual relationship to

the real world, but also the way the photograph makes the real world appear

strange, which connected to the viewers‘ subconscious. He is describing the

creation of an uncanny image, or an image of the marvelous (in Breton‘s

terms) one that is at once real and unreal. Photography was a democratic

medium, according to Man Ray, appealing and connecting with a wide range

of people: ―painting for me was a very personal, intimate affair, photography

was for everyone.‖305

Four of his photographs, including the photograph of Schiaparelli,

illustrated these sentiments, along with four Nadar photographs on the facing

page.(Figure 74) The image of Schiaparelli seems to decapitate her, replacing

her body with a bright white plaster sculpture, a conventional classical female

torso with arms cut off just below the shoulder.(Figure 75) The photograph

also plays on Schiaparelli‘s status as a couturière who dresses mannequins

like the one that poses as her body. The combination of her head and a

mannequin body would have read as a joke to anyone who knew her identity

as a couturière.

304 Man Ray, "L'age de la Lumière," in The Autobiography of Surrealism, trans. Marcel Jean (NewYork: Viking Press, 1980), 333.305 Ibid, 333.



147

Schiaparelli‘s face takes on the serene expression of a classical

sculpture and her sculptural lacquered wig by Antoine mirrors the severity of

sculpted marble or plaster.306 The photograph may be related to the image of

Lee Miller in Jean Cocteau‘s film, Le Sang d’un Poète (1930), in which she is

transformed into a Greek statue with broken arms.307 The composition of the

photograph demonstrates that it could just as easily be an illustration for an

article on Antoine‘s new hairstyles in Vogue as an illustration for Man Ray‘s

essay. The photograph as a whole, like Schiaparelli‘s trompe l‘oeil dress,

playfully mimics the popular classical styles of dress from designers such as

Madeline Vionnet. George Hoyningen-Huené created the look of classical

sculpture in his photograph of Vionnet gowns for the November 15th issue of

Vogue in 1931.(Error! Reference source not found.) Man Ray‘s

photograph takes the aesthetic of a photograph like Hoyningen-Huené‘s to the

extreme, turning the woman into a classical sculpture, thereby creating an

uncanny image of a woman who is at once flesh and plaster.

Schiaparelli‘s wig also pokes fun at the classical aesthetic returning to

fashion. The wig was one of her signature accessories; she had two made to

wear while vacationing in Saint-Moritz in 1931—a blonde one for skiing and a

silver one for evenings. The blonde wig was worn with a ski suit with buttons

shaped like dollar signs, perhaps a humorous nod to her rising wealth and

306Crawford reads the plaster cast as a dressmaker‟s mannequin, but for me the classical reference

seems more apt. Hannah Crawforth, "Surrealism and the Fashion Magazine," American Periodicals: A

Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography 14, no. 2 2004), 222.307 See: Mark Haworth-Booth, The Art of Lee Miller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 33-35, pl. 18.



148

fame. The wigs were described at the time by the New Yorker: ―She has, for

St. Moritz, a waterproofed wig for winter sports, at which she is truly capable;

and another, black and shiny for night wear, that looks like a wrought-iron

fern.‖308 The French fashion magazine, L’Officiel de la Couture de la Mode

published photographs of Schiaparelli‘s day and night looks in February 1932

describing the evening wig as silver. Any reader of L’Officiel would recognize

Schiaparelli and her wig. Thus I contend that Man Ray‘s photograph records

Schiaparelli‘s Surrealist performance. The real subject and author of this

photograph are not as clear as they might seem. Photographing Schiaparelli

wearing the wig in the form of a classical sculpture underlines the way that

these wigs mock modern classicism, as did Schiaparelli‘s dress with the

trompe l‘oeil pleats. Man Ray‘s photograph provide evidence for the meaning

of Schiaparelli‘s Surrealist performance on the slope of St. Moritz. Her

classical wig juxtaposed with the modernity of her ski suit and the fast paced

sport creates a classic images of Surrealist contrast.

Man Ray‘s photograph appears in Minotaure with three other Man Ray

photographs of women in various states of dress and undress. On the facing

page are four photographs by Nadar of women also in various states of dress.

All wear corsets emphasizing the wasp waists of the late nineteenth century

when they were taken. The fashion, in particular the silhouette of these

308 Flanner, "Comet," 23.



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women, allows the viewer to at once understand that the images on the two

pages are not contemporary.309

In her essay ―Surrealism and the Fashion Magazine,‖ Hannah

Crawforth argues that Man Ray‘s photographs ―serve as a metaphor by which

one can comprehend the Nadar photographs as works of surrealist art: they

can lift the pictures out of their previous context.‖310 This lifting of images out

of their previous context is something that regularly occurred not only in

Minotaure, but also on the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar 311. In April

1930 a drawing by A.E. Marly ran in Harper’s Bazaar. It illustrates

ensembles designed by Suzanne Talbot and Paul Poiret titled, ―In the Manner

of Kate Greenaway.‖(Figure 76) The Poiret and Talbot dresses were in the

Empire style--roughly the period of Napoleon I‘s first empire regime, 1804-

1814— with high waists and long straight neoclassical skirts. While Kate

Greenaway was an illustrator from the later nineteenth century, she

illustrated children‘s books in a nostalgic style, often employing the style of

the Empire period. Thus the illustration represents a complex relay of several

time periods and styles: early nineteenth century styles of clothing adapted

by a designer in 1930, illustrated by an artist working in the style of a

nineteenth century illustrator who herself worked in the nostalgic style of the

early nineteenth century.

309 Crawforth, "Surrealism and the Fashion Magazine," 224.310 Ibid 224.311 This is a practice which will be explored in greater depth in chapter 4 in the context of Surrealism,fashion, and fashion magazines.



150

Man Ray‘s spread in Minotaure also created such a historic relay

between his own contemporary images and Nadar‘s nineteenth century ones.

Man Ray used the magazine layout to claim Nadar‘s images as Surrealist, in

the same way that the Bazaar spread uses the Kate Greenaway style to evoke

the historical pedigree of contemporary fashion. The photographs in Man

Ray‘s spread play with the notion of voyeurism in their engagement with male

heterosexual fantasy representing the caged or captive woman, women on

display, or the sculpture that comes to life, the classic Pygmalion myth. In

just one of his photographs, and in only one of Nadar‘s, does the woman look

directly at the viewer. Schiaparelli does not acknowledge viewers in her

photograph. Her downcast gaze allows viewers to look freely at the uncanny

image of flesh and stone. Man Ray‘s photograph illuminates the way in which

Schiaparelli deconstructs classicism in her designs, such as her gown painted

by Jean Dunand.(Figure 77) In both cases Schiaparelli reveals the static

quality of classical forms in the context of the dynamic modern world,

exposing the regression inherent in the classicizing impulse of the post war

period. This deconstruction of classicism is also apparent in the lacquered

wig itself, which references the sculptural curls of the hair of classical

sculpture. Schiaparelli‘s use of the wig as a ski helmet heightens the uncanny

anxiety between hat and hair, hair and lacquer, soft and hard. By inserting

the plaster torso, Man Ray‘s photograph amplifies the uncanny version of

classicism that Antoine and Schiaparelli created.



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The second appearance of Schiaparelli in Minotaure is in photographs

accompanying an essay by Tristan Tzara titled ―D‘un Certain Automatisme du

Goût‖ (Regarding a Certain Automatism of Taste), in the same issue. Tzara‘s

essay discusses several objects in everyday life that resemble female genitalia

including architecture and women‘s hats. Three Man Ray photographs of hats

from Schiaparelli‘s winter 1933-34 collection (one worn by Schiaparelli

herself) illustrate the article, along with a sketch by Man Ray of several other

hats. Tzara talks about how these hats at first were made to resemble men‘s

hats, but began to take on the look of female genitalia because of the slits in

their design. The first photograph, and arguably the most well known is of the

―Savile Row,‖ a hat inspired by a man‘s fedora, and aptly named after the

famous street in London where the most fashionable men‘s suits were

tailored. Man Ray photographed the hat from above, prominently displaying

what Tzara sees as the labial folds of its crown.

Schiaparelli creates a provocative version of the fedora for a woman,

making the hat close fitting. In a Bloomingdale‘s ad from 1933 for copies of

―Schiaparelli Mad Caps,‖ one of the caps included is the Savile Row, which is

worn more like its male counterpart, high on the head. (Figure 78) The

photograph in the ad shows the range of possibilities for actually wearing

Schiaparelli‘s hats. In contrast to the advertising photograph (a standard

portrait style) Man Ray angles his camera so that the women‘s face cannot be

seen at all, the disembodied hat heightening the uncanny presence of the



152

vulva. In Man Ray‘s image of the ―Savile Row‘ the familiar fedora is suddenly

made strange by the presence of the vulva. The hat seems to take on a life of

its own, swallowing the woman‘s head below behind its brim. Man Ray‘s

framing also heightens the androgyny of the hat, giving the figure the

anonymous quality of the man-on-the-street, seen from above as part of the

teeming masses of the city.

Rosalind Krauss argues that this androgynous quality is heightened by

the fact that the hat is pulled down so far, ―firmly rounded, aggressive, the

crown of the hat rises up towards its viewer like the tip of the male organ,

swelling with so much phallic presence.‖312 The genital androgyny of this

photograph gives it indeterminate, and therefore, uncanny presence. Krauss

considers how this hat fits into Freud‘s notion of the fetish, an object or image

that is associated with the revelation, for a boy, that his mother lacks a

phallus:

In the logic of the fetish the paradigm male/female collapses inan adamant refusal to admit distinction, to accept the facts ofsexual difference. The fetish is not the replacement of thefemale genitals with a surrogate, coded /female/; it is asubstitute that will allow perverse continuation in a belief thatthe woman (mother) is— beyond all apparent evidence—phallic.313

While the fetish is often understood a surrogate for the penis, Krauss argues

that, as in this hat, the fetish allows for the collapse of gender distinction. She

goes on to describe her reading of Freud‘s case history of a man whose fetish

312 Rosalind E. Krauss, The Optical Unconscious (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), 162.313 Ibid, 164-5.



153

was ―ein Glanz auf die Nase,‖ which Krauss translates as ―a glance at the

nose,‖ as opposed to ―a shine on the nose.‖ She concludes that this creates

―the fusion of looking at and looked at, subject and object, seer and seen, a

fusion that reenacts the defense that the fetish itself will stage as the

misperceived blurring of male and female organs.‖314 Thus Krauss

complicates the notion of the fetish, making it not a replacement for the

phallus, but the merging of the male and female; Man Ray‘s photograph of

the ―Savile Row,‖ is a paradigmatic example of this.

This argument can be taken a step further and applied to Schiaparelli‘s

garments themselves. Her hats from the early 1930s had both phallic and

labial qualities.(Figure 79)(Error! Reference source not found.) Another hat

pictured in a Bloomingdale‘s ad, ―The Mike,‖ has an even more overtly labial

look, with three large folds of fabric coming up from the center. This hat also

appears in a Schiaparelli house sketch from 1933, and in the front view it has

an unmistakable phallic shape. It is surprising that Tzara and Man Ray did

not choose to include this hat, but perhaps it was too overt for their taste. The

article and photographs do not credit Schiaparelli as the designer of these

hats, though Tzara does suggest that the designers of these hats has a certain

amount of agency in their creation. Tzara claims that they added masculine

details intentionally to mitigate the presence of female genitalia in their

314 Ibid, 165.



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hats.315 This argument maintains, however, the sense that the presence of

female genitalia is in some ways beyond the control of the designers and that

they have attempted to mask it. Tzara is in large part concerned with the

unconscious sexuality that lies just under the surface of everyday life.

Subsequent writing on these photographs also rarely credits Schiaparelli.316

Acknowledging the designer and her more overtly sexual designs would

require Tzara and Man Ray to recognize that Schiaparelli intentionally makes

reference to the vagina in her hats as a way of provoking viewers. While the

taste for this kind of hat may still be seen as an expression of the unconscious,

as Tzara argues, the initial design certainly cannot be.

This uncanny fusion of male and female can be seen in several other

popular Schiaparelli hats from the period. She often used folds of fabric to

adorn the crowns of hats or created unusual flourishes such as what

Bloomingdale‘s call an ―Aztec tepee,‖ atop the ―Yak.‖317 (Error! Reference source

not found.) Her ―Helmet‖ hat with its Keiser Wilhelm-like point at the top is a

315 This is based on my translation of the essay. Tzara describes a hat which has what he sees as aman‟s collar and tie adorning it. He argues that this detail is not an accidental addition by the designer but an intentional addition to mitigate the explicit female sexuality of the hat: “Dans la manière meme

dont ces deux attributs, les plus marquants du costume masculin, le tire-chaussettes tendu faisant appelà une image de la virilité et la cravat dont le rôle symbolique est connu, dans la manière meme dont ilsentourent la reproduction de ce sexe feminine que les femmes portent sur la tête, il faut être aveugle

pour ne pas voir, non pas uniquement un effet de la fantaisie qui, elle, ne joue que le role d‟ingénieuse

entremetteuse, mais une réelle force de justification que les créatrices de ces modèles ont donnée àleurs oeuvres.” Tristan Tzara, "D‟un Certain Automatisme Du Goût," Minotaure, no. 3-4 (1933,reprint: Rizzoli, 1980), 82.316 Dilys Blum‟s Shocking and Hanna Crawforth are some of the only exception to this: Blum,Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 127. Crawforth, "Surrealism and the FashionMagazine," 240. On the other hand, photographs of art work, such as Oppenheim‟s Objet: Déjeuner

en Fourrure (1936) is treated as such even in photographs of the object by Dora Maar and Man Raywhere it surrealist effect is understood as being enhanced by the work of the photographer. Fer,Batchelor, and Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art between the Wars, 175-176.317 Ad for Bloomingdale's, New York Times, 4 September 1933.



155

particularly good example of her phallic designs.(Figure 80) These hats from

the early 1930s share a particularly tactile quality, since they are all knit (the

―Yak‖) or crocheted out of straw (the ―Helmet‖) and are therefore soft and

flexible. Through their shapes and textures they evoked both male and female

body parts, such as the penis, labia, and breasts. Schiaparelli was not creating

an androgynous look by dressing women in men‘s clothing. Instead she was

creating a look that brought sexuality to the surface.

Moving away from the androgyny of the flapper, Schiaparelli confronted

viewers with the wearer‘s sexuality as opposed to simply her gender.

Schiaparelli resisted the flaccid look of the flapper with an erect strong

silhouette that confronted viewers and created a kind of armor for the wearer.

Schiaparelli was clearly interested in a complex play of gender in her designs.

She was not simply dressing women in men‘s clothing, but creating uncanny

conflations of the masculine and feminine. Her tattoo bathing suits conflated

the knit fabric of a woman‘s bathing suit with the skin of a virile male sailor.

Her divided skirts seemed to change form as the wearer moved, looking

alternately like a skirt and pants. Schiaparelli was therefore making a

concerted design choice to confound viewers with clothing that oscillated

between male and female attributes.

In The Psychology of Clothes, J.C. Flügel argues that one of the most

important distinction between men‘s clothes and women‘s clothes derives

from the fact that ―in women the whole body is sexualized, in men the libido is



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more definitely concentrated upon the genital zone.‖318 Schiaparelli‘s clothing

embodies this psychological principal. As opposed to being a modest covering

for the head, Schiaparelli‘s hats visually sexualize the head through reference

to both male and female genitalia. Flügel, a contemporary of Schiaparelli,

provides insight into the ways in which her combinations of masculine and

feminine resisted the androgyny of the flapper. In his 1930 book The

Psychology of Clothing Flügel describes the place of phallic symbolism in

men‘s clothing:

Both stiffness and tightness are, however, likely to be over-determined by phallic symbolism. The stiff collar, for example, which is the sign of duty is also the sign of the erect phallus, andin general those male garments that are most associated withseriousness and correctness are also the most saturated with asubtle phallicism.319

Thus it is not unreasonable to read Schiaparelli‘s use of broad shoulders and

smaller waists as a phallic gesture—a style that was erect, in response to the

flaccid look of the 1920s. The streamlined androgonous looks of the 1920s

sought to blend in rather than stand out, and therefore did not seek to

confront viewers.

Schiaparelli‘s style of the early 1930s is best exemplified in a page from

Harper’s Bazaar in April 1933 whose headline reads: ―It is Conventional to

be Extreme.‖ A Schiaparelli suit with high rounded shoulders is paired with a

peaked, cone-shaped hat, and photographed to create a striking shadow of

318 J. C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes (London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press,and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1930), 107.319 Ibid, 77.



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this intimidating silhouette.(Figure 81) The text on the page informs readers

that while last year it took courage to wear the daring hats and padded

shoulders of the most daring designers, this year everyone is wearing them.320

A Bloomingdale‘s ad from March of the same year, which proclaims

―Schiaparelli—the daring—the original! Schiaparelli whose broad shoulders

make your figure slim, whose high hats make you inches taller! Schiaparelli

who gives you the sharp straight lines of youth!‖321 Schiaparelli‘s designs are

sold as giving women the power to manipulate their appearance, to give

themselves a taller, more commanding presence.

These styles used both masculine and feminine attributes to create a

look radically different from the boyish silhouette of the 1920s. Schiaparelli

brought back a feminine waistline, but combined it with a strong shoulder,

often using military detailing such as epaulettes and metal clips instead of

buttons. Hats capped off these defiant looks with a flourish. The women

wearing these ensembles wanted to be noticed, making themselves taller with

high hats that revealed the face, as opposed to shading it as did the cloche hats

of the 1920s. These hats were exuberant and, as Man Ray made clear, were

sexually suggestive. They confronted the viewer with bizarre shapes and

forms, allowing the wearer to see the response of those looking at her.

Schiaparelli‘s customers could become seer and seen, subject and object. The

confrontational sexuality inherent in these hats turns the traditional

320 It Is Conventional to Be Extreme " Harper’s Bazaar (April 1933), 33.321 Ad for Bloomingdale's, New York Times, 19 March 1933.



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voyeuristic masculine gaze back towards the male viewer. Most of

Schiaparelli‘s clothing works on this provocative level.

Schiaparelli‘s silhouette of the early 1930s is in sharp contrast with

classic flapper and garçonne silhouettes of the late 1920s that emphasized a

straight slim line with waistbands, if there was one, falling at the hips.(Figure

82) These designs seem droopy in comparison to Schiaparelli‘s tall slim style.

One of Schiaparelli‘s early designs f rom 1929, a boucle knit coat with a tall fur

collar worn with a close fitting cloche hat exemplifies this silhouette.(Figure

83) The cloche hat was often worn low, covering the forehead and eyes,

emphasizing a downward line.(Figure 84) Schiaparelli‘s hats of the early

1930s, on the other hand, are tilted away from the face, and with their

decorative flourishes, cap off an upward axis. While many designers in the

early 1930 were using broad shoulders and nipped-in waists, no one was

making hats quite like Schiaparelli. In a 1933 Dorothy Dulin illustration for

the Chicago Daily Tribune, a pointed hat, tops off a divided skirt that flares at

the bottom, and broad-shouldered jacket that nips in at the waist creates a

strong tall silhouette. The hat gives the look its final rising flourish.

Building upon Krauss‘ analysis of Man Ray‘s photographs, we can see

Schiaparelli‘s silhouette as phallic and provocative gesture, with her hat

completing what amounts to an erect silhouette. The 1920s streamlined look,

topped with a cloche looks limp in comparison, particularly as epitomized by

the Chanel slouch as we saw in the last chapter. Schiaparelli‘s 1929 boucle



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coat is a perfect example. The coat‘s tall fur collar envelops the wearer‘s neck

creating what amounts to a continuous tube down the bottom of the coat. Her

coats in 1931, on the other hand, shape the body in an entirely different way,

adopting the broad shoulders of men‘s garments and nipping in at the natural

waist. Vogue described this new style as:

Schiaparelli‘s wooden-soldier silhouette…It transforms youcompletely: wide padded epaulet shoulders, high, double breasted closing, flat, chesty chest, lines carved sharply fromunder the arms to the waist, and a straight column from theredown. Schiaparelli the dress carpenter, gets this effect in

redingotes, suits, and short fur jackets to wear with usuallyheavy woolen skirts.322

This new silhouette, though it emphasized the feminine curves of the waist

and chest, is still gendered as masculine, ―wooden-soldiers‖ made by a ―dress

carpenter.‖ These terms are used again in the next issue to describe two of

Schiaparelli‘s coats illustrated in the magazine.(Figure 85) These coats use

masculine styling, not to hide feminine curves, but to play them up in a

distinctly aggressive and phallic manner, as Flügel describes. Schiaparelli‘s

look is novel, because not only does it conform to the waist and hips, as did

much of the clothing in this period, but her hats emphasized an erect and

aggressive style. (Figure 86) She combined feminine curves with aggressive

masculine tailoring creating an uncanny look that was meant to stand out: ―It

is Conventional to be Extreme.‖

The ―Mad Cap,‖ Schiaparelli‘s most popular hat, was certainly a part of

this new aesthetic. It was photographed by Man Ray and appeared on the

322 Vogue Goes to the Collections," Vogue (1 October 1931), 42.



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third page of the essay along with a photograph of Schiaparelli herself in the

―Crazy Coxcomb.‖ Originally designed in 1930, it was a hand knitted tube

whose two corners could easily be manipulated by the wearer to create

different peaked styles. Many Hollywood stars famously sported the ―Mad

Cap,‖ including Ina Claire who wears a two-pointed model in a photograph

from 1932, and Katherine Hepburn, who wears a more tailored version in an

undated photograph.(Figure 87)(Figure 88) Schiaparelli credits Ina Claire

with popularizing the hat.323 The ―Mad Cap‖ may be the hat referred to in a

1933 article in Harper’s Bazaar that comments on a makeover given to

Hepburn by her studio RKO and American designer Elizabeth Hawes, to deter

her from ―the Schiaparelli monkey caps she likes and the faint aura of the

Bryn Mawr she denies ever having attended.‖324 It is apparent from this

comment that the ―Mad Cap,‖ like the ―Savile Row,‖ was clearly linked in the

popular press to androgyny. Early in her career, Hepburn had been criticized

for her rather masculine way of dressing, and the reference to Bryn Mawr, a

women‘s college that Hepburn did indeed graduate from in 1928, clearly

refers to Hepburn‘s outspoken and often ―manly‖ habits. Andrew Britton

quotes a 1933 article on Hepburn in Picturegoer that describes Hepburn as

looking like a schoolgirl, ―her sandy hair was tucked carelessly under a blue-

knitted cap. The cap preserved her reputation for funny hats.‖325 While this

323 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 49.324 Movietone," Harper’s Bazaar (February 1933), 65.325 Andrew Britton, Katharine Hepburn: Star as Feminist (New York: Columbia University Press,1984; reprint, 2003), 17.



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cap was evidently not one of Schiaparelli‘s creations, it is certainly likely that

Hepburn‘s ―reputation for funny hats‖ was built by wearing many of

Schiaparelli‘s. The designer herself recalled giving Hepburn a makeover at

her Paris salon very early in her career.326 This identification with the young

Hepburn suggests that Schiaparelli‘s clothes were associated with a certain

kind of androgyny exemplified by Hepburn in the early 1930s, both in cross-

dressing film roles and off screen by her unconventional ―mannish garb.‖327

This ―mannish garb‖ was often the same type of working class menswear

referenced by Schiaparelli in her early designs.328

The ―Mad Cap‖ was so popular that Schiaparelli began seeing copies of

it made everywhere. In her autobiography she claims that she ordered all of

the remaining hats in her stock destroyed after seeing the ―Mad Cap‖ on a

baby in a stroller:

from all the shop windows, including the five- and ten-centstores, at the corner of every street, from every bus, in town andin the country, the naughty hat obsessed her, until one day it winked at her from the bald head of a baby on a pram. That dayshe gave the order to her salesgirls to destroy every single one instock.329

Anyone who followed fashion would have easily recognized the cap in Man

Ray‘s photograph. His photographs isolate Schiaparelli‘s designs and put

them to work illustrating Tzara‘s thesis that unconscious images of sexuality

326Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 52.327 Britton, Katharine Hepburn : Star as Feminist , 32. See Britton‟s chapter 2 “Publicity,” for

accounts of Hepburn‟s clothing in contemporary journalism and chapter 4 “Gender and Bisexuality,”

for more on Hepburn‟s androgyny.328 For example Hepburn is described as wearing dungarees with a fur coat in a beat up truck. Ibid, 32.329 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 49-50.



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are being constantly produced, in cultural realms as diverse as architecture

and hats. Rosalind Krauss argues that the power of photography within

Surrealism is to ―find and isolate what we could call the world‘s constant

production of erotic symbols, its ceaseless automatic writing.‖330 She

demonstrates that the techniques of framing and doubling in photography

signify signification, alerting the viewer to semiotic value of the image: ―in

cutting into the body of the world, stopping it, framing it, spacing it,

photography reveals that world as written.‖331 These Man Ray photographs,

particularly the one of the ―Savile Row,‖ are a perfect example of the use of

framing by removing the figure entirely from the fashion photograph.

Man Ray‘s photographs provide insight into the new kind of

confrontational sexuality created by Schiaparelli in the 1930s. In Man Ray‘s

photograph, the ―Savile Row‖ oscillates between masculine and feminine,

phallic and vaginal, just as the coats and suits Schiaparelli designed to be

worn with it. Man Ray‘s photographs of Schiaparelli‘s hats point to the ways

in which Schiaparelli responded to the androgyny of the garçonne and flapper

aesthetic, with her own more provocative style of uncanny sexuality.

Schiaparelli not only adopted the styles of menswear, but she used them in a

distinctly sexualized manner. While the flapper silhouette had clearly been

shocking when first introduced in the 1920s, by the end of the decade it was

stale and conventional. Schiaparelli found new ways to challenge traditional

330 Rosalind E. Krauss, "Corpus Delicti," in L'amour Fou : Photography & Surrealism (Washington:Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1985), 40.331 Ibid, 31, 40.



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modes of feminine dress. She adopted working class styles or men‘s dress and

adornment such as tattoos and sailor shirts. Using these styles with trompe

l‘oeil techniques, she created uncanny conflations not only of male and

female, but also of skin and fabric.

Reading Schiaparelli‘s trompe l‘oeil clothing in the context of Surrealism

creates a more complex understanding of how it engages with Breton‘s notion

of the marvelous, or the uncanny. Schiaparelli‘s designs are more than simply

whimsical and clever. From the very beginning she was dealing with complex

questions at the heart of fashion, gender, sexuality, fantasy, and concealing and

revealing. Her trompe l‘oeil garments teased viewers and engaged with touch

as well as sight, making the wearer no longer simply an object, but also an agent

of the illusion. Her new silhouette in the early 1930 completed this translation,

making women stand out by bringing back feminine curves, along with strong

male tailoring. Examining Man Ray‘s photographs, it becomes clear that the

hat and other garments of the early 1930 engage in far more sexualized gender

play than did the androgyny of the 1920s. Schiaparelli referenced genitalia in

her hats in ways that gave wearers an erect and phallic presence, albeit with an

uncanny presence of femininity and the female body. R eading Schiaparelli‘s

clothing along with the art of the Surrealists allows for a more complex

understanding of the adoption of menswear for women, the use of illusionism

in dress, and the ways in which she was responding to trends in both art and

fashion in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Schiaparelli‘s shock tactics work to



164

move their wearers away from being looked at as objects to forcing viewers to

acknowledge the fact that they are looking. Using men‘s clothing to make

women more physically free and mobile was not Schiaparelli‘s goal: she was

working on a more complex semiological level. Her goal was not only to make

visible the masquerade of femininity, but through the uncanny conflation of

masculine and feminine in her phallic silhouettes, to question the stability and

power of masculinity.

In this chapter we have seen the role of fashion in the work of Man Ray

and in Minotaure. Through Man Ray‘s photographs we can see the ways that

Schiaparelli used the uncanny in her work. Schiaparelli‘s early designs engaged

with gender and sexuality in a Surrealist manner. By moving away from

androgyny towards a more sexualized expression, Schiaparelli created styles

that exuded strange glamour. Her clothes confronted viewers in a new way,

giving the women who wore them a position of agency, the ability to look back

at those who looked at them. In chapter four we will see how Schiaparelli

continued to create designs that confronted viewers, and delved deeper into a

Surrealist exploration of the body. In the next chapter we will examine another

aspect of strange glamour related to exoticism. We will see how designers used

Surrealist tactics to blend images from Africa with European styles to create

jarring juxtapositions. This chapter will explore another aspect of Strange

Glamour that allowed women to engage in the kinds of colonialist fantasies that

Surrealist men were enacting in their work.



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Chapter 3

“The Colonel’s Lady and African Sadie are Sisters Under their Hats”332

In May of 1931 the French milliner Madame Agnès appeared on the

cover of L’Officiel de la Couture, de le Mode in a drawing by Jean Dunand.

(Figure 89) She is described as wearing "a charming evening gown, knickers

skirt, of coarse white silk crépon created especially for her by the Maison

Schiaparelli on the occasion of the Paris Colonial Exhibition of that year. Her

coiffeur, 'A.O.F.,' one of her latest creations, consists of a crin foundation

embroidered in artificial silk."333 In Dunand‘s evocative illustration, Agnès

looks less like a milliner, and more like an exotic dancer from the Colonial

Exposition her gown was made for. Her graceful pose recalls a dancer, not a

mannequin. Dunand portrays her in a contour drawing focusing on the gold

details of the gown, jewelry and headdress. In the background of the drawing,

a silhouetted profile creates a large block of black and a smaller one of blue.

Most of Agnès‘ body and gown are black, creating an image that is rife with

striking racial connotations. Schiaparelli‘s gown and Agnès‘ hat allow her to

embody a racial ―other.‖ In two photographs of her inside the magazine she is

clearly white, her face framed by the white background and her shiny light

colored silk straw hat. (Figure 90) Here she looks far more conventional, and

while the page‘s copy touts the ―Colonial Manifestation Chez Agnès,‖ the hat is

332 "B. Altman & Company Window Display of Agnès Hats," in B. Altman Window Display

Photographs (New York: Gladys Marcus Library, Fashion Institute of Technology, c. 1931).333 Légende Da La Page De Couverture," L'Officiel de la Couture de la Mode, no. 117 (May 1931), 3.



166

one of her more abstract interpretations of the colonial theme. This is

particularly true when compared with one of her hats that appears in a

photograph two pages later, with its painted hand-knit crown topped with

coral bead embroidery and a black satin band.334 (Figure 91)

A Marshall Field & Company advertisement for Agnès hats from April

1931 proclaimed, ―Africa Speaks in Millinery.‖ But what exactly is Africa

saying? What does it mean for a white woman to wear an ―African,‖ or

―colonial‖ hat? A 1931 display of Agnés‘ hats in the window of B. Altman &

Co. in New York begins to reveal the complex story of the global turn of 1930s

fashion with a card reading: ―The Colonel‘s Lady and African Sadie are Sisters

Under their Hats.‖335 Clearly these hats were related to the history of

colonialism as well as to a long history of Orientalism in western fashion. The

1930s were a decade in which global influences of all kinds flowered in

fashion, inspired by the many World‘s Fairs and Colonial Expositions of the

period. African hats, Indian saris, sombreros, Mandarin caps, Hindu turbans,

and coolie caps covered the pages of fashion magazines, appeared on the

heads of movie stars, and filled the shelves of department stores. These

trends in 1930s fashion were a part of what I call an aesthetic of ―Strange

Glamour‖ that developed in this period. Strange glamour is built on

contradictions and contrasts. As we saw in the last chapter, fashion in the

1930s was moving away from the conformity of the 1920s flapper and towards

334 Colonial Manifestation Chez Agnès," L'Officiel de la Couture de la Mode, no. 117 (May 1931), 22.335 "B. Altman & Company Window Display of Agnès Hats."



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an emphasis on bold and brash looks for day —sometimes referred to as hard

chic—and slinky bias cut sex appeal in the evening. Global influences paired

with traditional European styles created dynamic ensembles, which were an

important part of this new strange glamour.

Surrealists are, of course, well known for their interest in the visual

culture of the colonized world. Wendy A. Grossman has detailed the

important role that photography played in the dispersal of images of African

art.336 She also demonstrates the ways that photographs of African art, which

have often been understood as objective documentary representations,

reflected instead the complex relationship of American and European artists

to African art. Moreover, such photographs have mediated the reception of

this art. The interest in so-called ―primitive art‖— what Grossman and others

term ―Modernist Primitivism‖—is often attributed to dissatisfaction with the

progress of the modern world in the wake of the rapid industrialization of the

nineteenth-century and, in particular, the horrors of World War I made

possible by the mechanization of war.337 For some American and European

artists, the art of Africa and Oceania, in particular, represented a simpler,

unchanging way of life more connected with spirituality. This view reflects

deep-seated beliefs about race, power, and progress, which were

institutionalized through colonial expansion.

336 See Wendy Grossman, "Modernist Gambits and Primitivist Discourses : Reframing Man Ray'sPhotographs of African and Oceanic Art" (PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park,2002), and Grossman, Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens.337 Louise Tythacott, Surrealism and the Exotic (New York: Routledge, 2003), 1. Grossman, Man Ray,

African Art, and the Modernist Lens, 2.



168

Many scholars have dealt extensively with the issues surrounding

―Modernist Primitivism,‖ and, in particular, Surrealism‘s engagement with

the primitive.338 I do not wish to make an attempt to resolve these debates,

important as they are. I choose instead to focus on what I will term

―Fashionable Primitivism‖—the way that ―primitive‖ influences played out in

fashion in the 1930s. Examining these influences can reveal the unique

relationship that women have with colonization. Though global cultures have

long influenced European fashion, I argue that these influences were used in a

unique way in the 1930s. ―Fashionable Primitivism‖ and the Surrealist‘s

brand of ―Modernist Primitivism‖ spoke to each other during this period. I

will trace this dialogue from the 1931 Colonial Exposition to the 1937 La Mode

au Congo exhibition at the Charles Ratton Gallery in Paris, an exhibition of a

group of hats from the Belgian Congo purchased by the milliner Lilly Daché.

This chapter‘s focus is on the Africanist aesthetic in fashion because these

influences are plentiful and rich. Moreover, more than any other continent in

the 1930s, Africa was radically ―other‖ for Europeans and Americans. It was

also a continent that had a lush life in the imaginations of Europeans and

Americans, as we will see.339 Comparing Agnès‘ hats with Daché‘s will reveal

the development of ―Fashionable Primitivism‖ from an abstract use of

338 See for example: William Stanley Rubin, ed. "Primitivism" In 20th Century Art : Affinity of the

Tribal and the Modern, 2 vols. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984). James Clifford, The

Predicament of Culture : Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1988). Tythacott, Surrealism and the Exotic.339 It is worth noting that fashion in the 1930s and indeed, contemporary fashion, freely adopts,appropriates and adapts from a wide variety of global sources, mixing and matching as it sees fit.Thus, to a certain extent singling out Africanist fashion is a matter of narrowing down an enormouswealth of material to a manageable portion.



169

―African‖ motifs, to a collage aesthetic which is related to the Surrealist‘s use

of African objects.

In the 1930s Man Ray and Andre Breton deployed African objects in

their work through photography. Using the photographic process as a means

of collecting, both artists associated African objects with their own artistic

practices. Man Ray used these objects as props in his photographs. Andre

Breton used them to illustrate his books, Nadja (1928) and Mad Love (1937).

According to Krzysztof Fijalkowski, the collecting practices of the Surrealists

―suggested a fervor for accumulation that was partly a sacred quest to save

and shelter the precious piece from its banal rationalized context, but also

suggested a compulsion to buy and possess, which—far from representing a

rejection of consumer economy —arguably amounted to an unexpectedly rich

celebration of its profusion.‖340 At the same time, many women employed

African accessories in their wardrobes. Nancy Cunard, for example, was

known for her unique personal style. She adorned her arms with signature

stacks of African ivory bracelets from her prodigious collection. How do the

practices of women like Eluard and Cunard relate the compulsive collecting of

surrealist men? While these men claimed to despise the consumer economy

and resist capitalism in their artistic practice, they enthusiastically

participated in these systems through their art collecting, and their habitual

trolling of the Paris Flea Market. At the same time that the Surrealists were

organizing their anti-colonial exhibition to expose the abuses of the colonial

340 Fijalkowski, "Black Materialism: Surrealism Faces the Commercial World," 109.



170

system, which underlined the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition, they were

participating in the obsession with colonial possession through their own

collecting practices. Breton was not wearing his flea market finds, or his

African objects, but was instead using them to decorate his domestic space

and illustrate his books. While some Surrealists did don their masks for

costume balls or mugging for the camera, these items were not part of their

daily wear on the street. Is there a difference, then, in Cunard‘s relation to her

bracelets and their meaning, and Breton‘s relationship to his collection,

particularly since Breton and other Surrealists often used these collections as

a means to raise cash when funds ran short?341

This chapter will use James Clifford‘s description of Ethnographic

Surrealism as a springboard to understand the way that fashion designers

deployed African influences to achieve the aesthetic of strange glamour. A

brief overview of the status of colonialism in France in the 1930s will provide

a backdrop for thinking about how the idea of ―Africa‖ existed in European

and American imaginations. Throughout the chapter I will trace what I see as

a development in fashionable primitivism, moving from abstract references to

Africa— bangle bracelets, raffia, and straw —to more concrete references to

specific hairstyles, headdresses and hats. Examining the ways in which the

Surrealists Man Ray and Andre Breton used African objects in their works will

illuminate the meanings of fashionable primitivism, and will give a new

perspective on these artists practices. I will compare Andre Breton‘s

341 Tythacott, Surrealism and the Exotic, 95-6.



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collecting practices to those of women in the fashion industry such as Helena

Rubinstein and Lilly Daché. All of these figures used their collections as a

form of self-promotion in their homes and commercial spaces. Looking at

them together we can see that Breton is part of a larger group of artists and

fashion entrepreneurs who used their domestic spaces as a space to advertise

their modern aesthetic sensibilities.

An examination of Man Ray‘s photographs of women with African

objects will demonstrate the important links made by artists and, by

extension, white Americans and Europeans between primitivism and

sexuality. I argue that Mme Agnès, Lilly Daché, and other designers used this

link between exoticism and eroticism to create fashions with a different kind

of sex appeal than the short skirts and low necklines of the flapper. These

fashions used the evocation of primitive sexuality to create an alluring image.

These clothes also clearly engaged with masquerade, which displaced the

sexuality of the look onto clothes as opposed to the wearer. The woman who

wore these clothes was masquerading as an ―African Sadie,‖ but could just as

easily change back into the ―Colonel‘s Lady,‖ by changing her clothes.

Women‘s fashion practices in this period reveal the unique relationship that

they had with colonialism. While white men were encouraged to look at

colonial women with a sexualized gaze, white women were set apart from this

dynamic since colonial men were not deemed appropriate romance partners.

Fashion was an arena in which white women could carve out a space for



172

themselves in this colonial fantasy. By masquerading as colonial women, they

could engage with the colonial imagination, particularly with regard to

sexuality.

Ethnographic Surrealism and Fashion

In his foundational essay ―On Ethnographic Surrealism,‖ James

Clifford explores the relationship between anthropology and Surrealism in the

1920s and 1930s. 342 He argues that the new practice of ethnography and

Surrealism both strove to make the familiar strange, to de-familiarize the

everyday by juxtaposing it with the foreign, the other. Clifford argues that the

concept of collage is common to both ethnography and Surrealism. In

Surrealism the umbrella and sewing machine meet on the dissecting table,

while in anthropology ―moments are produced in which distinct cultural

realities are cut from their contexts and forced into jarring proximity.‖343

Clifford explains that Surrealism is always present in ethnographies, but is

often smoothed over. It is most visible when ―the cuts and sutures of the

research process are left visible…To write ethnographies on the model of

collage would be to avoid the portrayal of cultures as organic wholes or as

unified, realistic worlds subject to a continuous explanatory discourse.‖344

342 James Clifford, "On Ethnographic Surrealism," in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century

Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 117.343 Ibid, 146.344 Ibid, 146.



173

Clifford‘s description of Ethnographic Surrealism is indebted to Walter

Benjamin‘s description of dialectical images. According to Benjamin, the past

does not illuminate the present, but rather the interaction between the past

and the present can create a unique and fleeting meaning, which has the

potential to transform our understanding of both the past and present.

Clifford thinks about such dialectical images in the context of ethnographies.

Ethnographic accounts put together the familiar and the strange to create

metaphoric descriptions of cultures. Clifford emphasizes the usefulness of the

Surrealist collage technique because it does not fool us into believing that we

really fully understand the culture being studied, but rather helps lead us to

think harder about our own culture. In his essay, ―Surrealism: The Last

Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia,‖ Benjamin explains that ―we

penetrate the mystery only to the degree that we recognize it in the everyday

world, by virtue of a dialectical optic that perceives the everyday as

impenetrable, the inpenetrable as the everyday.345 Benjamin urges us to use

dialectical optics, or what Clifford might describe as a collage aethetic, to

acknowledge what we don‘t understand about our everyday lives. Collage

makes the familiar strange, transforming our understanding of the everyday

world.

The everyday world of fashion was full of these dialectical images. I

argue that we can see the development of this collage practice from the

345 Walter Benjamin, "Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia," in Reflections :

Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York:Schocken Books, 2007), 190.



174

abstract uses of African style in the work of Madame Agnès, to the exuberant

appropriations of Lilly Daché, as well as the personal style of many individual

women in the 1930s.346 While Breton was using his collection to juxtapose

objects that questioned the idea of a universal aesthetic, designers such as

Schiaparelli, Agnés, and Daché were using a juxtaposition to interrupt

conventional standards of beauty though their designs. For these designers,

these chance encounters were embodied; they occurred on the body of a

fashionable woman: Nancy Cunard‘s African ivory bracelets and her bias cut

gown or Nusch Eluard wearing Schiaparelli‘s sari and carrying fan made of

transparent rodophane. (Figure 4)(Figure 5)

Colonial Background

In order to examine the ways that African objects and images of Africa

influenced fashionable women and Surrealists, we must briefly review the

state of colonialism in the 1930s. For the purposes of this investigation, I will

be focusing on France‘s relationship to its colonies as an exemplar of the state

of colonialism in the 1930s.347 World War I had re-shuffled the colonial map

for the major European powers. During the years between the World Wars,

France was—geographically at least—at the height of its colonial power.

346 This is not something I can pinpoint as starting in the 1930s, but I it reaches a kind of zenith then;while it still has a presence in fashion, it has faded from the forefront.347 Most of artists and designers I will be discussing were living and working in France, and most ofthe images and objects they were exposed to were a result of French colonialism. Though she lived inthe United States, Daché was French. I think that her relationship to Africa is better understood in thatcontext. Race in the US would also inform this research, but awaits a future project.



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According to historian Martin Thomas, despite the geographic breadth of the

French empire, there was a profound ambivalence in France about

colonialism after the First World War348 Thomas argues that while there was

a public interest in the exoticism of the colonies, there was very little public

will or interest in colonial expansion or even maintenance. The French public

in the metropole were far more concerned with what was going on within the

borders of France itself. Many were concerned that funding colonial projects

or the defense of the colonies was seen as taking much needed money out of

France. At the same time, the French Empire was barely being held together:

―Put simply, in much of the inter-war empire, French colonialism was barely

tolerated. Authority was generally imposed through coercion, whether actual

or implied.‖349

Scholar Elizabeth Ezra defines what she calls the ―colonial

unconscious‖ as ―the images of its colonial enterprise that France presented to

itself and to the world. In interwar France, these images were everywhere,

and they were inescapable.‖350 Such images were circulated in the Paris

expositions, films, newspapers, magazines, books (including children‘s books

featuring Babar and Tintin), on food packages, and, as we will see, in

fashion.351 At the heart of all of these images is exoticization—the use of an

348 Martin Thomas, The French Empire between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society (NewYork: Manchester University Press, 2005), 1-12.349 Ibid, 2-3, 5.350 Elizabeth Ezra, The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 2000), 2.351 Ibid, 2-3, 21.



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other to define the self.352 Elizabeth Ezra employs the terms of Orientalist and

Africanist discourse as a framework for thinking about eroticization and the

way in which artists and fashion designers responded to objects from the

colonies. She discusses these two positions not in terms of the particular

parts of the world they examine, but rather how they examine them.

Orientalism is concerned with rational study and classification of objects,

whereas Africanist discourse is positioned against the rational; it searches, but

not for any particular meaning.353 The Surrealists, and the fashion designers I

will discuss, approached objects and images from a broad range of countries

through Africanist discourse, reveling in the mystery and indeterminacy of

them.

The Surrealists were deeply engaged with an exoticism that venerated

African, Oceanic, and Native North American objects and cultures as

uninhibited and extraordinary. Louise Tythacott explains that ―the Surrealists

were, on the one hand, progressive and radical, on the other, fixed within the

world-view of their time…While disavowing the discourses of evolutionism

and aesthetic primitivism they constructed in their place equally problematic

discourses of the fantastic, the magical and the mystical.‖354 The Surrealists

treated non-western art, not as a series of motifs to be appropriated, but as

discrete objects that were linked to spirituality and the primitive

352 For an extended definition see: Brett A. Berliner, Ambivalent Desire: The Exotic Black Other in

Jazz-Age France (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 4-6.353 Ezra, The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France, 12.354 Tythacott, Surrealism and the Exotic, 14.



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subconscious. Cubists and other early Modernists along with Art Deco

designers had appropriated design motifs and aesthetics from African and

other non-western objects. Inspiration from the exotic colonies was crucial in

the development of Art Deco design. Ghislaine Wood writes that:

‗reality‘ for many people in the 1930s was permeated by theexotic. From the moment they turned on their mini zigguratradios in the morning, to the moment they left their Egyptian-style cinema at night, Art Deco exoticism surrounded them.Every aspect of modern living was given an exotic veneer, fromfaçades of factories and cinemas to the packaging of perfumesand chocolates.355

Where design motifs and themes had dominated the adaptations of Cubists

and Art Deco designers, Surrealists were interested in the meaning behind

such exotic objects. The Surrealists acknowledged that the objects they

collected had aesthetic value, meaning and potentially a function outside of an

aesthetic one in their original context, but they were not necessarily interested

in understanding that purpose in any serious way. African, Oceanic, and

Native American art was interesting to the Surrealists because they thought it

had a deeper and more primary relation to the maker‘s and user‘s

subconscious than did European art.356 This belief was tied to racist ideas

about the backwardness of the people who made such objects.357 As Tythacott

355 Ghislaine Wood, "The Exotic," in Art Deco 1910-1939, ed. Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton, andGhislaine Wood (London: V&A Publications, 2003), 125.356 Louise Tythacott explains that “The Surrealists frequently aligned the primitive, the mad, and the

child within their supposedly subversive system of belief, conceptualizing the art forms of all three asdirect expressions of inner life.” Tythacott, Surrealism and the Exotic, 55.357 See Tythacott‟s chapter “Fantasy, theory, Surrealist ideology,” which goes through the different

psychological, philosophical and evolutionary theories which influenced the Surrealists notion of the“primitive,” in Ibid, 55, 49-84.



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points out, despite the fact that the Surrealists were more sensitive to colonial

oppression and the idea that the objects they sometimes obsessively collected

belonged to living traditions, they were still a product of the attitudes of the

colonialist cultures in which they lived.

The tension between the impulse to classify the other, and the desire to

create mysterious fantasies about the other, is reflected in a well known

photograph of a Mangbetu woman named Nobosodrou, who was the wife of

the Mangbetu King Touba, taken by George Specht. (Figure 92) The

photograph was by far the most famous image that emerged from ―La

Croisière Noire‖ (―The Black Crossing‖), an expedition across the Sahara

sponsored by Citroën. The journey spawned a film La Croisière Noire (1926),

which documented the trip from Algeria to Madagascar between October 1924

and June 1925. Brett Berliner calls the expedition,

perhaps, the first multimedia extravaganza in France. Itgenerated numerous short ethnographic movies, and it becamethe subject of a feature-length film including original music and African songs arranged for orchestra. It was the subject ofnumerous journal articles, one major book, and an artexhibition. Finally, artifacts collected during the expedition were displayed in ethnographic and zoological museum andexhibitions.358

The photograph of Nobosodrou circulated in a diverse array of media

throughout the 1920s and 1930s: books, postcards, posters, sculpture, and

most curiously fashion. In books, the photograph was used as evidence of

what many European explorers had identified as the Mangbetu people‘s

358 Berliner, Ambivalent Desire: The Exotic Black Other in Jazz-Age France, 189-190



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advanced and hierarchical society.359 The photograph of the dignified and

elegant profile of a woman whose skull had been carefully shaped when she

was a child through binding was emblematic of the aesthetics of the

Mangbetu, which were often linked to Ancient Egypt.360 The photograph

served as a classification tool, evidence for constructing a hierarchy of African

societies along with the other photographs from ―La Croisière Noire.‖361

The photograph was also used as a representation of the exotic

mysteries of Africa. Enid Schildkrout explains that, ―by the 1930s, the image

of the ‗long-headed Mangbetu‘ woman was virtually a logo for Belgian

colonialism, feature in images at the 1931 and 1937 French expositions and on

postcards, posters, guidebooks, and in art galleries. This image was

simultaneously exotic, erotic, and easily aestheticized.‖362 The Mangbetu

woman became the de facto logo for the expedition and film, used on posters,

and even, curiously, on a hood ornament for a Citroën. In these contexts she

represented all of Africa, as an exotic and mysterious other. The eroticism of

this image is key to its adoption as a symbol of the expedition and ―Africa.‖363

359 The photograph first appeared in the book published by expedition leaders Georges-Marie Haardtand Louis Audouin-Dubreuil in 1927, La Croisière Noire, expedition Citroën Centre-Afrique.360 Enid Schildkrout, " Les Parisiens d'Afrique: Mangbetu Women as Works of Art," in Black

Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body, ed. Barbara Thompson (Hanover:Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2008), 71-73.361 The photograph was also used in the context of classification by American artist Malvina Hoffman,when she was commissioned by the Field Museum in Chicago to create a large group of sculptures toillustrate “the Races of Man” for the Hall of Man. What is fascinating about Hoffman‟s sculptures is

that she traveled extensively in Africa, and yet clearly relies on Specht‟s photographs in her sculpture.362 Schildkrout, " Les Parisiens d'Afrique: Mangbetu Women as Works of Art," 81.363 The fact the Aaron Douglas made Nobosodrou the subject of the cover of Opportunity, an African-American magazine, in May 1927, reflects the image‟s status in both Europe and America as a

representation of Africa.



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Brett A. Berliner rightly points out that, ―integral to exoticism is

―ethno-eroticism,‖ the state of sexual arousal and desire for a specific people

solely because of their racial or ethnic identity.‖364 Ethno-eroticism is at the

heart of the Africanist discourse that Ezra defines. We can see this kind of

exoticism and eroticism in the designs of the French milliner, Agnès. A series

elongated turbans appeared in L’Officiel in August 1926. (Figure 93) They do

not have the elegance of Nobosodrou‘s hairstyle, but merely approximate the

style.365 Notably, one of these hats is modeled by Josephine Baker, cementing

the connection between the hats and two of the most famous icons of black

beauty at the time: Baker and Nobosodrou. Baker‘s status as an ethno-erotic

sex symbol underlines the sexuality evoked through the reference to Africa.

This gendered use of exoticism, which is inextricably tied to eroticism,

is central to my examination of Primitivism in both fashion and Surrealism.

The gendering of exoticism is clear in the way in which intermarriage was

treated in France in the 1930s. Colonized men were not considered proper

husbands for French women, but on the other hand colonized women were

seen as potential partners from French men. By the time of the 1937

Exposition, assimilationist rhetoric was more prominent in colonial discourse.

The children of colonial unions, particularly girls, could—rhetorically, at

364 Berliner, Ambivalent Desire: The Exotic Black Other in Jazz-Age France, 4.365 In the 19th century “designations commonly applied to the Mangbetu were „artistes,‟ and „the

Parisians of Africa,‟ „les élégants,‟ and „les jouisseurs.‟ The Mangbetu were a natural sour ce forEuropean milliners to draw from with their interest in adornment and stunning headwear. EnidSchildkrout and Curtis A. Keim, African Reflections: Art from Northeastern Zaire (Seattle: Universityof Washington Press, 1990), 30.



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least— become a productive part of bolstering the French population.366 By

the late 1930s, marriages between white French men and métisses were

officially encouraged.367 French women however were left out of this

equation. While French culture encouraged men to look at colonial women

with an ethno-erotic gaze, colonial men were not suitable objects for French

women‘s fantasies, at least not their public fantasies. Through fashions, such

as Agnès‘s turbans, French women could temporarily take on the ethno-erotic

through masquerade.

Surreal Collecting

The Surrealist men did not engage with Africa, Oceania, or Native

North America through masquerade, as many women did, but rather through

collecting. Surrealists such as Breton often used these collections as a form of

social critique. Breton used objects from Africa and Oceania to question the

values of bourgeois culture. His collection included:

stuffed birds, cases of tropical butterflies, coins, minerals,crystals, glass bottles, objects made by psychiatric patients, books, paintings by Henri Rousseau, prints by Edvard Munch,drawings by Seurat and Adolf Wölfi, sculptures by Giacometti,objets trouvées, masks, sculptures and exotic artifacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas.368

366 Ezra, The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France, 16.367 Thomas, The French Empire between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society, 167.368 Tythacott, Surrealism and the Exotic, 43.



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Freely mixing ―high‖ art, objects from the natural world, and those made by

―primitive‖ cultures, Breton questioned the hierarchies of bourgeois taste and

drew parallels between these objects.

James Clifford‘s description of Breton‘s Ethnographic Surrealism

works hard to erase the feminized practices of shopping and interior

decoration that are central to Breton‘s practice as a collector. Like most

collectors of his time, Breton did not travel to Africa or Oceania where his

objects came from; he bought them in the markets of Paris, made possible by

colonialism.369 No matter how much they despised colonialism and the

capitalism that fueled it, Surrealists were actively and enthusiastically

involved in these systems through their collecting practices.370 It is also worth

remembering that Breton‘s collection served as a form of capital for him, not

only cultural capital, but financial. He sold a large portion of his extensive

collection of African and Oceanic art in 1931 in the wake of the Wall Street

crash and his own financial problems.371 He and Paul Eluard joined forces for

an auction at the Hôtel Drouot, which raised an incredible 285,000 francs.

Breton is often described as an explorer, discovering objects at the flea

market, but his activity is no differerent from that of the women shopping for

antiques there.

369 He did travel to Mexico, the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. Most of the objects in his collectionwere acquired in france, England, Holland, and leter the United States.370 Tythacott, Surrealism and the Exotic, 96. Janine A. Mileaf, Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist

Objects after the Readymade (Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2010), 133.371 It is also worth noting that Breton acquired a collection of contemporary European, African,Chinese, Japanese, and Native American art for the couturier Jacques Doucet‟s studio. This work not

only ties Breton‟s collection practices to fashion, but also turns his work as a collector into

professional employment.



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Breton‘s shelves and walls crowded with artifacts might have been

anathema to the sleek modern sensibility of the bourgeois home that he

detested, but he was using his artifacts to similar ends. They were intended to

demonstrate that Breton was worldly and part of the avant-garde, that he

understood the mysteries of these non-western objects, and that he could see

their beauty. For Breton, the domestic space became an expression of the

surreal, a glimpse into the images floating around his own subconscious.

Breton was deeply engaged with interior decoration and design, and yet no

scholars seem willing to associate his practice with this feminized activity.

Comparing Breton‘s use of his collection in interior design with cosmetic‘s

mogul Helena Rubinstein will make this clear.

On his trips through the Paris Flea Market, Breton looked for objects

that had some kind of psychic value to him.372 Some of these objects were

from Africa, Oceania, or Native North America, while others were vernacular

objects whose uses were obscured by the passage of time. Breton used the

objects in a number of ways. As discussed above, he decorated his apartment

with them in arrangements that created surreal juxtapositions between

modernist paintings and sculpture, African masks, Oceanic carvings, and

objects from the natural world. His juxtaposition of Cubist paintings, African

masks, and shadow boxes of butterflies challenges the viewer to connect the

objects, but gives no answers about the way they are related. (Figure 94) The

372 For more on Breton and the Flea Market, see: chapter 3, “André Breton at the Flea Market of Saint -Ouen: The Tactile Flâneur,” in Mileaf, Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist Objects after the

Readymade, 85-118.



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connection between African forms and Cubism are undercut by the unlikely

presence of the butterflies.

He used photographs of the objects to illustrate his books. In his book

Nadja, for example, a long passage describes Nadja‘s interactions with the

objects and paintings in Breton‘s apartment. The book, which lies somewhere

between novel and Surreal memoir, traces Breton‘s relationship with Nadja, a

mysterious woman with tenuous finances and an even more tenuous grip on

her sanity. Her vulnerability was precisely what drew Breton to her. He

described her as, ―a free genius, something like one of those spirits of the air

which certain magical practices momentarily permit us to entertain but which

we can never overcome.‖373 Breton‘s loving description of Nadja‘s readings of

his objects is a demonstration of how he expected visitors to encounter his

collection. Nadja ―recognized‖ the horns that she used in many of her

drawings in one of Breton‘s sculptures from Guinea. She stumbles on the

same form that obsessed her in her own work, precisely the kind of surreal

recognition that interested Breton most. Nadja‘s drawings are reproduced,

though the mask is not. The passage goes on to describe Nadja‘s responses to

painting by Georges Braque, Max Ernst, and Giorgio de Chirco, as well as a

mask from New Britain and a figure from Easter Island. Nadja is able to

intuitively read Ernst‘s painting, and the Easter Island figure speaks to her

saying, ―I love you, I love you.‖374 This uninhibited interaction with Breton‘s

373 André Breton, Nadja (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1988), 111.374 Ibid, 129.



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collection can also be enacted by the reader, as Breton provides illustrations

of all of these objects. As we will see, Breton also created a space for seeing

and reading a group of diverse objects in the Surrealist Exhibition of Objects

in 1936.

The photographs in Nadja constitute their own kind of curatorial

project for Breton. The book was another space in which Breton could

combine, high and low, natural and man made, and European art and Oceanic

sculpture. He continued this kind of curatorial practice in Mad Love, mixing

images of mineral formations and coral reefs, strange objects he found at the

flea market, and works of art by his friends Man Ray and Giacometti. Helena

Rubinstein, the American cosmetics mogul, had her own unique collection of

objects that she displayed in her New York salon and apartment. Though her

collecting practices have often been marginalized as mere shopping by

contemporary scholars, her collection and display practices had much

common with Breton.375

Rubinstein was interested in the same kinds of juxtapositions as

Breton. Her African objects, were contrasted in her salons with her

contemporary painting and sculpture collection as well the fashionable

patrons of the salon.376 As with Breton‘s atelier, her salon and apartment

375 In a recent documentary gallerist David Nash for the Michell-Innes & Nash Gallery describes her as“more of an accumulator…this was a lady who responded to works of art and living with them. She

bought what she liked and she liked a lot of things.” Ann Carol Grossman and Arnie Reisman, "ThePowder and the Glory," (USA: PBS, 2007).

376 Man Ray has often been mistakenly identified as an important collector of African art, and particularly as the owner of Rubinstein‟s Bangwa Queen because of his famous photographs of the



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were used frequently as backdrops for photographs. The extraordinary works

of art art in her New York apartment were ideal accessories for fashion

shoots.377 Vogue described Rubinstein‘s home as a ―Collector‘s Fantasy,‖

calling Rubinstein ―an adventurous soul who deviates from established

routes,‖ describing the way she paired modern and antique furniture,

European paintings and sculptures with African sculptures to create an

―assemblage.‖378 These juxtapositions are fascinating in the context of a

space so focused on beauty. Rubinstein‘s mixing of Cubist, Surrealist, and

African art created juxtapositions that suggested multiple ideas of beauty.379

We can see the way the Rubinstein herself promoted this idea in

George Maillard-Kessle‘s 1935 publicity photograph of her holding an African

mask. The fashionable modern suit and Chanel gloves she wears contrast

with the perceived timelessness of the mask.(Figure 95) This image was

meant to coincide with the Museum of Modern Art‘s exhibition African Negro

Art , which included several of Rubinstein‘s pieces. The accompanying press

release describes Rubinstein‘s collection:

sculpture. Wendy Grossman has revealed that he “never owned more than a handful of small Africanobjects.” The persistence of this narrative is telling in that it reveals the close association of Surrealists

with the collecting of non-western art, and the privileging of the artist‟s eye in these collections. It also

reveals the way in which the act of photographing an object can confer ownership on the photographer.Grossman cites one scholar‟s attribution of a record-breaking auction price to the fact that the famous“Bangwa Queen” belonged to Man Ray and was photographed by him, giving it an added Surrealistaura and authenticity. Grossman, Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens, 76.377Spanish Triumphs by Balenciaga the Spaniard," Harper’s Bazaar (15 September 1939), 64-5.378 Collector's Fantasy," Vogue (15 August 1938), 120.379 The Brooklyn museum often staged exhibitions which made use of this ethnographic-collageaesthetic, for example a 1939 exhibitions, Mask: Barbaric and Civilized , in which masks from manydifferent periods and cultures were displayed, among them masks used for beauty treatments atElizabeth Arden‟s salons.



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cultural and monetary. These collections were a form of self-promotion for

both figures, but were also a form of personal expression.

Primitivism in Fashion

The use of ―primitive‖ sources in fashion functions somewhat

differently from the collections of Rubinstein and Breton since fashion

interacts with a body. The use of so-called ―primitive‖ and ―orientalist‖ styles

in fashion has a long history. Like Breton and Rubinstein‘s collections, these

styles connected their wearers with modernity and the avant-garde. Harold

Koda and Richard Martin argue that fashion was an ideal place for unfamiliar

aesthetics to emerge since, ―the foreignness of the exotic is more easily

forgiven in clothing, perhaps because we tend to think of clothing as a less

fixed to place and less calibrated to long life. Portability and ephemerality

promote investigation, at the very least.‖381 What Koda and Martin do not

mention is the important role of ethno-eroticism in the adoption of African

and Asian styles in women‘s dress. Since the early eighteenth-century, Middle

Eastern, North African, and Indian garments have provided a wealth of

alternative forms to enrich western wardrobes: Zouave trousers, banyan

robes, and caftans, to name just a few.

In the 1910s and 1920s, Paul Poiret and Mario Fortuny used eastern

motifs to popularize new and sometimes radical styles in women‘s clothing.

381 Richard Martin and Harold Koda, Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress (New York:Metropolitain Museum of Art, 1994), 11.



189

Fortuny, inspired by his home in the trading mecca of Venice, combined

classical references, such as his Delphos gown, and shapes and patterns from

the Middle East, North Africa, and China. These influences helped provide an

exotic context for his largely untailored designs. Poiret was famous for

incorporating Middle Eastern themes into his designs, popularizing ―harem

trousers,‖ the ―lampshade‖ tunic, and other exotic costumes inspired by his

elaborate ―Thousand and Second Night Party‖ in 1911.382 These costumes

exploited fantasies about the ―Orient‖ as strange and exotic, and its women as

possessing a potent erotic charge. Poiret used Orientalist themed fancy dress

parties in a calculating manner to associate his avant-garde pants and simple

corset-less gowns with fantasies about harems and far away pleasure palaces.

(Figure 96) Poiret emphasized the exoticism of bifurcated garments for

women, moving them away from the practical clothes of the dress reformer

Amelia Bloomer and connecting them instead to an imagined world of sultans

and slaves. Poiret dressed as a sultan for his lavish 1911 party, and dressed his

wife in a ―lampshade‖ tunic, placing her in a golden cage surrounded by

attendants that was opened at the start of the party. Poiret used the exotic

sensuality of the imagined orient to give his radically modern clothes a

familiar and appealing context.

382 Poiret‟s use of Orientalist motifs is also connected to visual culture entering Paris through theDiagalev‟s Ballet Russe, and the 1899 publication of a new translation of The Thousand and One

Nights by Dr. J.C. Mardrus a friend of Poiret‟s. See, Peter Wollen, "Fashion/Orientalism/the Body," New Formations, no. 1 (Spring 1987), 8.



190

These styles, though, were best situated to Poiret‘s costume parties or

an avant-garde salon in Greenwich Village. By the 1930s styles from Africa,

South America, and India covered the pages of fashion magazines and were

worn by the chicest of women. The idea of Africa, in particular, was becoming

increasingly important in fashion. Such ―Africanist‖ fashions did not derive

from what people wore in Africa, but rather from images of Africa in the

popular culture of Europe and America. Key, of course, to the rise of

―Africanist‖ fashion was the popularity of Jazz music and its association with

Africa, and it most famous ambassador, Josephine Baker. Baker‘s life, work,

and influence has been detailed in many excellent studies, and I do not wish

to rehash that material here.383 What is important about Baker, however, is

that for her white audiences, she embodied both chic modernism—dressed by

the best couturiers—as well as ―primitive‖ sexuality. 384

Baker‘s fashionable status is confirmed by her appearance on the pages

of French fashion magazines, and her role as a model for Reard bathing suits

and knitwear, appearing in advertisements in L’Officiel de la Couture. A

383 See for example: Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007). Petrine Archer Straw, Negrophilia : Avant-Garde Paris

and Black Culture in the 1920s (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000). Tyler Edward Stovall, Paris

Noire: African Americans in the City of Light (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996). Berliner, Ambivalent Desire: The Exotic Black Other in Jazz-Age France.384 On Baartmann see, Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A

Ghost Story and a Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), , Sander Gilman, "TheHottentot and the Prostitute: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality," in Race-Ing Art History:

Critical Readings in Race and Art History, ed. Kymberly N. Pinder (New York: Routledge, 2002),119-38, Rachel Holmes, African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus (New York: RandomHouse, 2007), and Zoe Strother, "Display of the Body Hottentot," in Africans on Stage : Studies in

Ethnological Show Business, ed. Bernth Lindfors (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 1-61.



191

number of texts credit her with starting the Vogue for tanning.385 In the years

after World War I there was a shift from tan skin signifying the outdoor labor

of the lower class to the leisure time of the upper-class spent on exotic

beaches. This occurred for a number of complex reasons, however, Josephine

Baker as a striking icon of tanned beauty is particularly interesting in

relationship to African-inspired fashions. Baker herself recalled that the

French ―all went to the beaches to get dark like Josephine Baker…the French

got sick trying to get black —café au lait—you weren‘t anything unless you

were café au lait.‖386 Bronzers and new colors such as ―suntan‖ became

popular at the end of the 1920s. Famous white women like Coco Chanel and

Joan Crawford helped to popularize sun worshiping.387 Tan skin clearly still

had a symbolic connection to people of color at the same time that it came to

stand for exotic tourism. Joan Crawford, for example, was scolded by the

studio for her tanning ―because she looked ‗like a lineal descendent of

Sheba.‘"388 The fear of racial slippage and indeterminacy was prominent in

this period, at the same time that ethnic beauty was becoming more popular

in Hollywood.

385 Lois G. Gordon, Nancy Cunard: Heiress, Muse, Political Idealist (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 2007), 98. Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image, 63.386 Henry Louis Gates, "An Interview with Josephine Baker and James Baldwin," The Southern Review 21 (July 1985), 597.387 By 1935 beauty stories on tanning were regular features of the resort issues of Vogue and Harper’s

Bazaar.388 Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 2000), 109.



192

In the 1930s, standards of beauty were widening, in large part because

of the marketing strategies of cosmetic corporations. In her analysis of

fashion in films in the 1930s, Sarah Berry discusses,

Hollywood's "spectacle of difference"—its creation of ethnicity asa consumable pleasure. One of the primary products of thisspectacle, the image of exotic beauty, was indispensable to therecuperation of cosmetics. The frequent use of exotic femalestars as endorsers of women's beauty products was thus at odds with nativist norms of beauty, just as women's obsession withRudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro, and Charles Boyer'spassionate sexuality was seen as a rejection of culturallyapproved but boring WASP masculinity.389

Berry argues that cosmetic companies relied on an ever-widening spectrum of

beauty types and new looks to promote new products. The commodification

of ethnicity allowed for new kinds of marketing for cosmetics beyond the idea

of the pale ―natural‖ white beauty.390 Berry specifically examines such trends

in the United States where national identity is made increasingly complex in

the early twentieth-century by the arrival of immigrants from an increasingly

diverse group of countries.

―Spectacles of difference‖ were an important part of visual culture in

the 1930s in both Europe and the United States. Creating a spectacle of

difference— whether through Hollywood film, jazz music, worlds fairs, or

fashion—was a way ―to normalize, contain and manage non-European

cultures through the very process of creating them as spectacle.‖391 Difference

was made into a commodity through spectacle; it could be consumed, and

389 Ibid, 98.390 Ibid, 95.391 Evans, Fashion at the Edge : Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness, 31.



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thus assimilated into the everyday life of white Europeans and Americans. At

the heart of the spectacle of difference is sexuality. Berry argues that

―primitive constructions of femininity emphasize an edenic sexuality that is

libidinal but innocent, providing a mediation of Western split femininity‖392

Exotic women provide a middle ground in the traditional understanding of

the split definition of western women as Madonna and whore. Berry argues

that this mediation offered by primitivist and Orientalist ideas of ethnic

sexuality allowed cosmetic companies to market their products not as the

deceptive tools of the whore, but instead as the products that held the

potential for any woman to become beautiful: ―Orientalist beauty was offered

to Western women as a means of transgressing the strictures of split

femininity: by temporarily adopting signs of exotic sensuality via makeup and

clothing, Western women could present themselves as a combination of

(white) virtue and (nonwhite) sexuality.‖393 As we will see, the temporary and

contingent nature of fashion and cosmetics is precisely what makes these

areas ripe for the expression of fantasy and experimentation with sexual

expression.

392 Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood , 127.393 Ibid, 133.



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Photography and Primitive Sexuality

Orientalist and Africanist images have a long history of being linked to

sexuality.394 Wendy Grossman chronicled the ways that African objects were

associated to female sexuality in Modernist photography. Looking at the

ethno-eroticism in these photographs illuminates the prevalence of ideas

about primitive sexuality in the 1920s and 1930s, which, as we will see,

extended into the world of fashion. Grossman examines the ways that artists

such as Alfred Stieglitz and Man Ray pair African objects with female models,

often nude. These photographs not only reinforce the link between

primitivism and nudity, but also the notion of women as inherently primitive

in contrast to men. Grossman explains that these photographs, ―[posit] a

female/male dichotomy in which women are the ‗primitive‘ foil for the

‗civilized‘ male viewer. In this paradigm, the female body of all races

symbolizes women‘s supposedly unbridled sexuality in its natural state,

engendering erotic notions upon which male fantasies could be projected.‖395

We can see this idea in Man Ray‘s oeuvre, which is littered with such images

of women and non-western objects. Most famous perhaps is Noire et Blanche

(1926) in which Man Ray‘s model Kiki‘s smooth ovoid face with closed eyes

394 See, Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient," and , Gilman "The Hottentot and the Prostitute:Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality," in Race-Ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and

Art History, ed. Kymberly N. Pinder (New York: Routledge, 2002). Susan L. Hannel, "The Influenceof American Jazz on Fashion," in Twentieth-Century American Fashion, ed. Linda Welters andPatricia A. Cunningham (New York: Berg, 2005). Berliner, Ambivalent Desire: The Exotic Black

Other in Jazz-Age France.395 Grossman, Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens, 38.



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and slicked hair seems to mimic the contours of the Baule mask she holds.

(Error! Reference source not found.)

The photomontages of German Dada artist Hannah Höch demonstrate

the pervasiveness of the formulaic conflation of women with the primitive

other. The photomontages in the series, From an Ethnographic Museum

from the 1920s and early 1930s, combine images of ethnographic objects with

images of women. Höch scholar Maude Lavin describes these as mixing

―images connoting the display of the New Woman—in department-store

windows, magazines, and film—and the offering of ethnographic objects in

ethnographic museums.‖396 Lavin understands these images as a general

critique of the commodification of the New Woman and primitivism,

representing Höch‘s ambivalence about the performance of self that the

commodification of culture necessitates. Wendy Grossman, on the other

hand, sees Höch‘s work as a parody of the conflation of women and primitive

others. She understands Hoch‘s work as specifically commenting on

a prevalent trope of the Primitivist narrative in which womenand non-westerners are conflated as primal others, perceived aspossessing more elemental naïve, and childlike instincts. Whilecertainly inflected with biases of the times Höch‘s parodies ofthe popular representation of women and purportedly primitivecultures offer a perceptive analysis and rare critique of insidiousattitudes then pervading society.397

Whatever Höch‘s artistic intention, the From an Ethnographic Museum

series reveals the popular tangling of women and ethnographic ―others,‖ in a

396 Maud Lavin, "From an Ethnographic Museum," Grand Street , no. 58 (Autumn 1996), 128.397 Grossman, Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens, 85.



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kind of generalized category of the ―Primitive.‖ Her work reflects the

formulaic use of ethnographic objects and female bodies in modernist

compositions.

Man Ray‘s photographs of Simone Kahn (Breton‘s then wife) with

African sculptures represent a Surrealist version of this modernist genre. In

the first photograph from 1921, Kahn seems to be lost in her subconscious at

the bottom of the frame.(Figure 97) Her hair is not slicked back like Kiki‘s,

but looks slightly unkempt as she stares off indistinctly. A Fang mask hangs

in the background with Kahn‘s large dark shadow looming over it. The mask

is not in focus and has a mysterious and vaguely threatening countenance,

with a highlight falling on a ridge that appears to be an eyebrow on the left-

hand side. A viewer might construct a number of narratives looking at this

image. Is the mask a reflection of Kahn‘s disturbed unconscious? Or perhaps

Kahn‘s w hite beauty is being held under the spell of the threatening African

face? In another of Man Ray‘s photographs of Kahn from 1927, she lays back

across a couch or chair, holding a Vanuatu male figure from the South Pacific

up on her lap. (Figure 98) Here, the eroticism of the photograph is much

more explicit. Kahn stares at the viewer through kohl framed eyes, her hair

falls down wildly toward the bottom of the frame. The male figure, too, stares

out at us through deep triangular eye sockets and menacing eyebrows. He

seems to rise, phallic-like out of Khan‘s recumbent body. Here, again, the

tribal figure seems to hold Kahn under his spell in a more distinctly sexual



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manner. It is also possible to read the image as an expression of a phallic

dimension to Kahn‘s sexuality; an expression of her primitive and more

masculine erotic power. However we chose to read these images, it is clear

that they are fraught with primitive erotics, conflating female sexuality and

primitivism. In these photographs,

the female body was manipulated as an object of desire andfetishization in the Surrealist visual vocabulary. This formula,as it resurfaces in numerous manifestations of Man Ray‘s andothers‘ photographs of non-Western art throughout the 1920sand ‗30s reflects the Surrealists‘ vision of woman as muse and

their equation of unleashed female sexuality with notions of the―primitive‖ and its attendant tropes.398

Even more explicit were Man Ray‘s photographs of nudes with African and

Oceanic sculptures. In 1934, for example, he photographed a nude model

with Helena Rubinstein‘s Bangwa ―Queen‖ sculpture. (Figure 99)(Figure 100)

The photographs were probably taken before or just after the sculpture was

sold to Rubinstein when it was still in Charles Ratton‘s galler y.399 In these

photographs, the nude sports a fashionable Marcel Wave hairstyle, bangle

bracelets, a ring and earrings. The nude is not the classical and timeless one

of Man Ray‘s solarized photographs. Wendy Grossman has noted how the

model‘s racial ambiguity —she is often mistaken for Caribbean model

Adrienne Fidelin—has both troubled and attracted viewers because the

―photograph cannot be firmly placed within a dichotomous racial discourse

398 Ibid, 98.399 Ibid, 135.



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that tends to be the norm.‖400 This nude is modern, and yet through her

nudity is still connected with the Bangwa ―Queen.‖ In both photographs her

arm is draped over the pedestal of the sculpture between the legs of the figure.

In one version, the model leans back and gazes at the figure contemplating

her form. In another, the model is cut off just below the bust as she leans in

close to the figure and looks directly at the camera. Her bracelet, visible at the

left edge of the frame, mimics the anklets and bracelets of the figure as well as

her high collar. This repetition of form in the Bangwa figure is part of the

compelling rhythm of the sculpture. The model‘s jewelry connects her to the

sculpture, directly linking the primitive and the modern. The nude model‘s

jewelry is not inconsequential to the photograph as it becomes a signifier for

her connection to the primitive. As we will see jewelry plays an important role

as a signifier of the primitive, both in the photographs of Man Ray and in

fashions of the 1920s and 1930s.

Africanist Fashion in the 1920s

Nancy Cunard‘s famous collection of African bracelets serves as an

important bridge between the photographic and collecting practices of the

Surrealists, and the fashion practices of women in Europe and America.

Cunard‘s collection of ivory bracelets was legendary, and forms a central part

of most of her portraits. In a 1924 painting by Oscar Kokoschka, for example,

she appears with a small collection of bracelets on one arm. In a photograph

400 Ibid, 135.



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by Man Ray, c. 1936, as well as a series of photographs by Cecil Beaton from

1930 both of Cunard‘s arms are covered in bangles.401 (Figure 101) In Man

Ray‘s portrait, the bangled arms become columns supporting Cunard‘s

fashionably coiffed and made-up head, her leopard print dress completes the

African style of the look. The collection of bracelets itself was the subject of

several photographs by Raoul Ubac and Man Ray.402

Cunard was a writer, publisher and political activist. She used her

jewelry to express her allegiance to avant-garde literature, art and fashion.

Her eccentric look set her apart from other women, and her use of African

objects as a part of her look connected her to other modernists interested in

Africa. Cunard was fascinated not only with Africa, but also with African

Americans and Jazz. In the 1920s all three were heavily conflated. My

interest here is not in examining Cunard‘s politics. Nor do I want to examine

her attempts to promote what we would now call civil rights in her

monumental publication, Negro (1934).403 What is relevant in this context is

the way that Cunard used her African jewelry to express what she saw as

progressive racial politics, her love of jazz and her connection to the avant-

garde. According to Wendy Grossman, Cunard‘s bracelets ―acted as signifiers

for a new kind of modernity, presenting her as a trendy arbiter of taste

401 The Beaton photographs are reproduced in: Ibid, cat. 104-107.402 Interestingly, Man Ray uses a Navajo rug to cover the surface on which the bracelets are piled likethe spoils of conquest, or perhaps items for sale at the Paris Flea Market. The Navajo rug is sucked upinto the pile of African objects and their root in a distant culture is lost. This photograph alsoemphasizes the way that diverse cultures were often tangled together by artists and fashion designers.For reproductions of these photographs see: Ibid, 108-9, 111-112.403 For more on Cunard and these issues see Gordon, Nancy Cunard: Heiress, Muse, Political Idealist ,156-195.



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through her association with African artifacts.‖404 By the time Man Ray‘s

photograph of Cunard appeared in British Vogue, the ―‗new fashion‘ for

African Chic had virtually become her own.‖405 (Error! Reference source not

found.)

Nancy Cunard‘s somewhat eccentric adoption of African bracelets as

her signature accessory certainly influenced other women to adopt them.

Susan L. Hannel‘s excellent essay ―The Influence of American jazz on

Fashion,‖ traces the connection of such bracelets to popular dances in the

1920s, such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom. She demonstrates that

even bangle bracelets were strongly associated with Africa and jazz in the

1920s and 30s. These are precisely the kind of bracelets worn by the model in

Man Ray‘s photographs of the Bangwa Queen sculpture.(Error! Reference source

not found.) Kiki de Montparnasse wears a small set of bangles in the variation

of Noire et Blanche, and Man Ray is attentive to them in a contour sketch ofthe photograph. (Figure 102)(Figure 103) Man Ray associated these bracelets

with African art.

By the 1930s, bracelets worn in large qualities were clearly de rigueur

to create an exotic look. Elizabeth Harvey declared in the Washington Post in

1931: ―Seven is the lucky number of bracelets to wear when your accessories

go native.‖406 A short Washington Post article in 1928 proclaimed that the

404 Grossman, Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens, 137.405 Ibid, 137.406 Elisabeth Harvey, "Algerian Motifs Inspire Jewelry and Accessories," The Washington Post , 1March 1931, A1.



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―Art of Congo Jungle is Fashtion in Paris [sic],‖ reporting that ―there is a Paris

rage for Congo sculpture and painting. It has an echo in slave bracelets and

ring necklaces, both inspired by primitive African costumes—or lack of

costumes.‖407 These ―African‖ bangles, made of metal, wood, or plastic,

abstracted the bracelets in Cunard‘s collection. Aesthetically, they had no

concrete referent in African jewelry, but were clearly connected in the popular

imagination to Africa and jazz. The example of the bangles demonstrates how

appealing ―African‖ style was in the 1920s and 1930s. It also shows the

tenuous ties such fashion had to anything genuinely African. Just as

Surrealist artists conflated the art of Oceania, Africa, and Native North

America, fashion designers freely mixed styles from a range of countries and

ethnic groups. As we have seen, early on the cachet of these designs lay not in

their authenticity, but rather in the ways that they were commercially linked

to exotic cultures.

“Africa Speaks in Millinery”408

As we saw in her Mangbetu hats, the milliner Agnès created some

designs that were tied to specific images of Africa, but by and large her

designs evokes a more generalized form of fashionable primitivism. It is clear

that Agnès associates herself promotionally with this style in her appearance

on the cover of L’Officiel . She had appeared on the magazine‘s cover in 1926

407 "Art of Congo Jungle Is Fashtion in Paris [Sic]," The Washington Post , 12 January 1928, 3.408 Marshall Field & Company Advertisement," Chicago Daily Tribune, 20 April 1931, 17.



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and 1927 and in both photographs wears metal cuff and bangles made for her

by Jean Dunand. (Figure 104)(Figure 105) On the May 1927 cover, she

appears in an incredible Art Deco sweater and hat in white jersey painted by

Dunand. The cubistic design is capped off with the same bracelets as in the

1926 cover and an additional group of metal necklaces cascading around her

neck. Dunand, a famous art deco designer, was well known for his use of

African motifs. His jewelry included ―African-style necklaces, slave collars

and bracelets to be worn about the dainty neck and wrists of exotic beauties

such as Josephine Baker,‖ who was introduced to Dunand by Agnès.409 The

bracelets that appear in these photographs must have been signature pieces,

which the milliner wore often and thought important enough to wear for these

cover photographs. For Agnès, these bracelets encapsulated her connection to

modern and African style.

By the time of the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Agnès‘ ensemble on the

cover of L’Officiel would have been clearly legible to readers. (Error! Reference

source not found.) Agnès piled bangles on her wrist and upper arm. Her neck is

adorned with a slave collar style choker and gold earrings cascade from her

ears. The Schiaparelli designed "evening gown, knickers skirt, of coarse white

silk crépon [sic]‖ is covered with an apron of gold and red.410 The knickers

echo Paul Poiret‘s harem trousers, but in a sleeker, more modern silhouette.

(Error! Reference source not found.) Her ensemble is related to the Orientalist

409 Félix Marcilhac, Jean Dunand: His Life and Works (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 188.410 Légende Da La Page De Couverture," 3.



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tradition in fashion, and her pose in the Dunand drawing links her to the

many groups of dancers from all over the world who were performing in Paris

as a part of the exposition. (Figure 106) Her dress seems derived from an

amalgamation of the styles of both the Asian and African dancers. The French

magazine L’Illustration devoted six pages to the dances at the colonial

exposition in its August 22, 1931 issue. Bracelets like the ones worn by Agnès

appear on dancers from the Ivory Coast, Bali, and Cambodia. Her richly

ornamented dress refers to the opulent fabric of the costumes for the Balinese

and Cambodian dancers featured in the magazine, but pared down to a more

streamlined aesthetic. The bareness of Agnès‘ shoulders and arms connects

her with the dancers from Senegal and the Ivory Coast who wear jewelry and

hats but little else. Agnès‘ hair ornament is perhaps inspired by Mme. Nyota

Inyoka‘s head wrap. (Figure 107) Inyoka was a famous dancer in the 1920s

and 30s. L’Illustration calls her Hindu, but in other articles she is said to be

Egyptian or Persian.411 Inyoka, the daughter of an Indian father and a French

mother, grew up in Paris, fascinated with Indian and Egyptian culture. She

successfully drew on these cultures in her dancing and performed in New

York and Paris in the 1920s. According to The Chicago Defender, Inyoka,

―the little dark skinned dancer,‖ had been a part of the Ziegfeld Follies, was

fired ―when it was generally rumored she was a Race girl,‖ that is Black.412

Despite her talent, Inyoka‘s mysterious heritage was enough to create rumors.

411 "Gives Eastern Dances," New York Times, 25 February 1924, 13. John Martin "The Dance: BusyTimes," New York Times 19 December 1937, 156.412 "Nyota Dances," The Chicago Defender 28 March 1925, 6.



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Her performances remained popular, and she was one of the main attractions

at the Colonial Exposition, dancing to Indian and Egyptian music in an

entirely constructed Orientalist mode in lavish Indian costumes.413 In

Dunand‘s illustration Agnès‘ headdress mimics Inyoka‘s elaborately jeweled

hairstyles. Just as Inyoka mixed cultures in her performances, Agnès‘ dress

on the cover of L’Officiel draws from a number of the different dancers‘

costumes from the Colonial exposition, as well as the chic pajama costumes of

the early 1930s.

One of the most interesting illustrations that accompanies the article

on the Colonial Exposition‘s dances is a drawing of ―La Fête Sénégalaise des

fanaux, dans la vues du village indigene de l‘Exposition.‖414 This is the only

illustration where the dancers‘ audience is visible. A group of well dressed

men and women in evening clothes stands on the right side watching the

dancers politely, the man closest to us with his hands sedately clasped behind

his back. In contrast to their vertical posture, the Senegalese dancers move at

dynamic angles, their legs and bodies bent, and arms akimbo. Agnès‘ posture

in Dunand‘s drawing is not nearly as dynamic, it is perhaps closer to the

graceful posture of the Balinese dances, but she is clearly associating herself

with the colonial visitors to the exposition.

413 Ibid, 6. Jacqueline Robinson, Modern Dance in France: An Adventure 1920-1970 (Amsterdam:Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), 92-93.414 “The Senegalese celebration of lights, in view of the native village at the Exposition.” [my

translation] Paul-Émile Cadilhac, "L'heure De Ballet," L'Illustration, no. 4616 (22 August 1931), n.p.



205

Through her dress on the cover of L’Officiel , Agnés is attempting to be

a part of the exotic world of the exposition. She is not a member of the well-

mannered and well-groomed audience for the Senegalese dance, but takes on

the role of a performer. Using posture and fashion, Agnès and Dunand create

an image in which Agnès is able to masquerade as an exotic colonial woman

from a distant imagined world. Through her costume and pose, she links

herself to the petite Nyota Inyoka who with her ―childlike native grace and

baby smile, strangely consorted with rapt moods of the East. Her cherubic

but elastic torso, whirlwind arms and gyrating legs, even the upturned foot-

palms of the Buddha, were in the manner of Oriental art.‖415 Agnès associates

herself with the naive sensuality of Inyoka, but also to the more direct and

primitive style of the African dancers, whose bodies are on display for the

sophisticated metropolitan audience.

Agnès‘ hat designs inspired by the exposition allowed other women to

masquerade as exotic colonial subjects. Harper’s Bazaar describes her 1931

collection as ―a most important spring opening,‖ and ―distinctly French

Colonial. All of the colonies, Morocco, Indo-China, Martinique, et cetera, are

represented in colour, material, or form.‖416 A Marshall Field and Company

ad for the hats declared, ―Africa Speaks in Millinery. The tremendous interest

in the Paris Colonial Exposition inspired Agnès to make this beguiling

415 "Gives Eastern Dances," 13.416 Marjorie Howard, "Paris Hats," Harper’s Bazaar (May 1931), 138.



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Algerian Hat. It has the native side back point—the twisted colonial colors.‖417

The hat illustrated was a low cap that came to a point on the side of the head,

similar in shape to Schiaparelli‘s Mad Cap of the pre vious season. The same

hat appeared in Vogue on March 15, 1931 on Princesse de Faucigny-Lucinge.

In Hoyningen Huené‘s photograph the lush texture of Agnès‘ hat is even

clearer. Here, we can see how Agnès takes the popular shape—off the face

with a jaunty angle—and weaves ―strips of beige kid and brown raffia, around

which are twisted strands of brown wool that separate to show the hair at one

side.‖418 Raffia was one of the many French colonial imports being promoted

at the 1931 exposition.419 The copy of Agnès‘ hat available at Marshall Field

used woven brown and yellow raffia with twisted bands of red yellow and

brown crepe de chine to create a graphic appearance. The Broadway

Department Store in Los Angeles offered copies of Agnès‘ turbans in velvet.

These hats could also be found in the windows of B. Altman & Company in

New York, where they were advertised with the headline: ―The Colonel‘s Lady

and African Sadie are Sisters Under their Hats.‖420 (Figure 108)

Another of these cone-shaped hats by Agnès appears in the May 1931

issue of Harper’s Bazaar. (Figure 109) The caption tells us that, ―Agnès is

going French Colonial. This hat, inspired by Cambodian head-gear, she made

for Madame Schiaparelli. It is a cone shaped affair made of braided strips of

417 Marshall Field & Company Advertisement," 17.418 Princesse De Faucigny-Lucinge in the New Algerian Hat," Vogue (15 March 1931), 66.419 Michelle Tolini Finamore, "Fashioning the Colonial at the Paris Expositions, 1925 and 1931," Fashion Theory 7, no. 3/4 (September/December 2003), 357.420 "B. Altman & Company Window Display of Agnès Hats,"



207

black and white suede.‖421 Several different versions appeared in the May

1931 L’Officiel , one of silk straw on Agnès herself. (Error! Reference source not

found.)(Error! Reference source not found.)(Figure 110)(Figure 111) While the hats

were made from a number of different materials, the silhouette was fairly

uniform, ―the line is very much thrown back and to the right.‖422 This style

was popular both in France and the US.

Agnès‘ hats were not an extreme departure from the style of the time,

at least in their shape. Their materials and their colors made them distinct.

Like Agnès‘ costume on the cover of L’Officiel , these hats were generically

exotic. They used colors and materials to create general colonial or primitive

style. Only one image of an Agnès hat is explicitly compared to an image of an

African. It appears within an article on the Colonial Exposition in the June

1931 L’Officiel . A photograph of one of the hats, which has a feather

ornamenting the front of the crown, is compared to a photograph of an African chief from the Colonial Exposition. (Figure 112) This is the only place

where there is a clear appropriation of an African style.

The generic tendencies of colonial styles did not go unnoticed at the

time. One Washington Post writer mocked the potential for any color to be

labeled as colonially influenced: ―a list of Algerian colors is so comprehensive

that it‘s a little amusing: red, yellow, blue, green, brown, orange, black, and

421 Howard, "Paris Hats," 81.422 Colonial Manifestation Chez Agnès," 17.



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white.‖423 To a certain extent, Africa and other colonial possessions seemed to

lend only a colorful vocabulary to designers and fashion writers: ―sheik red,

caravan brown, or the seralglio [sic] blue.‖424 These hats represent the

popular manifestation of ―colonial‖ style: chic modern lines with exotic and

primitive colors and materials. Like bangle bracelets and chokers, straw,

beads, and feathers in bright colors came to signify Africa, and more generally

the exotic within the world of fashion. These accessories and fashion

participate in the spectacle of difference, conferring on their wearers‘ exotic

and potentially erotic glamour, but not moving too far out of the bounds of

conventional fashion.

Fashion from Artifacts: Lilly Daché’s Congolese Hats

Lilly Daché‘s use of African influence in her hats was a radical

departure from Agnès‘ aesthetic and the tame bangle bracelet. Like the

Surrealists, Daché collected African objects and used them directly in her

designs. In the world of fashion, women were still being encouraged to ―go

native‖ by Vogue, which informed readers in 1935, ―it‘s smart this year to look

like a Balinese maiden when you have the figure for it.‖425 The same year,

Schiaparelli was showing dresses in the style of Indian saris, and Guatemalan

hats from Macy‘s appeared in Vogue. Guatemala was also featured in a long

423 Harvey, "Algerian Motifs Inspire Jewelry and Accessories," A1.424 Ibid, A1.425 Native Charm," Vogue (1 January 1935), 29.



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article in Harper’s Bazaar in 1937.426 Straight through the 1930‘s, ethnic

masquerade was an important component of fashion. ―Going native‖ gave

women a new vocabulary of exotic forms with which to adorn themselves.

The references to exotic locales in these fashions not only linked women to

cosmopolitanism, but they also connected them to ideas about primitive

sexuality. Schiaparelli‘s saris could transport the wearer to the India of her

imagination, allowing her--however ephemerally--to become Indian. This is

clear in the way Steichen photographs the dress for Vogue, against a bold blue

backdrop with Indian musicians in ―native‖ dress on either side.427 The

photograph of Nusch Eluard in one of the sari dresses also plays up the

component of fantasy that was at the heart of these fashions. (Figure 113)

She looks down in a kind of reverie; her profile reflected in the strange

rodophane fan that Schiaparelli designed as an accessory for the ensemble.

Schiaparelli herself appeared in Vogue ―go[ing] native‖ on a trip to Tunisia

with her daughter. (Figure 114) According to Vogue: ―Even the forbidden

private wing of one of the great aristocratic Arab houses was opened to her,

and her veiled hostesses, as one woman to another, tried on for her all of their

ceremonial costumes.‖428 The article and photographs emphasizes the

masquerade in which Schiaparelli is able to participate on her trip,

particularly since Schiaparelli gravitated to the men‘s clothes. She and her

daughter wear them in two of the photographs. The article assures readers

426 “Guatemalan Colors," Vogue (1 April 1935), 91.427 “Mysterious as an Indian Charmer," Vogue (1 August 1935), 43.428 “Schiaparelli Among the Berbers," Vogue (15 August 1936), 44.



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that Schiaparelli will soon be transforming the clothes she bought in Tunisia

into ensembles for them, giving them access to the same masquerade.

These kinds of fashions allowed women to change their looks and

promoted strange glamour. Sarah Berry argues that by the end of the 1930s

sensuous and dusky dark-haired sirens like Dolores Del Rio,Dorothy Lamour, Hedy Lamarr, and Rita Hayworth hadreplaced pale platinum blondes as icons of glamour. It isdifficult to interpret such changes in fashion iconography, but what is clear is that in the 1930s a relative increase occurred inthe range of beauty types on the American screen and inadvertising, suggesting that the dominance of white, monoracial

beauty was significantly challenged by previously marginalizedfemale identities.429

Berry argues that these new ideas about beauty helped to market makeup in

the 1930s since there was a new sense that any woman could be beautiful with

the aid of makeup and fashion, ―predicated on a sense of the body's

malleability and constructedness, and…the notion that one's personality could

be endlessly modified through fashion.‖430 Just as makeup democratized

beauty, the fashions I am discussing here were working in the same way.

They allowed any woman, no matter how plain, to make herself exotic and

sensual while maintaining a sense of propriety since sex appeal was

constructed through fashion, rather than being innate in the wearer. Colonial

influences on fashion allowed the sexuality of a woman to be displaced onto

her clothes. A woman could play the role of a harem girl in a Schiaparelli sari,

but could just as easily change into a suit and take on a different appearance

429 Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood , 95.430 Ibid, 99.



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and personality. Like Clifford‘s conception of Ethnographic Surrealism, these

expressions of strange glamour revealed their own seams. This is especially

true in the work of milliner Lilly Daché.

Daché relied heavily on ideas of masquerade and fantasy in her

collections. In 1936 she showed hats influenced by a Chinese exhibition in

London. Bullock‘s Wilshire advertised them as ―hats that almost make us

imagine we are sitting right on the wall of China, spying a mandarin.‖431

Another collection from the same year evoked ―the allure of Old Spain‖432

Daché‘s publicity emphasized the research she did on each of her collections.

A New Yorker profile from 1942 explained, ―when she does a collection

suggested by the flora and fauna of a certain country, or a certain part of

America, whether she has been there or not, she gets a stack of ‗literature‘

about it…and studies so intently that, in her own words, ‗I even know the color

of the wind that blows there.‘‖433 She was photographed by Life in 1944

working in the picture collection of the New York Public library.434 The

photograph attests to her continuing interest in African art, photographs of

which surround her. (Figure 115) In March 1937, Daché illustrated to the

Chicago Women‘s Congress how ―styles in hats follow the news,‖ explaining

that

431 "Bullock's Wilshire Ad," Los Angeles Times, 9 January 1936, A8.432 Ethel Ehlen, "Hats Go Spanish--with Mantillas, Bright Kerchiefs, Veils as Decorative Mediums,"The Washington Post , 23 August 1936, S7.433 Margaret Chase Harriman, "Hats Will Be Worn," New Yorker (4 April 1942), 24.434 This photograph appears not to have been published in the magazine.



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sometimes it is so paradoxical a cause as war; sometimes aneconomic upheaval or a great scientific discovery. It may evencome from exhibitions of paintings, porcelains, tapestries, greatplays or cinemas inspired by some romantic period of history, a

royal romance, or a king‘s coronation.435

That year she was also influenced, as were many other designers, by the Pan-

American Exposition set to open in June.

Lilly Daché was born around 1893 in France. She moved to the US as a

young woman and rose through the ranks in the New York fashion world in

the mid 1920s to eventually open her own millinery business, which

continued to expand throughout the 1930s. In April 1937, Daché laid the

cornerstone for her new building on East Fifty-Sixth street, which would open

that September.436 Daché‘s new building was an architectural marker for her

meteoric rise in the fashion world. The building housed her retail millinery

business, the manufacturing facilities from her perfume range, workrooms,

rental space used by other retail fashion and beauty companies, and a

penthouse apartment shared by Daché and her husband. Daché‘s office

included a library for design research. The décor of the building was as

international as the inspiration for Daché‘s hats: a Ming dynasty statue,

chairs upholstered in Tibetan wolf, hand woven Balinese textiles, and a settee

covered in Indian fabric.437 Like Breton and Rubinstein, Daché‘s personal and

435 "Makes Own Hats," Chicago Daily Tribune, 12 March 1937, 10.436 "To Lay Corner Today," New York Times, 15 April 1937, 43.437 “ New York: Milliner Builds Multi-Story Establishment," Architectural Record (March 1938), 54-55.



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business space was a forum of self-promotion to display her modern and wide

ranging tastes.

The summer before the opening of the salon while in Paris, Daché

purchased a collection of hats from the Belgian Congo.438 These hats formed

the basis for a collection she designed for the opening of her new building

where both the original hats and new designs could be seen. In October, the

hats traveled to Marshal Fields in Chicago to be displayed in the French Room

where the hats could be purchased.439 Like Breton and Rubinstein, Daché

emphasized juxtaposition in her collection and décor. Her Congolese hats

would have been seen alongside her own creations in her shop, at Marshall

Fields, and eventually in her own home. But before the hats crossed the

Atlantic, they were part of a curious exhibition at Galerie Charles Ratton, La

Mode au Congo.

Charles Ratton and Surrealism

Ratton was an important dealer and exhibitor of both European non-

western art. Just a year before La Mode au Congo, Galerie Charles Ratton

had its first foray into Surrealist art, hosting the Exposition Surréaliste

d’Objets. This exhibition is an example of another space in which Surrealism

438 This was reported by Life in September 1937. When Daché donated the hats to the MetropolitanMuseum of Art in 1974 she reported the provenance as the “Colonial Exposition in Paris 1930 -1931.”

It seems more likely that she bought the hats while in Paris and they were exhibited at Charles Ratton‟s

gallery and then traveled to New York to be exhibited in her new salon. Although it is also possiblethat the hats were being exhibited at Ratton‟s gallery when Daché saw them and bought them. Thanks

to Wendy Grossman for sharing the provenance information from the Daché bequest with me.439 "Marshall Field & Company Advertisement," Chicago Daily Tribune, 4 October 1937, 15.



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engages with shopping and consumerism. A diverse group of contemporary

art objects were included in the exhibition, some by Surrealist artists, others

by Dadaists and Cubists. The exhibition also included natural specimens,

found objects, and objects from Native North America and Oceania. Janine

Mileaf explains that the exhibition was Surrealist by virtue of its method of

display, rather than through the objects included. It was not arranged

according to the Surrealists‘ favorite method of chance, but instead was

―carefully contrived to facilitate [the] experience of desire.‖440 She quotes one

critic who writes that this exhibition was ―a flea market of the by -products of

the imagination.‖441 The exhibition‘s design might also be compared to

contemporary boutiques, which were also using pedestals, glass cases, and

shelves to display their wares. Andre Breton conceived of the objects in the

exhibition ―as both derivatives and vehicles of desire. Driven by attraction and

fantasy, a viewer would move through the exhibition as if through a waking

dream.‖442 This also describes the way that a viewer moves through a

boutique or department store, fantasizing about the objects she encounters.

In this period, many of the most chic and exclusive boutiques were not unlike

museums. Helena Rubinstein, Elizabeth Arden and Lilly Daché all felt that

440 Janine A. Mileaf, "From Fountain to Fetish: Duchamp, Man Ray, Breton and Objects, 1917-1936"(PhD Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1999), 176.441Crouzet, “Surréalisme pas mort,” quoted in Ibid, 189.442 Janine Mileaf, "Body to Politics: Surrealist Exhibition of the Tribal and the Modern at the Anti -Imperialist Exhibition and the Galerie Charles Ratton," RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 40(Autumn 2001), 251.



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art was an important part of the aesthetic of their retail business.443 With the

help of Brooklyn Museum curator Stuart Culin, Bonwit Teller displayed works

of African art to promote their African inspired sportswear.444 Culin believed

that ―for every one person who goes to a museum to gratify his or her curiosity

about new things…ten thousand visit the department store with the same

motive.‖445 Galleries and retail spaces are far more related than the

Surrealists might have wanted to admit. Jane Mileaf explains that:

the entire [Ratton] exhibition would transport viewers through

reverie to the realm of the marvelous, or the surreal, byenabling an unconscious desire to fuse with the commonexperience of consuming art. By way of the tactile body, objects would provoke imagined sensations and disturb a visitor‘sperceptions.446

I would argue that this experience is the same kind encouraged in a

department store, or Lilly Daché‘s shop. Her new building was meant to be an

experience. Women could touch and try on dozens of hats. Daché herself

might create an entirely new hat to order for a customer while she was there.

Shops are designed to release unconscious desires to consume objects. While

the objects in Ratton‘s gallery did not have individual prices on them, what

united them was their position as commodities. Whether found, readymade,

cubist, surrealist, natural, or from a distant land, all of these objects were set

443 Rebecca Jumper Matheson, "'a House That Is Made of Hats': The Lilly Daché Building, 1937-68,"in The Places and Spaces of Fashion, 1800-2007 , ed. John Potvin (New York: Routledge, 2009), 214.Clifford, "Helena Rubinstein's Beauty Salons, Fashion, and Modernist Display," 98.444 From the 1910s onwards there were close ties between museum curators, designers and departmentstores in the United States, see: William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a

New American Culture, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 164-173.445 Jan Whitaker, Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class,1st ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006), 145.446 Mileaf, Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist Objects after the Readymade, 154.



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up to invoke a desire to touch as Mileaf points out. The longing to touch is

connected with a yearning to possess. These objects were brought together by

artists who were also collectors, who were a part of this cult of ownership.

The exhibition‘s closest kin was the flea market or the wunderkammern

(cabinet of curiosity).

This exhibition exemplifies the relationship Surrealists had to

―Primitive‖ art. These works were markers of avant-garde capital. Like the

objects used in Dada readymades, or Surrealist objects, Native American and

Oceanic objects in the Ratton show ―were taken out of their useful contexts,

juxtaposed pseudo-randomly, and reinserted into the world in order to trigger

a reconfiguration of society.‖447 While the artists may have acknowledged the

fact that such objects had lives that extended beyond the purely aesthetic,

these lives ended when they appeared in Surrealist exhibitions, homes or on

the auction block. In contrast, the Mode au Congo exhibition and the designs

it inspired creatively suggested the ways in which its objects were used. The

exhibition paired Daché‘s collection of hats with photographs taken by Man

Ray of the hats on models. The exhibition literally showed how the African

objects were used. It also reveals the surreal potential inherent in fashion.

While the exhibition certainly overlooked any deeper meaning the hats had to

their original owners, it did interact with them in a new way.

Mileaf argues that the Exposition Surréal iste d’Objets achieves Walter

Benjamin‘s location of Surrealism‘s ―revolutionary potential in the physical

447 idem, "From Fountain to Fetish: Duchamp, Man Ray, Breton and Objects, 1917-1936", 237.



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disturbance of the body.‖448 Benjamin stresses the bodily confrontation with

the surreal in everyday life: ―we penetrate the mystery only to the degree that

we recognize it in the everyday world, by virtue of a dialectical optic that

perceives the everyday as impenetrable, the impenetrable as everyday."449

Benjamin argues that the surreal is not truly encountered in a drug-induced

haze, or in an ecstatic trance, but rather in our everyday life. Mileaf sees the

Exposition Surréaliste d’Objets as combining objects from everyday life in

such a way as to create such a surreal encounter. I would argue that this

encounter occurred in La Mode au Congo, and in the designs that resulted

from the exhibition. In fact, looking at Daché and Agnès‘ hats, and some of

the other fashions discussed in this chapter, the so-called ―everyday‖ that the

Surrealists sought to disrupt was full of the kind of fantasies that they were

encouraging.

La Mode au Congo

While the exact timeline of Daché‘s purchase of the Congo hats is

unclear, the Ratton exhibition of the hats opened in May 1937. Included in

the exhibition were photographs by Man Ray of models sporting the hats.450

448 idem, "Body to Politics: Surrealist Exhibition of the Tribal and the Modern at the Anti-ImperialistExhibition and the Galerie Charles Ratton," 253.449 Benjamin, "Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia," 190.450 This is reported in the MoMA Primitivism catalogue with no reference to a source. WendyGrossman, on the other hand, claims that the photographs were made after the exhibition was over. Ithink the fact that “mode” was in the title suggests that the photographs were probably a part of the

show. (Grossman also reports that no photographs of the exhibition have survived. Jean-LouisPaudrat, "From Africa," in "Primitivism" In 20th Century Art : Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern ,



218

Wendy Grossman has documented the long and fruitful professional

relationship Ratton had with Man Ray, who photographed many of the

objects that passed through Ratton‘s gallery.451 These images are remarkable

in the context of Man Ray‘s other photographs of women with African objects,

not to mention those of his contemporaries because of their engagement with

masquerade and fashion. Man Ray used at least six different models,

including his Caribbean lover Adrienne Fidelin, and the Salvadorian Comtesse

Consuelo de Saint Exupéry, the wife of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of Le

Petit Prince. Each model is perfectly coiffed, manicured, and made up. Most

of the models sport fashionable clothing, not out of place in the pages of

Harper’s Bazaar where a few of these photographs ended up. Some of them

also wear pieces of jewelry that may have been African but, as we have seen,

could also have been made by European designers.

Man Ray‘s photographs make Daché‘s collection of Congolese hats

legible in the context of western fashion. Man Ray uses the same codes he

was using in his fashion photography for Harper’s Bazaar at the time. A

comparison of two photographs of Reboux hats he made for the November

issue of Bazaar makes this clear. The photograph on the left hand page of the

suggestively titled ―Istamboul‖ felt turban is a three-quarter view of the model

who looks up dreamily.(Figure 116) A model wearing a stylish menswear

inspired suit, complete with a tie, poses in the Mode au Congo portfolio in

ed. William Stanley Rubin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984), 164. Grossman, Man Ray,

African Art, and the Modernist Lens, 143.451 Grossman, Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens, 90.



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nearly the exact same way, although she looks less dreamy and more assertive

as she gazes off in the distance.(Figure 117) Both models show off their hats to

advantage in three quarter view, demonstrating how they create a beautiful

line rising off the forehead. We can see similar poses in a number of the Mode

au Congo series.452

In the right hand photograph, a Reboux hat in hunter-green felt is

displayed by a model who gently tips her head forward to show the front. The

hat hides one of her eyes and the other is closed. This pose is mirrored in a

number of the Mode au Congo images, allowing Man Ray to show the delicate

lace-like patterns of some of the woven caps. (Figure 118) A woman in a short-

sleeved sweater poses in several of the photographs with a Melanesian kapkap

around her neck, and a lavishly beaded hat on her head. 453 (Figure 119)(Figure

120) The model is fashionably posed in a conventional profile or three-

quarter view to show off the silhouette of her hat. In one photograph, her

hands are crossed over her chest, perhaps in homage to an Egyptian pharaoh.

In another, she holds her hand to her ear, perhaps trying to hear the sound of

drums in an imagined jungle. Her poses subtly evoke conventions of fashion

photography as well as the imagined African who once wore her hat.

452 For more reproductions from the Mode au Congo Series see: Giulio Carlo Argan et al., Man Ray,

Fotografia Anni '30 (Parma: Università de Parma, 1981), and Man Ray: L'età Della Luce, (Modena:Galleria Civica, 1989).453 This is a perfect example of the conflation of tribal arts from various countries. Kapkap are diskshaped ornaments made of a clam shell overlaid with a delicate filigree of turtle shell worn on the heador around the neck.



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The jewelry that is paired with the hats in these photographs conflates

Africa with other tribal regions such as Melanesia. In addition to the kapkap

pendant, a number of bangle bracelets are worn by some of the models. One

quite large bracelet would not look out of place in Nancy Cunard‘s collection,

and perhaps it was borrowed from her. These may also be inexpensive

Bakelite bangles, perhaps supplied by one of the models, or something Man

Ray kept in the studio. In a number of the photographs it appears that a table

has been set up with the hats and jewelry on it. (Figure 121) In one

photograph, the Comtesse Consuelo de Saint Exupéry wears a European style-

hat while examining a woven hat with three long appendages embellished

with cowrie shells. (Figure 122) (Figure 123) On the table in front of her lies a

chessboard covered with at least three other hats and the large bangle. She

wears another small bangle around her upper arm. This photograph marks

these hats as fashion as opposed to ethnographic artifacts or works of art.

They are not in glass cases, nor on pedestals. Exupéry examines the hat

carefully, feeling its texture, imagining herself wearing it. She is in the

position of a discerning fashion consumer. Examining the other photographs

of Exupéry in which she tries on a number of the hats we see in front of her, it

is clear the group of images creates a narrative of masquerade. In three

photographs she wears a curvaceous and lavishly beaded hat along with a

necklace that seems to be made from the fierce teeth or claws of some jungle

animal. (Figure 124) It is not insignificant that Exupéry and Findelin are the



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only two models to wear this necklace, since neither is European. (Figure 125)

Both women seem to more fully embrace the masquerade in these

photographs. In another photograph, Exupéry poses with a hand behind her

head that is encircled with a halo of cowries. She poses casually in a beaded

cap, holding a cigarette in her perfectly manicured hand. (Figure 126) This

pose mirrors that of Princess Sherbatow in a 1935 photograph for Vogue by

Horst. In one of the photographs of Exupéry published in Harper’s Bazaar,

she wears a fez-shaped, cowry-covered hat with an ebullient plume of fur on

the crown. (Figure 127) She looks down, eyes nearly closed, with her hand on

the side of her head. This strange pose is repeated in an image of Fidelin with

her elbows in the tri-corner hat. (Figure 128)

Man Ray‘s photographs of Exupéry in particular reveal the

transformative potential of these African hats. They demonstrate the

unconscious reverie evoked by trying on an exotic hat. They show how the

wearer‘s carriage and personality can change through her clothing. Exupéry

seems to be shopping around for the perfect hat; each evokes a different mood

and feeling. These photographs reveal the Surrealist potential of shopping.

They demonstrate that rich fantasies that can be conjoured through the

donning of a particular garment or accessory. These are the same sorts of

fantasies that were induced by Agnès‘ hats or Nancy Cunard‘s bangles.

Fashion designers and the women who wore those designs were creating

Breton‘s ―marvelous‖ in their own everyday lives. There was nothing



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―mundane‖ about an Agnès hat, or even a Bakelite bangle; these objects

evoked the fantasy of masquerade for the women who wore them. Man Ray‘s

photographs serve as a document of this process of the fashion masquerade.

In contrast to Exupéry, Man Ray‘s photographs of Fidelin are unique

within the group. She is positioned not as a female consumer, or fashionable

European model, but as a beautiful ethnographic other. In 1936 Man Ray met

Fidelin, whom he described as a ―beautiful young mulatto dancer…from the

French colony of Guadeloupe.‖454 In several of the photographs she is topless.

(Error! Reference source not found.) In others, the tube of fabric that forms her

skirt is pulled up to cover her breasts. (Figure 129) This dress is different

from the sweaters and suits worn by the other models. Wendy Grossman

explains that Fidelin ―wears not the Western garb of the other models but is

decked out in African jewelry with her bare skin exposed. These cultural

markers of her otherness lend an exotic and sexualized air to the image

underscored by the classic come-hither pose of her arm crooked behind her

head.‖455 Fidelin uses a stock fashion pose, which can be seen in a number of

images from Harper’s Bazaar that same year, as well as an image of Exupéry

from the portfolio. In combination with her body, either semi-nude or

clothed in a kind of sarong/grass skirt hybrid Fidelin takes on the look on a

woman from an ethno-erotic postcard. The only hint of Fidelin‘s modernity is

her lipstick.

454 Ray, Self Portrait: Man Ray, 237.455 Sala Elise Patterson, "Yo, Adrienne," New York Times Magazine (Spring 2007), 234.



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Man Ray‘s other models combine the ―Primitive‖ and ―Modern.‖ Their

fashionably plucked eyebrows, manicures, chic suits and blouses, provide just

the right balance to their Congolese crowns and ivory bangles. These

photographs pair the African hats with the models‘ distinctly contemporary

clothes. This is notable since in the Reboux photographs Man Ray is careful

to crop the women‘s heads closely and blot out their bodies through

solarization. Wedding bands on a number of models, the cigarette, and the

man‘s shirt and tie mark these women as not only belonging to a ―civilized‖

culture, but also a modern one. Wedding bands— which might have been

taken off by a fashion model for a shoot—point to the institution of

monogamous marriage, an institution not perceived to be part of the primitive

cultures of Africa.(Figure 130) The cigarette is also an interesting inclusion

since many visitors to Africa noted that smoking was prevalent there, though

images of Africans took care not to include cigarettes.456(Error! Reference source

not found.) Cigarettes are a notable presence in fashion photography; a 1935

photograph by Horst P. Horst for Vogue shows a model in a feather Agnès hat

smoking a cigarette coolly. Cigarettes were certainly emblematic of chic

modern femininity since for so long they had been deemed unladylike.

Another emblem of civilization and modernity present in the

photographs is a chessboard. Man Ray‘s interest in chess has been well

documented and Grossman has analyzed these images‘ relationship to the

456 Malvina Hoffman, for example, tells the story of making a portrait of a Ubangi woman with disks inher mouth who had rigged a bamboo holder to smoke. Malvina Hoffman, Heads and Tales (NewYork: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), 149-150.



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metaphors of chess.457 Importantly, in the context of the meeting of

ethnographic, Surrealist and fashion photography, the chess board—especially

in one photograph where a woman seems to be playing—is a signifier for

complex civilization, evoking as it does a history of monarchical and religious

structure. Man Ray uses the conventions of fashion photography here to

create images that juxtapose the primitive and the modern.

These photographs must be read in the myriad of contexts in which

they appeared. Within the Ratton exhibition, these photographs—to a certain

extent—demonstrated how their original owners used the objects in the

exhibition. They also added a distinctly Surrealist flavor to the exhibition

through their juxtaposition of the primitive and the modern. One photograph

of Exupéry appeared in the French magazine Cahiers d’Art with the caption

―Photographie Man Ray. Parure Congolaise. ‗La Mode Au Congo‘.

Exposition a la Galerie Charles Ratton‖ (―Man Ray photograph. Congolese

finery. Exhibition at the Galerie Charles Ratton.‖).458 (Figure 131) Here, the

photograph is a work of art from Man Ray‘s oeuvre and we can think of it in

the context of his other images of women with African objects. The images

from this portfolio are perhaps not as explicit as Man Ray‘s photograph of

Simone Kahn with a Vanuatu figure, but draw upon similar themes.

457 See for example, Wendy Grossman, "Man Ray's Endgame and Other Modernist Gambits," in The

Art of the Project : Projects and Experiments in Modern French Culture, ed. Johnnie Gratton andMichael Sheringham (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 43-45.458 La Mode Au Congo," Cahiers d'Art 12, no. 1-3 1937), 103.



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In the Mode au Congo portfolio, the African objects are not merely

props, but are worn, transforming them from décor into useful fashion. The

hats interact with the head that wears them, as is apparent in many of the

images where the models respond to their hats. In a number of the images

the models hold their heads in their hands, sometimes with eyes closed, their

hats seeming to express the thoughts arising in their silent reverie. (Error!

Reference source not found.)(Error! Reference source not found.) Finally, four of

these photographs appeared in Harper’s Bazaar. (Figure 132 ) In this context

they become fashion photographs, making the Congolese hats legible as

fashion, not artifacts. Interestingly, Fidelin was featured on a full page and

Saint-Exupéry appeared in two of the three other small photographs in this

spread. Fidelin was the first model of color to appear on the pages of a major

fashion magazine.459 Because her photograph appeared in the context of a

story on African hats, her racial presence was mitigated. Surrealist PaulEluard wrote a short article explaining that the exposition ―will surely have a

happy influence on fashion. Happy, because among the objects that are airily

woven into the web of life there is none that demands greater inspiration,

greater daring, than a woman‘s hat. Every head should dare to wear a

crown!‖460 Eluard clearly writes Daché out of the story altogether, despite the

fact that a caption notes, ―All these hats at Lilly Daché.‖461

459 Patterson, "Yo, Adrienne," 234.460 Paul Eluard, "The Bushongo of Africa Sends His Hats to Paris," Harper’s Bazaar (15 September1937), 106. This article also appeared in Paul Eulard, "Exposition," Marianne (5 May 1937), n.p.461 Caption from, Eluard, "The Bushongo of Africa Sends His Hats to Paris," 107.



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The truth was that Daché had discovered these hats before Eulard.

Grossman explains, ―while fashion publications in the interwar period

exploited the novelty of the Surrealist aesthetic as an effective sales tool, in

this instance fashion took the lead and the art world f ollowed.‖462 Daché had

bought these hats with an eye to using them in her new salon and as the

inspiration for a new collection. The appearance of Man Ray‘s photographs of

the Congolese hats in the September 15th issue of Harper’s would soften the

ground for her collection that was simultaneously being advertised in

newspapers across the US in August and September 1937.

In an interview from October 1937, Lilly Daché explained: ―Two

influences are of particular moment and will undoubtedly blaze a trail in this

season‘s millinery fashions—primitive African Headdresses and sculptured

hats which may be traced directly to the coiffeurs of Chinese idols.‖ This

article also reports that Sally Victor visited the Ratton hat show and ―is much

to blame for getting from the gallery ideas for the skull and dunce caps with

high crowns and beaded embroideries like the Belgian hats of the eighteenth

century.‖463 Lilly Daché‘s exuberant Congo-inspired designs were a far cry

from Agnès‘ tame straw hats six years earlier. One streamlined an exuberant

feather headdress to create an incredible cap topped with ―a primitive

uprising of feathers.‖464 (Figure 133)(Figure 134)(Figure 135) Daché took the

462 Grossman, "Modernist Gambits and Primitivist Discourses: Reframing Man Ray's Photographs ofAfrican and Oceanic Art", 156-7.463 Crete Cage, "Hat Styles Arouse Clubwomen," Los Angeles Times 31 October 1937, D14.464 Bullock's Wilshire Ad, Los Angeles Times 21 September 1937, A8



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shape of a conical hat and the pompom on its peak for another whimsical

design. (Figure 136)(Figure 137) A black wool jersey hat mimics the texture

of the tri-corner hat worn by Fidelin in Man Ray‘s photograph, while adopting

the elephant trunk shape of an elaborately beaded Kuba Mukyeem mask.465

(Figure 138)(Figure 139)(Error! Reference source not found.)

In all of these hats, Daché is appropriating and adapting directly from

the hats in her collection, both in form and material. Interestingly, the

Mangbetu coiffure discussed at the start of this chapter inspired another hat

in the collection. The resulting design was described by one store as a ―lofty

barbaric turban.‖466(Figure 140) The image of the Mangbetu woman clearly

endured. The image was emblematic of African style, particularly the Congo,

so much so that Daché included a reference to the image in her collection even

though it did not relate directly to a hat in her own collection.467

Lilly Daché‘s hats participated in the same kinds of contrasts that

James Clifford identifies as Ethnographic Surrealism. Daché hats were made

to be worn with conservative suits and dresses. Their exuberant exoticism

stood in stark contrast to conventional outfits they were paired with. The

465 Daché‟s mask is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art‟s collection along with the other hats in

Daché‟s collection (accession number: 1974.83.30). Other examples of this type of Kuba mask can befound in: Suzanne Preston Blier, The Royal Arts of Africa : The Majesty of Form (New York: Harry

N. Abrams, Inc., 1998), 236-241. Mary Lou Hultgren and Jeanne Zeidler, A Taste for the Beautiful :

Zairian Art from the Hampton University Museum (Hampton: Hampton University Museum, 1993),cat. 24-5.466 Bullock's Wilshire Advertisment, Los Angeles Times, 9 August 1937, A8467 The American milliner Sally Victor also made reference to Mangbetu hairstyles in her 1937collection inspired by the Ratton show. A black felt hat embellished with wooden triangles mimics thelook of the elongated skulls and upswept hairstyles of Mangbetu women. A navy blue hat used tubularstraw braid to mimic hair in a style inspired by the Mangbetu. (both in the Metropolitan Museum ofArt‟s Costume Institute).



228

Washington Post explained that Daché‘s African hats were, ―a smart method

of adding drama to an otherwise simple and conservative costume.‖468

Juxtaposing the ―savage‖ hat with a ―sophisticated‖ suit, Daché‘s work created

a bold silhouette. Daché‘s hats unsettled conventional ensembles, not least

because they put the hats of African men on the heads of white American

women.469 In Breton‘s essay, ―The Crisis of the Object,‖ written at the time of

the Surrealist Exhibition of Objects at the Galerie Ratton, he rails against the

commonplace objects that populate our everyday worlds. He explains that the

objects in the exhibition were devised to ―oppose by all possible means the

invasion of the world of the senses by things which mankind makes use of

more from habit then necessity. Here, as elsewhere, that mad beast of

convention must be hunted down.‖470 Lilly Daché and Sally Victor, along with

other milliners and fashion designers were already defying convention in their

designs. Daché‘s hats reveal the rich presence of fantasy in fashion. They are

only one example of the ways in which women were creating drama and

resisting convention in their sartorial style. These hats were exuberant and

provocative.

“Si J’Etais Blanche (If I Were White)”471

468 Savage to Sophisticate; Hat-Bag Theme," The Washington Post, 28 October 1937, 13.469 One issue which I have not yet been able to grapple with in the context of these hats is whetherAfrican American women wore them. I hope to be able to research this futher in the future.470 André Breton, "Crisis of the Object," in Surrealism and Painting , trans. Simon Watson Taylor(Boston: MFA Publications, 2002), 279.471 Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image, 64.



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Lilly Daché‘s hats were designed for women who were interested in

making an entrance. Unlike Agnès‘ demure raffia hats, these styles were

brash and bold. According to Life, ―for 32.50, a Lilly Daché customer can, so

far as headgear goes, look like a Congo chief.‖472 Daché‘s hats were certainly

part of a larger trend of global influences in fashion stemming from the

world‘s fairs and colonial expositions. The interest in African fashion in

particular reflected a complex set of idea about Africa in the popular

imaginations of Americans and Europeans. Man Ray‘s photographs of

Daché‘s collection make clear the kinds of fantasies that could be evoked by

fashion. While collectors like Breton, Rubinstein and even Daché used their

collections to exhibit their aesthetic philosophy, women engaged with

fashionable primitivism through their own wardrobes, participating in a

complicated process of masquerade and fantasy, which was potentially more

subversive. While these women could certainly change their clothes and

divest themselves of the image of primitive sexuality, their clothes allowed

them to subvert traditional gendered ideas of colonialism. These clothes

allowed them to participate in fantasies about primitive sexuality that their

gender would otherwise preclude.

Early on, Josephine Baker recognized the ways that white women were

engaged in racial masquerade. In 1932 she began performing a song titled Si

472 Africa's Belgian Congo Sets the Style in Hats for American Women," Life (13 September 1937),54.



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J’Etais Blanche (If I Were White) while wearing a blond wig at the Casino de

Paris. She sang:

Moi, si j'étais Blanche Sachez qu' mon bonheurQui près de vous s'épancheGarderait sa couleur Au soleil, c'est par l'extérieurQue l'on se dore Moi, c'est la flamme de mon cœur Qui me colore.

Me, if I were white,

Know that my happiness Which explodes near you Would guard its colorUnder the sun, it‘s by one‘s exteriorThat one tansBut for me, it‘s the flame of my heart By which I am colored.473

While there are a number of ways in which one might interpret this song,

it can certainly be read on the level of parody. By 1932, Baker was right at the

center of the fashion for all things African, for all things that were not white

and European. In the song she teases the Parisians who sunbathe in resorts

like Juan-les-Pins in the Antibes trying to achieve her café au lait complexion.

Through her ―white-face‖ performance, Baker satirizes the racial masquerades

that were an important part of fashion in the 1930s. Nancy Cunard, among

473 Lyrics by: Bobby Falk, Leo Lelièvre, and Henri Varna. Sung by Josephine Baker. Translation in:idem, Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image, 63-4.



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others, was shocked and offended by the performance, no doubt because of

her own deployment of African fashion.474

As we have seen, collecting was another space in which women could engage

with materials from Africa and other colonized regions. While their practices have

often been seen as distinct from those of Andre Breton, they were working in much

the same way to display and promote their own aesthetic philosophies that relied

on collage and juxtaposition. These ways of collecting and displaying objects are

very much in line with the aesthetic of contrast at the heart of strange glamour.

Strange glamour depended on the same eccentric juxtapositions and incongruous

combinations that drew Surrealists to non- western art. Agnès‘ demure hats and

brash turbans gave a sense of mysterious glamour to a woman‘s wardrobe. They

referred loosely to Africa through materials and textures. The turbans mimicked

the hairstyle of Nobosodrou. Lilly Daché took this style even further making

reference to actual hats and headdresses from the Congo. Her exuberant collection

exemplified the strange glamour of the 1930s, and Man Ray‘s Mode au Congo

series reveals the surreal nature of this aesthetic.

In the next chapter we will see the last explosion of this surreal aesthetic in

both fashion and art before the war. By the end of the 1930s women‘s hats, in

particular, had become so wild that both Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar felt

compelled to defend them from their male detractors. Vogue showed photographs

of ―men‘s hats, culled form various parts of the world and presented here in the

474Bennetta Jules-Rosette used the term “white-face” to describe Baker‟s performance, and reports on

Cunard‟s reaction. Ibid, 63.



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interests of social justice. To our mind, they prove conclusively that when funnier

hats are worn, men will wear them.‖475 Harper’s Bazaar challenged a group of

men to come up with better creations than contemporary milliners, and showcased

their odd creations in the April 1938 issue.476 Schiaparelli put everything from

inkwells to hens to mutton chops on her customers‘ heads, making Daché‘s Congo

collection look tame by comparison. By 1937, Schiaparelli was frequently

collaborating with Salvador Dalí and the next chapter will examine the many

spaces and forums in which the fashion and art world met in the years just before

the war. Surrealism and strange glamour were working towards the same goals in

this period, to unsettle and disrupt conventional ideas about beauty.

475 “Gentlemen-Laugh These Off," Vogue (15 March 1938), 110.476 “Bonnets by the Boys," Harper’s Bazaar (April 1938), 80-81.



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Chapter 4

Strange Glamour

An illustration by Cecil Beaton of Schiaparelli‘s first showing in her

new atelier on Place Vendôme appeared in the March 15, 1935 issue of Vogue.

(Figure 141) The image shows a model, who bears a strong resemblance to

Schiaparelli herself, sauntering down a flight of stairs in a smart suit, her hat

cocked jauntily to one side:

down the stairway festooned in blue velvet, steps a terse figure—the epitome of spring 1935. Her hat marches aggressively ahead

of her, its blue felt visor rolled amusingly. Her blue wool suit,punctuated with red-and-green buttonholes, has the military briskness of Vienna before the War. Her blouse of white silk,froths at the neck and wrists with Binche lace and wears a heartinsignia.477

The woman in Beaton‘s sketch is bold and unrestrained, her ensemble full of

the contradictions fashion followers had come to expect from Schiaparelli.

The militarism of the suit, with its signature wide shoulders and long lean

skirt is contrasted with the feminine flourish of the blouse with its lace cuffs

and collar and a playful heart with an arrow through it just below the

neckline. Schiaparelli matches the masculine bravado of martial tailoring

with the doodle of a love struck girl.

The woman wearing the suit is also somewhat incongruous. Not the

pretty young girl we expect in the fashion illustration, but a more mature,

unusual looking woman who, in this ensemble, encapsulates the idea of

strange glamour, which will be the subject of this chapter. What I am calling

477 “Paris Openings," Vogue (15 March 1935), 56.



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strange glamour is an aesthetic in fashion created through dissonance,

through the contrasts upon which Schiaparelli‘s designs thrived: masculine

and feminine, day and night, hard and soft, traditional and revolutionary.

Strange glamour was certainly not Schiaparelli‘s invention alone, but she is

perhaps the designer who embodies it most fully, particularly in her own

personal style that was so closely associated with her work as a designer.

Schiaparelli was not classically beautiful, but was instead classified as one of

the jolies laides, a ―good looking ugly.‖478 Her clothes were made for women

like her, not to hide their unusual features, but to draw attention to these

women, making them look shocking. This interest in shock is what sets

Schiaparelli‘s work apart from her contemporaries and links it with the notion

of ―convulsive beauty‖ so central to the Surrealist project. Schiaparelli and the

Surrealists both used the uncanny conflation of incongruous elements to

create convulsive beauty. This shared aesthetic connects Schiaparelli much

more deeply with Surrealism than most fashion and art historians have yet

acknowledged. This chapter will trace these connections between Surrealism

and the work of Schiaparelli in the late 1930s.

While Schiaparelli‘s early collections experimented with the uncanny

through issues of tactility and gender, in the late 1930s strange glamour really

came into its own, particularly as she embarked on more serious

collaborations with Surrealist artists. As this chapter will demonstrate,

however, Schiaparelli had a well defined Surrealist aesthetic all her own.

478 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 153.



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While the themes that she worked with in her collections had parallels in

Surrealism, she was not simply copying or translating. Schiaparelli was

making these ideas her own, often changing their meaning, experimenting

with wild abandon, and influencing the Surrealists themselves.

In the years leading up to World War II, Schiaparelli‘s work became

increasingly exuberant and unusual. In Shocking Life, she wrote of her own

work (as usual in the third person):

In her special, ever-changing work, contrasting viewpoints,

contrasting values are needed, but to obtain the necessaryrhythm and harmony these contrasts have to be carefully balanced and adjusted…Schiap‘s mind became increasinglyreceptive, and during the years that followed, and until theoutbreak of war, her brain gave out the ideas like a fireworksshow.479

Schiaparelli saw her own work as embodying contradictions and discordant

ideas that she managed to bring together into one image. In the late 1930s

these dissonant images grew odder and more exciting. These years were also

productive ones for the Surrealists. Their work became well known in the

United States, through fashion magazines, Schiaparelli‘s designs, and only

later through an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936.480 Dalí

emerged as the star of this exhibition and his fame would rise throughout the

rest of the decade, in part through his collaborations with Schiaparelli. In

1938 Andre Breton and his cohort produced the Exposition Internationale du

479 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 60-1.480 There had been earlier Surrealist exhibitions most notably Newer Super-Realism organized byChick Austin at Hartford‟s Wadsworth Athenaeum in 1931 and throughout the 1930‟s Surrealism

could be seen at the Julian Levy Gallery (starting in 1932). The MoMA show though was the mostwidely publicized.



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Surréalisme. As we will see, this exhibition also had the mark of fashion and

Schiaparelli.

Strange Glamour

Strange glamour is built, it is not natural. It uses contrasts and

juxtapositions. As we saw in chapter two, the Schiaparelli woman can be

masculine and feminine all at once; she can embody multiple conflicting

identities. Caroline Evans rightly connects ―Schiaparelli's playful attitude

toward the body,‖ to Joan Riviere‘s argument about the masquerade of

femininity, ―for it articulates female identity as a matter of surface, or

appearance, destabilizing the idea of an essential femininity.‖481 Schiaparelli‘s

destabilization of femininity in her fashion is part of the wider Surrealist

project to question the notion of a unified consciousness and identity through

an exploration of the subconscious.

Similarly, for Schiaparelli, strange glamour was not glossy, young

prettiness, nor was it the sweet androgyny of the flapper. It is eccentric,

challenging, individual, and mature. It is the glamour of Joan Crawford,

Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead, and Katherine Hepburn,

all of whom were dressed by Schiaparelli. These women—along with ethnic

beauties who rose to fame in the 1930s such as Anna Mae Wong, Dolores Del

Rio (who was dressed by Schiaparelli), Dorothy Lamour, Hedy Lamarr, and

481 Caroline Evans, "Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins: Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentered Subject," Fashion Theory 3, no. 1 (March 1999), 7.



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Rita Hayworth— were changing the standards of pale blonde beauty in

Hollywood.482 In high society, Schiaparelli devotees Daisy Fellowes, Millicent

Rodgers, and Wallis Simpson (later the Duchess of Windsor) also exuded

strange glamour.

Strange glamour is best demonstrated through several examples. In its

Hollywood incarnation, Joan Crawford is particularly instructive, since we

can see how her look changed from that of a young flapper to the mature

aesthetic of strange glamour.483 In a photograph from 1927, Crawford poses

as the classic flapper, cropped hair under a cloche, bee stung lips, gaze

askance, and in a slouched pose. (Figure 142) In a photograph of Crawford by

Edward Steichen from 1932, where she is dressed in a pleated dress and

patterned coat by Schiaparelli, she stares directly at the viewer. (Figure 143)

Crawford faces us head on, sitting straight up on the back of a modern chair.

Her body is shaped by the coat that gives her the classic high, broad shoulders

and nipped-in waist she became famous for. Her glamour is bold and

constructed, right down to her notorious plucked eyebrows. A photograph of

Tallulah Bankhead from Harper’s Bazaar in 1934 illustrated the contrasts

inherent to strange beauty. Bankhead‘s stern glare in the photograph stands

out against the fluffy white wool of her bunny hat and the bib collar of her

Schiaparelli jacket. (Figure 144)

482 Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood , 95.483 Schiaparelli biographer Palmer White called Joan Crawford, “the embodiment par excellence of theSchiaparelli Lady.” Palmer White, Elsa Schiaparelli: Empress of Paris Fashion (New York: Rizzoli,1986), 108.



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Shock Tactics

Strange glamour is my term for the manifestation in fashion of Andre

Breton‘s concept of convulsive beauty. Breton, a writer and theorist, placed

himself at the head of the mainstream Surrealist movement. He wrote many

of the key texts that defined the movement and he wielded the power to

decide which artists belonged to the movement and which did not. Those

artists who were excommunicated by this Marxist Pope of Surrealism were

often those involved with fashion or other commercial endeavors, including

Salvador Dalí in 1939.484 Despite his distaste for fashion, Breton‘s concept of

convulsive beauty found expression in clothing. Dilys Blum explains that,

―the acceptance of new concepts of female attractiveness during the 1930s had

a parallel in the Surrealist‘ challenge to existing notions of beauty…beauty

implied harmony, but convulsive beauty took pleasure in being shocking, with

an emphasis on dissonance and discordance.‖485 In Schiaparelli‘s hands

convulsive beauty, in the form of her clothing and accessories, disrupts the

stable gendered identity of the wearer, and conventional notions of attraction.

Breton ends his novel Nadja (1928) with the statement, ―beauty will be

CONVULSIVE or it will not be at all.‖486 Convulsive beauty is Breton‘s

organizing principle for the aesthetic of Surrealism that defines beauty as a

484 It is also worth noting that Breton was not a great friend to female artists either. Artist Leonor Fini,who exhibited with the Surrealists, but refused ever to formally join the group, explained: “I disliked

the deference with which everyone treated Breton. I hated his anti-homosexual attitudes and also hismisogyny. It seemed that the women were expected to keep quiet in café discussions…Breton seemed

to me to expect devotion, like a pope.” Peter Webb, Sphinx: The Art and Life of Leonor Fini (NewYork: The Vendôme Press, 2010), 69-72.485Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 152.486 Breton, Nadja, 160.



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series of strange encounters, or paradoxes. The classic example of convulsive

beauty is the chance encounter. Breton writes in Mad Love that the Comte de

Lautrémont‘s famous encounter of a sewing machine with an umbrella on a

dissection table, ―constitutes the very manifesto of convulsive poetry.‖487

Breton‘s description of convulsive beauty also links aesthetic pleasure to

erotic pleasure. Breton identified the merging of two things—that is when

they move beyond Lautrémont‘s encounter to become one object or being—as

l’érotique voilée (the veiled erotic).488 This merging is often of the animate

with the inanimate, as we will see in the case of the Surrealist fascination with

mannequins. Breton declared: ―Beauty, neither static nor dynamic,‖

comparing it with ―a train that ceaselessly roars out of the Gare de Lyon and

which I know will never leave, which had not left.‖ 489 Something with

convulsive beauty is at rest, in motion, and embodying the potential for

movement all at once. This quality is referred to as l’explosante-fixe, the fixed

explosion.

Schiaparelli‘s strange glamour esthetic engages with all of these aspects

of convulsive beauty. It also engages with one of the most important elements

of convulsive beauty: shock. According to Breton convulsive beauty ―consists

of jolts and shocks, many of which do not have much importance, but which

487 André Breton, Mad Love (L'amour Fou), trans. Mary Ann Caws (Lincoln: University of NebraskaPress, 1987), 9, 123.488 Briony Fer, "Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis," in Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art

between the Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, in association with the Open University, 1993),216.489 Breton, Nadja, 159-160.



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we know are destined to produce one Shock, which does.‖490 Shock in

convulsive beauty can manifest itself as an unexpected erotic charge, or

unstable amalgamation of movement and stillness. Hal Foster explains that

―shock is an alternative route to the unconscious,‖ which is why it was so

important for Surrealists such as Breton.491 Shock affects a viewer in a

visceral way. It is a bodily reaction. It is what makes convulsive beauty

convulse.

Shock tactics were crucial to Schiaparelli‘s practice, and her creation of

convulsive beauty and strange glamour. Shock became practically a second

signature for Schiaparelli in 1937 when she created her signature shade,

Shocking pink, and the perfume Shocking. Schiaparelli even took the name

for her autobiography, Shocking Life, where she wrote about her discovery of

this new color and perfume name:

The colour flashed in front of my eyes. Bright, impossible,imprudent, becoming, life-giving, like all the light and the birdsand the fish in the world put together, a colour of China andPeru but not of the West—a shocking colour, pure andundiluted. So I called the perfume ‗Shocking.‘ The presentation would be shocking, and most of the accessories and gowns would be shocking. It caused a mild panic amongst my friendsand executives, who began to say that I was crazy and thatnobody would want it because it was really ‗nigger pink.‘ ‗Whatof it? Negroes are sometimes strikingly smart.‘492

In Shocking pink and her perfume Shocking, Schiaparelli married a number

of different themes that had defined her fashion: the natural world, exotic

490 Ibid, 160.491 Foster, Compulsive Beauty, 49.492 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 89-90.



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cultures, and Surrealism. Schiaparelli saw her new shade of pink as coming

from cultures outside of Europe, cultures which, as we have seen often

influenced her fashions. The bottle for Shocking, designed by Leonor Fini—

which will be discussed at length below — was based on the torso of Mae West,

and had a sex appeal that was certainly shocking to some. The fragrance too

was shocking, formulated for the classic Schiaparelli woman: ―no shrinking

violet would be attracted to the warm, sensual animalistic notes of ambergris,

civet, and musk and the fruity and spicy tones of patchouli and vetiver

blended with such classic perfume ingredients as rose, jasmine, syringe,

magnolia, and gardenia.‖493 Perfume expert Jean-Marie Martin-Hattemberg

went so far as to call Shocking ―the first sex perfume.‖494 Frida Kahlo, an

exemplar of strange glamour herself, was a fan of the perfume. At her 1953

retrospective in Mexico, she was confined to her four poster bed that had been

brought into the opening, the pillows laced with Shocking.

As in Breton‘s account of convulsive beauty in Nadja, sometimes

Schiaparelli‘s jolts and shocks were inconsequential, for example, whimsical

buttons shaped like cow heads, mermaids, or pianos. In other cases though,

Schiaparelli‘s details were more akin to Breton‘s capital-S Shocks: bullet

casings used as buttons on a cream colored coat with details from men‘s

hunting clothes (1932-5), a zipper placed provocatively across the front of a

493 Stamelman, Perfume : Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin : A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to

the Present , 213.494 Jean-Marie Martin-Hattemberg, “Elsa Schiaparelli. Senteurs surrealists, flacons d‟extravagance,”

Parfums & Senteurs 4 (October 2000), 73. Quoted in Ibid, 213.



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skirt (Winter 1935-36), padding usually sewn inside a dress to enhance the

bust was appliquéd to the outside of dresses (1936). Schiaparelli‘s

collaborations with Salvador Dalí were also part of her shocking tactics.

Dalí, who had grown up in Spain, moved to Paris in 1929 and joined

the Surrealist group. He made films, paintings, and sculptures, and wrote

about his work and theories. He is most known for his carefully executed

academic paintings that depict Freudian themes, but also for his infamous

publicity stunts. In June 1936, London‘s New Burlington Galleries hosted the

International Surrealist Exhibition where Dalí attempted to give a lecture in a

diving suit and nearly suffocated. On December 7, 1936 Fantastic Art, Dada,

and Surrealism opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York sparking a

blitz of publicity for Dalí and Surrealism and landing him on the cover of Time

magazine.

Lewis Kachur argues that ―By the mid-1930s, in Paris and New York, a

large Surrealist exhibition would set a theme for the season and be

immediately reflected in the vitrines of department stores and in the press.‖495

Surrealism was becoming more and more prominent in popular culture,

particularly after the MoMA exhibition, and Surrealism‘s American mascot

was undoubtedly Salvador Dalí. Throughout the late 1930s Dalí would

venture beyond painting and sculpture, to dabble in popular culture,

particularly fashion. In the same period Schiaparelli‘s designs were becoming

495 Kachur, Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and Surrealist Exhibition

Installations, 8.



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wilder. It was apparent by 1936 that she was allying herself with the

Surrealists, and the fashion press understood this. The art press also

recognized the connection, although often more critically. The Washington

Post’s art editor, Sibilla Skidelsky, claimed that ―no one has any use for

Surrealism, except designers of clothes who can, as Schiaparelli did after the

London [International Surrealist] Exhibition, utilize some of the Surrealists‘

practical jokes in details of pockets or of belts.‖496

Skidelsky is referring to Schiaparelli and Dalí‘s bureau drawer suits and

coats. These garments brought to life Dalí‘s obsession with putting drawers

into bodies. The collaboration was responsible for bringing Dalí‘s work onto

the pages of Vogue. The magazine labeled him one of the ―unsung heroes

behind the Paris openings‖ including a cartoon ofDalí in his diving mask.497

(Figure 145) The Bureau Drawer suits and one of Dalí‘s sketches appeared in

the same issue. In November of 1936 an article on Surrealism appeared in

Vogue that featured a portrait of Dalí.498 Together Schiaparelli and Dalí

brought many of the artist‘s favorite motifs to life, including hats shaped like

mutton chops, inkwells, and high heels, and the Tear-Illusion and Skeleton

gowns.

The American public‘s first exposure to the term Surrealism may well have

been through Schiaparelli‘s fashion, which had been associated with

496 Sibilla Skidelsky, "Museum of Modern Art Sponsors Outworn Hoax," The Washington Post , 27December 1936, F5.497 “Vogue's Eye View of Unsung Heroes Behind the Paris Openings," Vogue (15 September 1936),57.498 M. F. Agah, "Surrealism or the Purple Cow," Vogue (1 November 1936), 51.



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Surrealism for a number of years. In 1935 George Hoyningen-Huene created

two photomontages for Harper’s Bazaar that were inspired by Max Ernst. A

Schiaparelli coat and gown are shown in strange barren Surrealist landscapes.

(Figure 146) The captions read like exquisite corpse poetry: ―She paused on

the threshold in her curious wrap of bright red Cellophane velvet, and because

the air was cold, she tucked her hands and her icy rings under the heavy

gathers…She slung the orange scarf over one shoulder and moved on into the

moonlight, flame trailing over gray silk crepe.‖499 In January 1936

Schiaparelli‘s clothes had been shown in a Surrealist inspired photo spread by

Andre Durst for Vogue.500 (Figure 147) Schiaparelli had been linked to artists

in the fashion press since the beginning of her career.501 A Schiaparelli

ensemble on the cover of Vogue in 1936 was accompanied by the caption:

Schiaparelli gives a strange hurricane twist to the flaming red velvet hat Eric drew for our current cover--a twist that shootshigh at the side-back--take notice: the caracul [lambswool] scarfhas dyed streaks of bright blue-green through the black fur--itlooks as if the dress makers are becoming Surrealists, and, toclimax it all, blue-green kid gloves.502

The fashion press clearly understood Schiaparelli as a Surrealist. She was not

the only Surrealist whose work appeared on the pages of fashion magazines.

Fashion magazines also exposed their readers to Surrealism by

featuring a number of different artists in their pages. The work of Man Ray

499 “She Paused on the Threshold..." Harper’s Bazaar (October 1935), 74-5.500 “Rope Hurtling out of Oblivion, Surrealist Fashion," Vogue (15 January 1936), 43.501 See chapter 2. Flanner, "Comet," 20. “The Dressmakers of France," 76.502 Table of Contents, Vogue (1 September 1936), 63.



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had appeared in Harper’s Bazaar since 1934. He had also been an occasional

contributor to Vogue since 1925. Vogue had been offering the work of Pierre

Roy and Georgio de Chirico on its covers since 1935. Dalí, in particular, was a

natural at publicity, and a perfect fit for the world of fashion. From his

student days, Dalí used clothes and self-presentation to set himself apart from

his peers.503 His wife Gala was also a follower of fashion and frequently wore

Schiaparelli‘s clothes to high profile events, and openings.504

By the close of 1936 the presence of Surrealism in fashion had reached

a fevered pitch in the wake of the MoMA exhibition. In addition to her

Surrealist fashion designs, Schiaparelli had also begun to design prints for the

American market through Everfast and Druckerwolf. This line featured

several Surrealist motifs including A Hand to Kiss, a navy silk crêpe covered

with disembodied hands. Bonwit Teller created a number of Surrealist

window displays for their Fifth Avenue store just in time for Christmas that

year, including one based on a sketch by Dalí entitled, ―She was a Surrealist

Woman like a Figure in a Dream.‖505 (Figure 148) The window featured a

mannequin with a head of flowers, a recurring motif in Dalí‘s painting, along

with two of his Surrealist objects, the Aphrodisiac Dinner Jacket and his

lobster telephone. Grotesquely long arms crashed though the walls on either

503 For a discussion of Dalí‟s personal use of fashion see: Robyn Gibson, "Surrealism into Fashion:The Creative Collaborations between Elsa Schiaprelli and Salvador Dalí" (PhD dissertation, RMITUniversity, Melbourne, 2001), 147-156.504 Gala‟s desire for Schiaparelli gowns has often been cited as the reason for Dalí‟s collaborations

with the designer. Gala herself has often also been blamed for Dalí‟s pursuit of commercial projects.

Dawn Ades and Michael Taylor, Dalí (New York: Rizzoli, 2004), 437.505 "Bonwit Teller Surrealist Windows Ad," New York Times, 20 December 1936.



246

side of the display with purses and jewelry grasped in their hands. Dalí used

signature images from his repertoire to create a dynamic effect in the window.

In January 1937, with her penchant for the topical, Lilly Daché showed a

collection of hats for spring inspired by Salvador Dalí. The collection featured

dyed mushrooms perched on pillbox hats, the ―‗Fungus Hat‘ a deep green

straw peasant bonnet with an open top.‖506 Other hats in this Dalí inspired

collection were trimmed with metal, wood, and cork. The Washington Post

proclaimed: ―Surrealist Dalí put Mushrooms on New Bonnets.‖507 Helena

Rubinstein got in on the act too, borrowing Man Ray‘s paintingObservatory

Time—The Lovers (1932-36) to use in a display of her lipstick line at her new

salon after it appeared in the MoMA show. The year before, Man Ray had

used the painting as a backdrop for a fashion photograph for Harper’s

Bazaar.508 As we have seen, Schiaparelli was always avant-garde and her

aesthetic shared much with the Surrealists; her designs were increasingly

being understood in the context of Surrealism by the public, just as she was

beginning to collaborate with more artists associated with the movement.

Strange Glamour by Day and by Night

The basic contrast at the heart of Schiaparelli‘s strange glamour was

day and night. Schiaparelli presented ―hard chic‖ looks for day, and slinky

506 "Surrealist Dalí Put Mushrooms on New Bonnets," The Washington Post , 24 January 1937, S7.507 Ibid, S7.508 Clifford, "Helena Rubinstein's Beauty Salons, Fashion, and Modernist Display," 102.



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seductive looks for night.509 As we saw in chapter two, Schiaparelli

introduced daywear that created a strong silhouette, sometimes called the toy

soldier, with its broad shoulders, nipped in waist, topped with a quirky hat as

the final flourish. (Figure 149) This look joined masculinity and femininity in

a way that was a radical departure from the flapper look of the 1920s. The

way that Schiaparelli‘s looks oscillate between the masculine and feminine—

as we saw in chapter 2— was related to the uncanny, a key part of the

Surrealist aesthetic. Palmer White, in his monograph on Schiaparelli, argues

that her day wear created an image of ―hard chic, [which] had a militant,

masculine quality,‖ a ―hard, highly individual femininity.‖ He contends that

Schiaparelli‘s clothes worked to ―protect the New Woman from counter-

attacks by the male.‖510 Her gowns for the evening, on the other hand, were

daringly sexy: body skimming with low backs and shimmering finishes.

(Figure 150) Schiaparelli‘s aesthetic freely mixed masculine and feminine,

creating a contrast between hard and soft, day and night, public and private,

aggressive and sensual. These contrasts also fascinated Dalí. His favorite

lobster, for instance— which, as we will see below, made its way into a

collaboration with Schiaparelli—combined a hard shell that ―acted as a womb

that protected the softness and more amorphous character of its internal

organs.‖511 Dalí, like Schiaparelli, believed in the necessity of armor, writing

of his love of shellfish: ―by virtue of their armor, which is what their

509 White, Elsa Schiaparelli: Empress of Paris Fashion, 97.510 Ibid, 94, 96-97.511 Ades and Taylor, Dalí , 286.



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exoskeleton actually is, these are a material realization of the highly original

and intelligent idea of wearing one‘s bones outside rather than inside, as is the

usual practice.‖512 This image was realized in Schiaparelli‘s x-ray sweater

from 1929, and was recreated, as we will see, in the Skeleton dress she made

with Dalí.

A perfect example of such surreal contrasts between day and night,

hard and soft appears in George Hoyningen-Huene‘s Max Ernst-inspired

photomontages. (Error! Reference source not found.) On the left a voluminous

coat completely covers the model‘s body as she stares coldly at the viewer,

while on the right a flowing evening gown wraps around the body of a model

who faces away from the viewer, her back exposed by the low cut of the dress.

For day, Schiaparelli‘s Ne w Woman could stand up to any man whom she

encountered. Her clothes were confrontational and daring, the woman in

them was not to be ignored, and she was no shrinking violet. For evening,

Schiaparelli‘s New Woman transformed into a sleek, often shimmering sylph.

Body-hugging gowns accentuated curves with revealing necklines, or low

slung backs. Schiaparelli also contrasted masculine and feminine at night.

She topped a slinky dress with a stark broad shouldered cape with lavishly

decorated panels around the neck line and another with a bright red coat with

military detailing and unusual escargot-shaped buttons. (Figure 151)

512 Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Dial Press,1942), 9.



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Schiaparelli‘s woman was at once masculine and feminine. This

dialectical combination, which as we saw in chapter two, was present from the

very beginning of Schiaparelli‘s fashion career, is related to Surrealism.

Ulrich Lehmann, for example, calls Surrealist assemblages and found objects

―dialectical objects,‖ explaining that ―the term…implies that the Surrealist

object carried w ithin itself its own contradiction.‖513 Schiaparelli‘s clothing

allowed women to express their own dialectical states as simultaneously

masculine and feminine. Unlike the Surrealist objects however, these women

were made subjects, not objects, though their dress.

Constructed Glamour

The idea of agency and subjectivity were key to Schiaparelli‘s strange

glamour. Glamour and beauty were not givens in her understanding, but

could be constructed. Schiaparelli describes one woman from the American

mid-west who arrived at her shop quite plain but the designer

liked her and began to mold her. She started to slim severelyand irrevocably, cut her hair in a very strict way that made herhead look like a cask. She seemed to become taller, and herrather large bones, that were a drawback at the beginning, became strangely interesting and took on a certain special beauty…she was more than smart, more than beautiful.514

Schiaparelli saw herself and her customers as constructing beauty, making

what was an unattractive feature into one that was strangely glamorous.

513 Ulrich Lehmann, "The Uncommon Object: Surrealist Concepts and Categories for the MaterialWorld," in Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design, ed. Ghislaine Wood (London: V&A Publications,2007), 20.514 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 74.



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Schiaparelli herself epitomizes strange glamour. It is easy to see her unusual

and striking features in the Beaton sketch of the opening of her new salon.

Strutting down the staircase casually with head tossed to the side, this woman

is not the young, girlish, pretty type, but an older more unusual and confident

beauty. This is evident in Man Ray‘s early portraits of Schiaparelli, such as

one for 1932 in which she poses with one of Antoine‘s lacquered w igs on her

head and a wooden hand and arm caressing her face (a prop Man Ray often

employed in portraits). (Figure 152) Here Schiaparelli‘s sharp features are

softened in contrast with the wooden hand and stylized curls of the wig. This

Surrealist portrait is significant because Schiaparelli chose to include it in the

1954 edition of her autobiography, Shocking Life. 515 Schiaparelli recounts her

mother‘s disparaging remarks about her looks in comparison to the beauty of

her sister in this autobiography, and the surreal lengths she went to in order

to change them. Perhaps her most infamous stunt was planting flower seeds

in her mouth and ears so that her face would sprout flowers. Interestingly,

this is an image that would later be realized in a number of Dalí‘s paintings

including one in Schiaparelli‘s personal collection, Necrophiliac Springtime

(1936) which, along with Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their

Arms the Skins of an Orchestra (1936), would form the inspiration for the

Tear-Illusion dress that will be discussed below. (Figure 153)

515 It is possible that this photograph was taken in the same sitting as Man Ray‟s photograph of

Schiaparelli that was used in Minotaure. Man Ray‟s retouching of the photograph is probably alsoresponsible for some of the softness of the photograph. Elsa Schiaparelli, Shocking Life (New York:E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1954) n.p.



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Schiaparelli‘s Summer 1937 collection reflected both the constructed

nature of strange glamour as well as its potential for metamorphosis. The

collection was described in L’Officiel in musical terms: ―the collection sings a

roundelay…a melody of music caught in the mousseline folds of waltz

skirts…A song of birds, bees and butterflies woven on summer prints…a

ballad of impudent saucy hats…a lilt of flower, spring and sunshine.‖516

Butterflies and flowers of all kinds were incorporated on the prints of dresses,

as buttons, and on hats. Mermaids, fox heads, and cows became

buttons.(Figure 154)(Error! Reference source not found.) The crown of a straw hat

unzipped to reveal a vanity case. Metamorphosis was at the heart of this

collection. Schiaparelli also introduced a new cheerful silhouette in the Waltz

length dress, an hourglass shape with a full skirt. It was worn with petticoats

that ended about ten inches off the ground making it the perfect style for

dancing. Some of the most stunning of the designs in the spring collection

were Schiaparelli‘s Bird Cage coats, made of horsehair or crin (heavy silk net)

woven to form a lattice-like mesh. One black coat was paired with a black

gown printed with giant white butterflies. Another, in bright pink with

butterfly fastenings, was paired with a simple black gown, and French Vogue

showed a ―white satin [gown] printed with brightly colored butterflies and a

black crin coat—a surrealist metaphor for beauty captured.‖517 (Figure 155)

These ensembles move beyond this simple metaphor however. Cages were a

516 Schiaparelli," L'Officiel de la Couture de la Mode (March 1937), 88.517 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 156.



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favorite motif of Schiaparelli‘s, appearing in her home, her boutique, and in

her fashion. In 1939 she ―show[ed] saucy hats made with bird-cage crowns in

which bright birds are imprisoned,‖ as well as hats with mesh veils that

seemed took on the appearance of a cage.518 Jean Michel Frank built an

immense gold and black cage as a backdrop for the window of Schiaparelli‘s

perfume shop at Place Vendôme that opened in June of 1937. (Figure 156)

Notably, The Bird Cage by Picasso, which was a part of her collection,

was her favorite painting. (Figure 157) What is fascinating is the way that

Schiaparelli reads it: ―there is a cage. Below it are some playing cards on a

green carpet. Inside the cage a poor, half-smothered white dove looks

dejectedly at a brilliantly polished pink apple; outside the cage an angry black

bird with flapping wings challenges the sky.‖ According to Schiaparelli, the

painting was thought by many friends to be a portrait of her. They saw her as

a mixture of the white dove cowering within the cage and the angry black bird

who, ―with flapping wings challenges the sky.519 Schiaparelli deliberately

misreads the painting. The black bird is clearly in the cage, raging to escape,

while the white bird cowers in the corner. Schiaparelli was a woman who

always felt restricted, by her family, by the world around her, and even by the

practicalities of turning her often eccentric ideas into wearable clothing.

Schiaparelli explained that,

As often as not too many elements are required to allow one torealize the actual vision one had in mind. The interpretation of

518 "Schiaparelli Sets Style to Music," New York Times, 30 April 1939, 58.519 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, viii.



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a dress, the means of making it, and the surprising way in whichsome materials react—all these factors, no matter how good aninterpreter you have, invariably reserve a slight if not bitterdisappointment for you.520

While her business was tremendously successful by this point, she surely

would have felt the restrictions of being a woman in the 1930s. It is possible

that Schiaparelli was also frustrated that some in the Surrealist circle,

particularly Breton, did not take her work seriously.521 For Schiaparelli,

perhaps seeing one of the birds free and railing at the sky was more gratifying

than seeing her strain against the cage. Schiaparelli was both the woman whorages against the sky, creating a revolutionary style, blurring the boundaries

between art and fashion, and the woman who cowered in the cage longing for

the pretty apples, longing for an easier, more conventional life. This comes

through in her autobiography.

In the form of the cage coats, again Schiaparelli puts the control in the

hands of the woman. She can appear as ―a surrealist metaphor for beauty

captured,‖ or liberate herself from the cage of the coat.522 While these clothes

do not necessarily liberate the women who wore them, they did change and

challenge Surrealist ideas about women, as muse and as object. These

ensembles allowed women not simply to be ―literally transformed into

520 Ibid, 42.521 While Schiaparelli herself never spoke about not being accepted by the Surrealists, it is revealingthat Schiaparelli leaves Breton out of her autobiography, only mentioning Duchamp when shediscusses her participation in the 1942 First Papers of Surrealism exhibition. Breton also“excommunicated” artists who made work for Schiaparelli, such as Giacometti and Dalí, precisely

because of this “commercial” work. Judging by the way that contemporary writers have dismissed her

work, as well as Breton‟s hostility toward women and commercial work, it seems likely that he wouldhave dismissed Schiaparelli and her work. Ibid, 135.522 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 156.



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butterflies,‖ but to transform butterflies into moving thinking women with

agency all their own.523 Schiaparelli believed that the woman who wore her

clothes had just as much a role in their life as she, the designer, did: ―A dress

has no life of its own unless it is worn, and as soon as this happens another

personality takes over from you and animates it, or tries to.‖524 While this act

of animation may or may not be successful, Schiaparelli‘s philosophy certainly

leaves room for the agency of her customer.

One of these customers who bought a number of pieces from this

collection was Mrs. Wallace Simpson, or Wally as she was known in the

newspapers. The theme of metamorphosis from Schiaparelli‘s butterfly

collection was reflected in Simpson‘s own story. Her every move was followed

by the papers during her romance with King Edward VIII, and his subsequent

abdication of the British throne so that the two could marry. Simpson

traveled to Paris and bought eighteen designs from Schiaparelli‘s Spring 1937

collection, including a sky blue suit with enormous butterfly buttons, the

black dress with large white printed butterflies worn with the black cage coat,

a suit with leather chess pieces for buttons to be worn with a white silk blouse

printed with black chess pieces, and a black suit for the evening with a rococo

scroll work appliqué. (Figure 158) Cecil Beaton photographed Simpson in her

new Schiaparelli wardrobe for Vogue just before her wedding. Mirroring her

523 Ibid, 151.524 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 42.



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own description about molding a woman‘s look, Beaton described her in her

new attire as the classic Schiaparelli constructed beauty:

Of late, her general appearance has become infinitely moredistinguished. Not only is she thinner, but her features haveacquired a refined fineness. She is unspoiled. She is like an uglychild who wakes up one day to find that it has become a beauty, but she herself has created this beauty by instinctively doing theright things.525

Her beauty was not innate, but rather Simpson‘s own creation. Schiaparelli‘s

unusual and eye-catching styles were crucial to the formation of her new

beautiful image.

Surrealist Objects: Female, Edible and Otherwise…

Schiaparelli‘s first collaborations with Salvador Dalí, a series of suits

and coats with pockets made to look like drawers, played off the notion of

constructed beauty. Schiaparelli‘s collaborations with Dalí, as well as a

number of other designs she created in the years leading up to World War II,

engaged with ideas the Surrealists used in their found and assembled objects.

As we have seen, the dialectic of masculine and feminine, subject and object,

is at the heart of Schiaparelli‘s work, as it is in Dalí‘s; so looking more deeply

at Dalí‘s ideas about Surrealist objects can reveal new ways to read

Schiaparelli‘s designs. Dalí‘s 1931 text in Le Surréalisme au Service de la

Révolution outlines a progression from separate subject and object to unified

subject and object:

525 From Cecil Beaton, Cecil Beaton's Scrapbook (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937), 27.Quoted in Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 165.



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1. The object exists outside of us, without our taking part in it(anthropomorphic articles);

2. The object assumes the immovable shape of desire and actsupon our contemplation (dream-state articles)

3. The object is movable and such that it can be acted upon(articles operating symbolically)4. The object tends to bring about our fusion with it and makes us

pursue the formation of a unity with it (hunger for an article andedible articles)526

As we will see, Dalí‘s last category of objects, those that can fuse with a subject

because they are edible, were of particular interest to both Dalí and

Schiaparelli. These edible objects are meant to be literally —not just visually —

consumed. Beyond this more literal interpretation however, Dalí‘s fourth

stage of the object could also refer to fashion. A gown, when worn, fuses with

the body of the wearer. The body shapes the clothes, the clothes shape the

body. As we have seen, Schiaparelli believed in the potential for fashion to

change a woman‘s appearance, as well as the way she moves. Walter

Benjamin also saw this surreal potential for fashion. In The Arcades Project,

Benjamin declared that ―Every fashion couples the living body to the

inorganic world.‖527 Through this merging of clothes and body, inorganic and

organic, fashion was the perfect vessel for fetishism: ―In fetishism, sex does

away with the boundaries separating the organic world from the inorganic.

Clothing and jewelry are its allies.‖528 Like Schiaparelli, Benjamin saw the

526 Lehmann, "The Uncommon Object: Surrealist Concepts and Categories for the Material World,"23. Originally published in part as “Objets Surréalistes,” in Le Surréalisme au Service de la

Révolution (Paris), No. 3 (1931) translated in This Quarter (London), v. 1 (September 1932), 197-207.527 Benjamin, The Arcades Project , 79.528 Ibid, 69.



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―eccentric, revolutionary, and surrealist possibilities of fashion.‖529 This

potential was realized through this close relationship of the body to fashion.

Fashion can be a uniquely Surrealist intervention, merging subject and object,

woman and clothing.

The key to Dalí‘s practice as a Surrealist artist was his paranoiac-

critical method. This was a method through which he could intentionally

misread what he saw. For Dalí it was a way to achieve the results of

automatism or a hallucinatory or hysterical state without giving up control.

As he famously proclaimed: ―the only difference between myself and a

madman is that I am not mad.‖530 Breton described Dalí‘s approach in 1936

as an ―insistence upon an infantile non-differentiation in approach to

knowledge of objects and that of beings.‖531 Dalí‘s paranoiac-critical method

ignored the difference between subject and object, deliberately mixing the

two. We can see a parallel in Schiaparelli‘s commandment to women: ―Never

fit the dress to the body, but train the body to fit the dress.‖532 Schiaparelli

worked in the same paranoiac-critical vein as Dalí, merging the dress and the

wearer into one Surrealist image.533

In Schiaparelli‘s case, the woman is not objectified in the same way

that Dalí objectifies women in his work. This is apparent in the example of

529 Ibid, 68.530 Dawn Ades, Dalí , Rev. and updated ed. (New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 119.531 André Breton, "The Dalí 'Case'," in Surrealism and Painting , trans. Simon Watson Taylor (Boston:MFA Publications, 2002; reprint, 1972), 135.532 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 211.533 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 124.



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the bureau drawer suits and coats. These garments were based on sketches

and paintings by Dalí that centered on a recurring theme of bodies with

drawers protruding from them.534 The bodies that these drawers penetrated

were invariably female. According to Dalí, ―The drawers include everything—

Freud, Christianity, the possibility of penetration into the interior of a human

being with its secret compartments all full of meaning.‖535 The open drawers

reveal the unconscious of these women, allowing a male viewer to penetrate

their bodies. Women may hide their secrets in these drawers but in Dalí‘s

works they are always open, to reveal them.

Dalí also cut drawers into a bronze replica of the Venus De Milo, using

fluffy balls of fur for the pulls, playing up the fetishistic quality of the figure.

Dalí transforms a replica of high culture, fine art, into a bizarre example of

craft or decorative art, a piece of furniture.536 This incredible object oscillates

between art and utility, and between beauty and vulgarity. In Schiaparelli‘s

interpretation, her suits and coats also oscillate back and forth between art

and fashion. They also cleverly riff on the objectification of women,

particularly in the context of Dalí‘s art. Dalí‘s woman is transformed into

furniture, but in the context of a garment that was worn, this furniture came

to life. Schiaparelli designed several different permutations of the bureau

534 Interestingly, Richard Martin writes that the drawer suits and coats may not be a true collaboration between Dalí and Schiaparelli, but may be a instance where Schiaparelli was simply taking inspirationfrom Dalí‟s art. Martin, Fashion and Surrealism, 118.535 Gibson, "Surrealism into Fashion: The Creative Collaborations between Elsa Schiaprelli andSalvador Dalí", 187.536 Lehmann, "The Uncommon Object: Surrealist Concepts and Categories for the Material World,"20.



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drawer suit. Two examples can be seen in a photograph by Cecil Beaton for

Vogue. (Figure 159) On the left, a blue wool suit with wide lapels and two

drawer pockets just below the waist and on the right a black wool suit with

five drawer pockets. Both are shown with the same calf-length skirt. This suit

appears in a sketch from Bergdorf Goodman where it is clear that the bottom

pocket, just below the waist, runs the full width of the suit, and is apparently

buttoned over the front of the jacket.537 A belted coat appears in an

unpublished photograph by Beaton with eight drawer pockets running all the

way up to the neck, finished with round pulls, worn with a cap topped with a

small crown, a motif Schiaparelli was also using in buttons that season.538

(Figure 160) Some of the drawer pockets were usable and others were simply

decor. These false pockets confounded viewers.539

The suits and coat followed her principle of daywear—and suits in

particular—as armor. Fabric was conflated with the wood of a bureau and

only the woman wearing the suit knew which pockets could actually be

used.540 Adding to this modern armor were the gloves Schiaparelli designed

to accompany these ensembles that were made of black or white suede with

colored snakeskin nails.541 These gloves appeared to reveal the polished nails

537 For a reproduction of this sketch, which is at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum ofArt in New York, see Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 132.538 “Tales of Details," Vogue (15 September 1936), 152.539 Vogue, in particular, was frustrated by the tease of the false pockets. Interestingly, the magazinealso noted that designer Marcel Rochas was influenced by the surreal in his collection: “Rochas, too,

had a touch of surrealism — we suspect Leonor Fini was behind this — and used umbrellas, gloves, purses, and tobacco pouches for pockets and clocks for belts.” Ibid 153.540 Robyn Gibson, "Schiaparelli, Surrealism, and the Desk Suit," Dress 30 2003), 51.541 “Tales of Details," 150.



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of the wearer, and made the wearer appear to be wearing no gloves at all. Like

her tattoo sweaters and swimsuits discussed in chapter two, these gloves

conflated leather and skin, teasing viewers. In the same collection

Schiaparelli also included gloves in ―surrealist pastel suedes with the veins of

the hands painted on‖ that may have been inspired by a sketch by Surrealist

artist Meret Oppenheim.542 Echoing her early X-ray sweater, Schiaparelli

again experiments with ideas of transparency and turning the body inside out.

Instead of suggesting the soft skin of a woman‘s hand through the use of pale

colored kid or suede, these gloves evoke the fragile veins, at once beautiful

and grotesque: strange glamour.

Cecil Beaton‘s photograph of the Bureau suits played up the Surrealism

of these designs, creating a strange and barren landscape in the studio, and

giving one of the models an issue of Minotaure (from June 15, 1936) to hold

as a prop. (Error! Reference source not found.) The magazine‘s cover was

illustrated by Dalí with a female minotaur whose breasts open as a drawer.

The creature has polished fingernails and toenails alluding to Schiaparelli‘s

gloves, and in a nod to a future collaboration, a lobster climbs out from a hole

in the stomach of the figure. There is no way of knowing if the idea of

including Minotaure was Schiaparelli‘s, Beaton‘s, or perhaps Dalí‘s, but it is a

significant addition to the photograph, directly connecting these clothes, and

potentially the women who would buy them to the Surrealists.

542 Ibid 150. Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 123.



261

It is unclear exactly how Dalí‘s and Schiaparelli‘s collaborations

worked. Neither wrote much in their respective autobiographies about the

process, and the contemporary press offers very few hints. In the case of the

dresser drawer suit, a number of sources mention Dalí as the inspiration for

the design. The Los Angeles Times said the suit was ―patterned after

drawings of the surrealist Salvator Dalí [sic]‖543 The New York Times said the

details of the suits were ―inspired by‖ Dalí‘s work, and Vogue wrote of the

pockets, ―obviously, Salvador Dalí is responsible.‖544 Dalí knew and respected

Schiaparelli‘s work, as did his wife Gala who was a frequent customer.

Schiaparelli explained that,

Dalí was a constant caller. We devised together the coat withmany drawers from one of his famous pictures. The black hat inthe form of a shoe with a Shocking velvet heel standing up like asmall column was another innovation…There was another hatresembling a lamb cutlet with a white frill on the bone, and this,more than anything else, contributed to Schiap‘s fame foreccentricity.‖545 [emphasis added]

What is evident is that Dalí‘s name only added to the publicity for certain

designs, and the suit would have also been good press for Dalí himself, since it

would have introduced him to a wide audience, particularly in the United

States where Schiaparelli was very popular. The theme of drawers was also a

part of Schiaparelli‘s boutique in the form of a giant stuffed bear given to Dalí

by Charles James. Dalí dyed the bear Shocking pink and cut drawers in it.

543 Sylva Weaver, "Seeing Paris Styles," Los Angeles Times, 4 October 1936, G6.544 "By Wireless from Paris: Winter Chic," New York Times, 16 August 1936, X8. Tales of Details,"153.545 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 90.



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Bettina Bergery, a friend of Dalí who was in charge of displays at the boutique,

used the drawers to display jewelry.

Dalí‘s next collaboration with Schiaparelli was one of the most famous

dresses in Wallis Simpson‘s trousseau, the Lobster Dress.(Figure161)(Figure

162) The dress circulated widely through images of Simpson‘s trousseau in

the French, American, and British fashion press. The lobster print was also

used on beach clothes, such as a linen dress illustrated in Vogue.(Figure 163)

None of the press surrounding these designs mentions Dalí. Schiaparelli does

not mention the dress in her autobiography, nor does Dalí. The lobster was a

recurring image in Dalí‘s work, for example, on Harpo Marx‘s head in his

famous 1937 Hollywood portrait of the comedian, and atop the head of a male

figure with drawers in The Dream of Venus (1939).546 The year after

Schiaparelli‘s dress appeared he put a lobster on the handset of his

A phrodisiac Telephone (1938) made for Edward James.547

In Dalí‘s work, the lobster appeared most often as a substitute for, or

conflated with a telephone.548 This image probably derived from a visit to

Edward James‘ house during a meal of lobsters eaten in bed by the

houseguests. A tossed off lobster shell landed on the telephone, prompting

James to recount a strange visit to a woman who mistook a lobster sitting by

546 Harpo Marx, 1937 see Ades and Taylor, Dalí , cat. 172.547 Designer Charles James also experimented with the lobster in 1939 with his dress, “La Sirène" or

the “Lobster Dress” which evoked the tail of a lobster through its draping.548 Wood, ed. Surreal Things : Surrealism and Design, 285.



263

her bed for her telephone.549 The lobster appealed to Dalí because not only

was it strange looking, with a phallic presence, it was food. Dawn Ades notes

that in addition to the lobster‘s supposed powers as an aphrodisiac, it is also

considered a phallic symbol in dream analysis.550 Consumption of food, and

often non-food substances—shit, telephones, lamb chops, camembert,

woodcocks—fascinated Dalí as part of his mission to unite subject and object.

He wrote, ―It so happens that I attach to spinach, as to everything more or less

directly pertaining to food, essential values of moral and esthetic order.‖551

The A phrodisiac Telephone refers to fellatio, with the lobster‘s tail, and

presumably its sex organs, positioned over the mouthpiece of the phone.

Dalí‘s fascination with all things edible was tied up with ideas of consumption

in sexuality.

The idea of edible clothing and accessories appealed to Schiaparelli

too; she made buttons in the shape of escargot and crabs, a fish bracelet, and a

crawfish clip.552 Vegetables frequently appeared in jewelry: a necklace made

of porcelain vegetables and flowers in 1937, and in a ―vegetarian bracelet‖

with vegetable charms on raffia.553 (Figure 164) The placement of a larger

than life lobster on the front of a delicate waltz length white organdy dress is a

provocative gesture. The lobster, printed over the crotch of the wearer can be

549 Ades and Taylor, Dalí , 286.550 Ibid, 286.551 Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, 9.552 For images see: Collection Caviar," Vogue (1 April 1936), 78. Eye-Catchers," Vogue (15January 1937), 84-5. Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 104.553 “Collection Caviar," Vogue (1 July 1937), 51.



264

read as phallic, or perhaps as an invitation to dine on the wearer herself. This

would certainly have been part of Dalí‘s reading of the dress, again connecting

sexuality and consumption of food. Through his portrait of Gala with lamb

chops on her shoulders, Dalí ―discovered that it showed that instead of eating

her he had chosen to eat the chops.‖554 In this context the act of eating is

sexual. The lobster dress‘ innocent white organza is violated by the lobster

and all of its connotations, though Harper’s Bazaar assures readers that the

lobster is ―red, but not brilliant.‖555 The concept of the lobster covering a

woman‘s sexual organs would be fully realized by Dalí in 1939 in his bizarre

exhibit for the World‘s Fair in New York, The Dream of Venus, in which

lobsters often act as pseudo-loincloths for the models in the show.

Dalí‘s lamb chop would also be used by Schiaparelli in a clever hat in

late 1937. The hat played on the feathered hats popular in the period. For

example in 1936, couturier Edward Molyneux showed a pillbox with a feather

trailing off the back. (Figure 165) Schiaparelli‘s hat was also a pill box style

worn forward on the head that came to a point in the back, capped off with a

butcher‘s paper frill made in patent leather. (Figure 166) Schiaparelli created

a series of hats around this time that transformed fashionable hat silhouettes

into everyday objects. These hats engage in Dalí‘s paranoiac-critical method,

deliberately interpreting one object as another; in the case of the mutton chop

hat, a plumed pillbox is deliberately misread as dinner.

554 Ades, Dalí , 161, 176. For an image of Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on her

Shoulder , 1933, see Ades and Taylor, Dalí , cat. 1555 “Schiaparelli's White Organza..." Harper’s Bazaar (April 1937), 87.



265

Schiaparelli‘s Inkw ell hat from 1938 was also a collaboration with Dalí,

though as with most of their collaborations, it is unclear how the idea

emerged. (Figure 167) The Inkwell hat played off of hats with outrageously

long plumes adorning them, such as one designed by Schiaparelli in 1935.

(Figure 168) Schiaparelli re-imagined these plumes as quill pens. In her

―Hen in a Nest‖ hat, that graced the cover of Vogue, Schiaparelli,

investigate[d] the special possibilities Surrealism [which]allowed for the noncontextual displacement of the object and itsrole as an amusement in complement to its being an aesthetic

argument. Thus, the feather hat readily becomes a chicken hat—a perched bird—now risible yet beautiful in its transformationinto the mere barnyard chicken.556

These hats were popular because they were not simply outrageous, but they

spoke to the shapes and styles that were fashionable. Fashion scholar Colin

McDowell writes that,

even at their most outrageous, Schiaparelli‘s hats never made women appear foolish. They were far too amusing andsophisticated for that. In fact, a woman wearing one ofSchiaparelli‘s creations proclaimed her self -confidence while atthe same time advertising the fact that she was au fait with thelatest developments not only in fashion but also in the arts.557

Her infamous High Heel hat was another collaboration with Dalí. The idea is

thought to have come out of a photograph of Dalí taken by his wife Gala in

1932 with a shoe on the artist‘s head and shoulder. A sketch for the shoe hat

appears in one of his sketchbooks c. 1937. Dalí wrote in his autobiography

that he was obsessed with shoes: ―All my life I have been preoccupied with

556 Martin, Fashion and Surrealism, 108.557 Colin McDowell, Hats: Status, Style, and Glamour (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), 152.



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shoes, which I have utilized in several surrealist objects and pictures to the

point of making a kind of divinity of them. In 1936 I went as far to put shoes

on heads; and Elsa Schiaparelli created a hat after my idea. ―558 Schiaparelli

showed the finished hat on August 5th with her fall 1937 collection, and the hat

appeared in a number of different French and English fashion magazines.

(Figure 169)(Figure 170)

Dalí‘s most famous use of a shoe is his Objet Scatologique à

Factionnement Symbolique (Scatological Object Functioning Symbolically)

from 1930, that includes a red high heel shoe as well as several images of

women‘s shoes.(Figure 171) A sugar cube with an image of a shoe is

suspended above a glass of milk that sits in the front of the shoe; it is

counterbalanced so that it can be dipped into the milk. This animated object

expressed both the phallic and vaginal potential inherent in the high heel.

Schiaparelli‘s High Heel hat exploits this dual potential as well. The hat‘s

clever design did not merely put a shoe on a head, as in Gala‘s photograph,

but re-imagined the shape of the funnel and tricorn hats popular at the time

as high heels. (Figure 172)(Figure 173) Schiaparelli‘s knowledge of millinery

style and construction turned Dalí‘s bizarre gesture in Gala‘s photograph into

a paranoiac-critical image. In this case the transformation played with the

sexual connotations of hats, replacing the funnel hat with a phallic shoe.

Schiaparelli herself describes the Shocking pink heel of the hat ―standing up

558 Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, 122.



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like a small column.‖559 Here she describes the version of the hat that

appeared in Harper’s Bazaar with its phallic Shocking pink heel projecting

from the head of the blasé wearer.560 In another version that appears in a

Schiaparelli house sketch, the shoe is a predecessor of Chrisitan Laboutin‘s

stilettos with a bright red sole. (Figure 174) This configuration plays up the

labial potential of the shoe.

The sexuality of the High Heel hat was underlined by the ensemble it

was paired with: a black dress and jacket with lips embroidered on the

pockets and lip-shaped buttons.561 Interesting pockets had become a

Schiaparelli signature. She often created false pockets, double pockets on

blouses that became known as Schiaparelli pockets, and slit pockets in

unusual places on coats and blazers. A purple tweed suit from fall 1936 with

pockets trimmed with velveteen ovals and oval-shaped buttons presages the

Lip suit from the following fall. (Figure 175) The tweed suit is perhaps even

more suggestive in its play with texture using velveteen to line pockets that

might be read as lip-shaped. The 1937 Lip suit takes a paranoiac-critical

reading of pockets as lips to the extreme, embroidering lip shapes in metallic

thread over the pockets. It displaces a part of the body: ―when the wearer

559 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 90.560 Martin, Fashion and Surrealism, 111.561 Dilys Blum calls the ensemble a collaboration with Dalí, but other sources credit only Dalí with theidea for the hat. Lips were certainly another obsession of Dalí‟s, but were also present in Man Ray‟s

work. The suit may have been Schiaparelli‟s own invention using a popular Surrealist theme. Blum,Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 136. Evans, "Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins:Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentered Subject," 2.



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slips her hand in her pocket she puts it in somebody‘s mouth…but whose?‖562

The mouth pockets, particularly in their velveteen incarnation, also refer to

the labia, making these suits far more shocking than their conservative cuts

suggest. The velveteen suit, in fact, places two of the pockets over the breasts

of the wearer, a favorite trick of Schiaparelli, displacing the genitalia and

teasing viewers with the open invitation of the pocket. The shoe hat and Lip

suit were not merely meant as absurd gestures; there was an obvious sexual

undercurrent to these designs. It is also evident that Schiaparelli was not

merely the passive translator of Dalí‘s ideas into fashion, nor did she simply

steal his ideas for her own profit. Schiaparelli adapted themes popular

amongst the Surrealists for her own designs, using the same methods that the

Surrealist artists were using.

Perhaps the most interesting surreal objects used by Schiaparelli in her

clothes were mirrors. This is especially true in a dinner suit with mirrored

embellishment from Schiaparelli‘s winter 1938-39 collection.563 (Figure 176)

The suit‘s lavish embroidery by Lesage depicted two shattered mirrors

surrounded by gold embroidery in the form of baroque frames over the

breasts of the wearer. The mirror designs were inspired by the décor of

Versailles. Schiaparelli had experimented with mirrors the season before this

jacket appeared with another suit that had hand mirrors as closures. (Figure

562 Evans, "Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins: Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentered Subject," 1.563 The importance of this garment is underlined by the number of times it has been appropriated byother designers. Yves Saint Laurent, a great admirer of Schiaparelli, used it on the back of a jacket fora 1978-9 collection, and in 2004 Roberto Cavalli adorned a t-shirt with the same embroidered patternsin a different configuration (going so far as to get Lesage to do the embroidery).



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177) Both suits reflect ideas about vanity, but also, quite literally reflect the

viewer. The baroque mirror jacket, in particular, confronts a viewer who

looks at the wearer‘s breasts with his own image, distorted by the square

mosaic of the mirrors. As Caroline Evans has argued,

If…women are condemned to watch themselves being looked at,Schiaparelli pursues that problem into the theatre, throws up acloud of spangles and, in the form of the splintered handmirrors, turns the shattered gaze back on the spectator. Thetheatricality of all Schiaparelli's work shows an understanding offashion as performance, or masquerade; the wearer createsherself as spectacle, but the moment she displays herself she

also disguises herself.564

Schiaparelli‘s clothes are always concerned with revealing the masquerade of

femininity. The contrasts she created between hard and soft, masculine and

feminine, and day and night draw attention to the constructed nature of

femininity. The mirror jacket not only drew attention to the masquerade but

intervened in it, intercepting the viewer‘s gaze and turning it back onto him or

her. This gesture aligns Schiaparelli with the Surrealists. While the suit

jacket with its reference to Versailles would seem to turn the wearer into

furniture, the mirrors make the ensemble theatrical. The woman turns from

object into a subject staring, or perhaps winking back at the man who tries to

ogle her breasts. This conforms with Dalí‘s description of the final stage of

unity between subject and object: ―The object tends to bring about our fusion

with it and makes us pursue the formation of a unity with it.‖565 Dalí tended

564 Evans, "Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins: Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentered Subject," 6.565 Lehmann, "The Uncommon Object: Surrealist Concepts and Categories for the Material World,"23.



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to think about this fusion through objects that were edible, but Schiaparelli

thought of it, in this case, through the mirror. In her mirror jacket the viewer

is consumed by the mirror on the jacket, and made a part of the object.

Instead of fashion objectifying its wearer (as it is often described as doing),

Schiaparelli gives her client clothes through which to objectify others.

Schiaparelli‘s clothes at their most Surreal give their wearer agency.

This agency is evident in Vertès‘ illustration of Schiaparelli‘s Inkwell hat for

Harper’s Bazaar where the wearer uses the plumed quill of her hat to sign Vertès‘ signature, to literally finish drawing herself into existence. Caroline

Evans explains the illustration: ―Here, perhaps, is Schiaparelli writing herself

into existence or, perhaps, for she is a designer, drawing herself. Vertès'

conceit is prescient: Schiaparelli, herself a self-made woman, contributed in

no small degree to other women's self-definition in her fashion designs of the

interwar years.‖566 Schiaparelli used the paranoiac-critical method to create

garments and accessories that gave their wearers the agency to transform

themselves into Surreal images of strange glamour.

Body Conscious

While the Surrealists strove to make objects that could fuse with

subjects, they never truly managed to achieve this union. Schiaparelli, on the

other hand, created clothes that could fuse with the body. Fashion must be

566 Evans, "Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins: Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentered Subject," 7.



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understood in relationship to the body that wears it. Clothes can shape and

mold the body, just as the body can reshape the clothes it wears. Thus the

fashion designer operates like the Surrealist artist whose intervention with an

object changes it to make it absurd, or uncanny as in the case of Meret

Oppenheim‘s fur covered tea cup, saucer, and spoon, Objet (1936), or Oscar

Dominguez‘s upholstered wheelbarrow, Broette (wheelbarrow, c. 1937). In

the designer‘s case, the object is a body. This is why clothes, particularly

shoes and gloves, have such an erotic charge in the work of Surrealist artists.

In Surrealist texts such as Breton‘s Nadja, ―traces of the woman are felt in her

sartorial shell, and evoke the metaphorical potential of clothing as

simulacra.‖567 Schiaparelli used these pieces of clothing to confuse and

conflate clothing and the body, as well as the outside and inside of the body.

In chapter two we saw how she conflated skin and fabric with her tattoo

collection, and inside and outside in her x-ray sweater.

These themes would return in later collections. We have already seen

how the High Heel hat and lip pockets have refigured the body in bizarre and

erotic ways. Schiaparelli‘s collaborations with Jean Cocteau for her Fall 1937

collection also reconfigured the body. Schiaparelli used Cocteau‘s sketches as

the basis for incredible embroidery and beadwork on a coat, dinner dress and

evening gown. These designs displaced parts of the body onto clothing,

confusing what was real and what was not. Cocteau, an artist, poet,

567Lehmann, "The Uncommon Object: Surrealist Concepts and Categories for the Material World," 25.



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playwright, and filmmaker, was well ensconced in both the world of art and

fashion by the 1930s. Like Dalí, he was part of Coco Chanel‘s circle. He was

also a frequent contributor of both sketches and articles to Vogue. Though

Cocteau may not have been officially associated with Surrealism, the press

drew this connection, and his designs were obviously in a Surrealist vein.568

A telling example is a blue silk coat adorned with the kind of double

image that fascinated Dalí and other Surrealists. The back of the coat is

decorated with two profiles facing each other, their outlines also forming the

shape of a footed vase full of roses sitting on a column. (Figure 178) The flutes

of the column create the illusion of pleats running down the bottom of the

coat. This design is precisely the kind of oscillating double image that the

Surrealists, particularly Dalí, championed. Schiaparelli‘s use of multiple

materials to achieve the design—gold metal, red silk, and pink silk appliqué—

creates multiple dimensions playing up the oscillation between the image of

the vase and the faces. The interest in double images also appeared on the

pages of Harper’s Bazaar in an illustration of accessories in December 1936

that could be turned upside-down to reveal a second set of accessories and

captions. (Figure 179) In this brilliant illustration, Erik Nitsche created hats

that morph into scarves and collars when the magazine is turned upside-

down. Magazines were picking up on the interest in double images in both

the art and fashion world.

568 "The Paris Collections Are Offering Three Lengths for Evening Skirts," New York Times, 30 May1937, 62.



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The body comes more fully into view in Schiaparelli‘s and Cocteau‘s

second collaboration, a grey linen dinner jacket adorned with Cocteau‘s

contour drawing of a woman‘s profile. (Figure 180) Her hair, in gold bugle

beads, flows down the left sleeve of the jacket. Her arm traces the lapel of the

jacket with a hand curving around the waist of the wearer, its pink polished

fingers holding a pair of silver gloves. In L’Officiel , the dress was shown with

two tone gloves, mimicking those on the jacket. In this design the

embroidered woman seems to embrace the wearer, her embroidered hand

potentially confused for the real hand of the wearer. Again Schiaparelli

experiments with trompe l‘oeil, teasing the viewer, and provocatively inviting

touch. The final collaboration with Cocteau in this collection was even more

provocative: a figure-hugging mossy pink silk crepe gown with swaths of

flowers in yellow, green, and blue sequins with a hand reaching across the

décolletage covering the right breast. (Figure 181 central image) This design

was imported to New York in the Spring of 1937 by Bergdorf Goodman.

Hands had been a recurring theme in Schiaparelli‘s work, from fabric

prints to belts to pins. Dilys Blum notes that Schiaparelli‘s fall 1934

collection, in particular, was preoccupied with hands, coinciding with an

article in Minotaure illustrated with a series of photographs of hands in

different attitudes.569 Schiaparelli made a number of different hand

569 Jeweler Paul Flato, whose designs frequently appeared on celebrities both on and off the silverscreen, was also interested in hands. In 1938 he created a series of pins in the gestures of sign-language letters. The pins could be purchased in any configuration. Especially popular were initials.Katherine Hepburn wore one of these pins in the film Holiday (1938).



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accessories for this collection including belt fasteners, buttons, and purse

fasteners. (Figure 182) A series of clips were also made by the jeweler Jean

Schlumberger, some of which may have been used by Man Ray and Surrealist

photographer Claude Cahun in their work.570 Schiaparelli continued to

incorporate hands in her designs, often as ―Victorian whimsies,‖ as her

designs became more nostalgic.571

In addition to these hand accessories, Schiaparelli was also

preoccupied with gloves in a number of her collections. Gloves were a potent

symbol in Nadja, becoming a simulacrum for women. Breton talks about his

uncanny feeling at a woman removing her sky- blue glove: ―I don‘t know what

there can have been, at that moment, so terribly, so marvelously decisive for

me in the thought of that glove leaving that hand forever.‖572 The same

woman also possessed a bronzed glove that Breton uses to illustrate this page.

In this passage a hand is conflated with a glove and a bronze sculpture. In

Nadja, ―intimacy is always mediated, for Breton, by the displaced objects of

desire, those objects—be they Nadja‘s glove, her clothes, or the city itself—on

which he focuses attention.‖573 The glove is conflated and confused with the

woman. The glove functions as l’explosante-fixe, embodying the potential to

take on a life of its own. Breton‘s work underlines the glove‘s close connection

to the body that was integral to Schiaparelli‘s playful designs. In addition to

570 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 122.571 Ibid, 131.572 Breton, Nadja, 56.573 Fer, "Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis," 183.



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Schiaparelli‘s gloves with faux nails and veins, discussed above, she

experimented with a number of other uncanny designs in the 1930s. She

created evening gloves for her Winter 1938-39 collection with metal claws.

(Figure 183) These accessories obviously played on the idea of the femme

fatale, a woman letting her talons show. Instead of covering claws with

elegant gloves, this pair allowed a woman to put on claws or take them off at

her will.

Other gloves also played on the idea of woman as animal. Harper’s

Bazaar describes one such pair: ―Schiaparelli‘s humor persists. Bright red

snakeskin inserted between the fingers of black antelope gloves to make your

hands look like little paws.‖574 (Figure 184) Other pairs used fur to create the

look of paws. (Figure 185)(Figure 186) These gloves mocked the idea that

women were more primitive, more animalistic, a notion popular with the

Surrealists. Caroline Evans explains that ―often [Schiaparelli‘s] use of fur…

disturbs conv entional associations with softness and femininity.‖575 In 1938

Schiaparelli created a pair of long gloves with garters, and a few month later

she showed spats worn as gloves, confusing the arms with legs. (Figure 187)

In all of these cases, Schiaparelli exploits the surreal and erotic potential of

gloves. She used them to transform women into femmes fatales, animals, or

even to change arms into legs. Gloves are conflated with hands, as they are in

the work of Breton. We can also see this theme reflected in a number of

574 “Schiaparelli Hands out a Frenzy of Excitement," Harper’s Bazaar (15 March 1938), 133.575 Evans, "Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins: Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentered Subject," 3.



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fashion magazine covers that also animated gloves, including Surrealist

Georgio de Chirico‘s cover of Vogue where gloves appear in a Surreal still life,

and another Vogue cover by Raymond De Lavererie in which a glove comes to

life to feed a bird a grape-shaped broach. (Figure 188)(Figure 189)

Schiaparelli‘s most surreal works often resulted from her conflation of

clothing with the whole body. These were often her most sexually explicit

designs in which the body skimming style of 1930s gowns was used to subvert

the wholeness of the body itself. Unlike gloves, which were meant to be

removed in public, a gown was not taken off in public, and thus has a closer

relationship with the body that wears it. In 1936 she designed a series of

dresses on which she appliquéd decorative padding over the breasts. (Figure

190) This decorative detail mimicked the padding often sewn into a custom

couture gown to enhance the breasts.576 The ―falsies‖ gowns not only changed

the shape of the body wearing it, but revealed the illusion created by the

couture gown. Diana Vreeland remembered these gowns fondly in her

autobiography: ―I can remember a dress I had of Schiaparelli‘s that had fake

ba-zooms—these funny little things that stuck out here. When you sat down,

they sort of went…all I can say is that it was terribly chic. Don‘t ask me why

but it was.‖577 This was a particularly humorous gesture at a time when larger

breasts were coming back into fashion and women were using ―falsies.‖ It is

576 "Schiaparelli Evening Dress: T.36-1964," Victoria and Albert Museum,http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O133559/evening-dress/.577Diana Vreeland, D.V., ed. George Plimpton and Christopher Hemphill (New York: Vintage Books,1985), 125.



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also a biting commentary on the masquerade of femininity, raising questions

about the assumptions viewers make about what clothing reveals about the

body underneath it.

After a long period of emphasis on slim boyish silhouettes, the

hourglass figure began to come back into fashion, partly because of the

popularity of the voluptuous Mae West. Schiaparelli discusses this

development in her autobiography, writing that the most modern of the

―falsies‖ were called ―‗Very Secret‘ and they were blown up with a straw as if

you were sipping crème de menthe.‖578 This description provides an

intriguing context for Dalí‘s Aphrodisiac Dinner Jacket (1936), which was

made the same year as Schiaparelli‘s ―falsies‖ dresses.579 (Figure 191) The

assemblage consists of a smoking jacket covered in shot glasses with crème de

menthe and straws. Inside of the jacket was an advertisement for the

―Diamond Dee Uplift‖ bra with the image of the bra at about chest height. It

is possible that Dalí was also making a comment on the ―falsies‖ trend. He

had most certainly created a garment that was at once masculine and

feminine and loaded with erotic references. Both Schiaparelli and Dalí

respond to viewers‘ visual consumption of the body. Dalí invited viewers to

literally consume, by drinking his shot glasses of crème de menthe.

578 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 89.579 It‟s also interesting to note that Duchamp and Enrico Donati‟s cover for Le Surréalism en 1947:

Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme included an actual foam rubber “falsie” on the cover with the

inviting phrase “prière de toucher” (“please touch”). Mileaf, Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist

Objects after the Readymade, 1-2.



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Schiaparelli meets the viewer‘s gaze head on, revealing the construction of the

female body through fashion.

A number of Schiaparelli‘s other designs also drew attention to the

breasts, and their erotic potential. In 1937 Schiaparelli showed ―suggestive

brassière-formed bodices.‖580 This new silhouette was tailored to hug the

body, creating a second skin in a way distinct from the classic bias cut dresses

of the 1930s. An illustration from Vogue shows one of these dresses worn

with an exuberant ―Scheherazade‖ hat whose sweeping shape seems to mirror

the brassière shape of the bodice.581 (Figure 192) This was the same collection

that included the High Heel hat and the Lip suit, two other designs that

experimented with displacing parts of the body. Schiaparelli‘s designs

frequently called attention to the corporeal sexuality of the wearer, as well as

the viewer. These designs, particularly the ―falsies‖ dresses, acknowledge the

constructed nature of sexuality and gender. In this way the wearer of

Schiaparelli‘s garments is put in control of what is concealed and revealed.

The viewer of the garment is caught off guard when his gaze is met not by a

sexual ob ject, but by padding. Through these garments the viewer‘s gaze is

met by a sexual subject who returns his gaze with a playful wink.

580 “Vogue's Eye-View of Paris Sex Appeal," Vogue (1 September 1937), 75.581 The dress in Vogue may be the same as a green printed silk faille dress in the collection of theBrooklyn Museum now housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While the dress has been given adate of 1933-1935 by the museum, it appears to be the same green dress illustrated in Vogue. The Metdress included a number of Schiaparelli‟s trademark zippers, at the wrists and on the side seam near thewaist, adding to the sex appeal of the garment. Reeder, High Style: Masterworks from the Brooklyn

Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art , 104.



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In the years leading up the outbreak of World War II, Schiaparelli‘s

Surrealist winks began to turn more somber. In 1938 she presented her

―Circus‖ collection, that included the Inkwell hat, the Hen hat, clown hats as

well as Circus Tent veils. These were made in fabric to match the gowns in the

collection and could be worn with a small hat shaped like a snail or a small

fez. (Figure 193) The collection used a number of exuberant circus-inspired

embroideries, prints, buttons, and accessories featuring acrobats, elephants,

and merry-go-rounds. (Figure 194) It also included garments inspired by the

spirit of the circus with ―Surrealist touches, like snail toques, mouth pockets,

eye embroideries with gold eyelashes and dresses worn backwards.‖582 Two of

the Surrealist touches in the collection were collaborations with Dalí, the

Tear-Illusion Dress and the Skeleton Dress. (Figure 195)(Figure 196)

These dresses were notably darker than the rest of the collection. The

Tear-Illusion dress did not appear in either Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, nor in

any of the popular French fashion magazines, suggesting how revolutionary it

was. Only Harper’s Bazaar published the Skeleton dress.583 The Tear-

Illusion dress was made of pale blue silk crepe printed with trompe l‘oeil

patches of torn flesh. (Figure 197) The print was designed by Dalí to resemble

a series of his paintings including Necrophiliac Springtime (1936), owned by

Schiaparelli, and Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the

Skins of an Orchestra (1936). (Error! Reference source not found.) Both paintings

582 "By Wireless from Paris," New York Times, 13 February 1938, 84.583 “Harper's Folies," Harper’s Bazaar (15 March 1938), 70-71.



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featured women with heads of flowers wearing torn white dresses. In

Schiaparelli‘s translation the blue dress is printed with tears in Dalí‘s tromp

l‘oeil style. The tears reveal the pink underside of the fabric and a darker pink

revealed in the holes. The dress is worn with a ―circus tent‖ veil which,

instead of the trompe l‘oeil print, has actual cut-away flaps of the blue

material, revealing the same dark purple-pink underneath. These tears are

ambiguous. Dilys Blum reads them as torn patches of fur: ―as if the gown

were made from an animal skin turned inside out.‖584 Caroline Evans writes

that ―They are the colors of bruised and torn flesh; yet it is completely unclear

whether the illusion is meant to suggest torn fabric or flesh. Is the cloth below

the "tears" textile or skin? Do the rips designate poverty (rags not riches) or

some form of attack?‖585 The strange color combination of the gown, even

more difficult to imagine now that the colors have faded, confounds our

expectations. The blue fabric of the gown is torn to reveal not the skin of the

wearer, but the viscera, as if fabric and skin are one and the same. This is the

very illusion Dalí creates in his paintings.

As we have seen, the conflation of clothes and body has been a

prominent theme in the work of Schiaparelli. This dress was worn with a pair

of opera length pink gloves with two strips of ruffled material that ran the

length of the gloves. The delicate dress gives the illusion of vulnerability and

exposure, but paired with its matching full length flesh colored gloves, the

584 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 139.585 Evans, "Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins: Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentered Subject," 11.



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ensemble almost completely envelopes the wearer‘s body. As it typical with

Schiaparelli, the viewer thinks that the clothes reveal more of the body

beneath than they actually do. Schiaparelli‘s friend and collaborator Leonor

Fini was also fond of creating images of women with ripped clothing. Her

biographer Peter Webb goes as far as to suggest Fini as a possible source for

Dalí‘s imagery in the Tear-Illusion dress.586 As with Schiaparelli‘s dress, these

women are not being victimized, but are strong protagonists in her paintings.

Peter Webb writes that Fini‘s paintings from the 1930s ―mark an important

stage in the progress of Leonor‘s art… They create an erotic dream world in

which women are in control.‖587 This is particularly evident in her 1938 Self-

Portrait with Scorpion in which she is fashionably posed in a brown shirt

with mutton chop sleeves, torn at the elbow and wrist. Her single white glove

is turned up to reveal a scorpion‘s tail, or perhaps simply a brooch. Just as

Fini created erotic images of women in control, Schiaparelli created erotic

gowns for women to wear that kept them in control. Some of these were worn

by Fini herself.588

The Tear-Illusion dress is not merely an expression of sexuality.

Richard Martin rightly points out ―at the time of the Spanish Civil War, when

Fascism was spreading throughout Europe, the references to shattered glass

and rent fabric would have held strong implications for both the political and

586 Webb, Sphinx: The Art and Life of Leonor Fini, 64.587 Ibid, 77.588 Schiaparelli lent dresses to Fini, as she did to many other famous women as a way of advertising.Ibid, 33.



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visual worlds.‖589 This macabre gown‘s presence in an otherwise joyful

collection is related to the impending war. In 1936 German troops had

reoccupied the Rhineland and the country was remilitarizing in violation of

the treaty of Versailles. The same year, Schiaparelli‘s native Italy had

conquered Ethiopia. Years before Schiaparelli had become a French citizen,

but she felt the weight of being Italian in these years. She wrote in her

autobiography, ―Personally I never experienced during that difficult period

any antagonism from friends or newspapers. The fact that I was Italian born

was never referred to but I could not help thinking about it, and it hurt me as

a missing limb hurts when the weather is about to change.‖590 In her

autobiography, published in 1954, she made sure to tell readers that while

visiting Italy she had been invited to meet Mussolini, but refused.591 1937

had seen a metaphoric face off between Germany and the Soviet Union on the

Trocadero at the Paris International Exposition. Picasso‘s haunting w ork

Guernica (1937) appeared in the Spanish pavilion at the Exposition,

representing the horrors occurring during the Spanish Civil War. Schiaparelli

wrote that in the years just before the war: ―the Parisian women, as if feeling

it was their last chance, were particularly chic.‖592 The circus collection in

many ways reflected this sentiment.

589 Martin, Fashion and Surrealism, 136.590 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 99.591 Ibid, 77.592 Ibid, 100.



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The Tear-Illusion dress also serves as evidence of a complex Surrealist

sensibility, creating an uncanny comparison between the actual tears and the

trompe l‘oeil ones. Schiaparelli undercuts the elegant shape of the gown with

the menacing tears and the uncanny pairing of reality and illusion. Caroline

Evans writes that in the Tear-Illusion dress, ―Schiaparelli…plays with ideas

normally antithetical to fashion, countering poise and tranquility with

violence and anxiety.593 Since the heyday of Punk, in the late 1970s, torn

clothing has been part of the fashion landscape, and Schiaparelli‘s work is an

important predecessor.

Her clothes do not reflect the idea of random violence, the patina of

wear, or the rags of poverty that are evoked by ripped styles popular in the last

half decade or so. Instead, she combines elegance with violence. She renders

the tears with exacting precision, whether in the print, or the cut panels of the

veil. The violence enacted on this gown is the result of careful calculation.

Schiaparelli is not a designer whose work we would automatically associate

with violence but her contemporaries did. Jean Cocteau explained that,

whereas in other times only a few mysterious and privileged women dressed themselves with great individuality and by the violence of their garb destroyed the ―moderne‖ style, in 1937 a woman like Schiaparelli can invent for all women—for each woman in particular—that violence which was once the privilegeof the very few.594

593Evans, "Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins: Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentered Subject," 11.594 Jean Cocteau, "From Worth to Alex," Harper’s Bazaar (March 1937), 143, 172.



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Schiaparelli‘s fashions are violent because they defy our expectations. Instead

of an elegant gown we get torn flesh, and the viewer is again confounded when

he or she realizes that the whole garment is meant to trick the eye.

The Skeleton dress was another shocking inversion of our expectations

of elegant eveningwear. As we have seen, the idea of displacing the inside of

the body onto the outside of the clothes had been of interest to Schiaparelli

since the beginning of her career. The Skeleton dress was in many ways the

ultimate expression of this theme. A sketch by Dalí gives some sense of the

garment‘s origin. (Figure 198) Dalí‘s original sketch of skeletons swathed in

transparent drapery dress with stylized bones, even included his ideas for

bags. He writes at the bottom of the page ―Dear Elsa I like this idea of ‗bones

on the outside‘ enormously.‖595 Perhaps the idea arose from a conversation

between the two. Schiaparelli had been attracted to this idea for quite some

time as well, and had experimented with the skeleton in the late 1920s in her

x-ray sweater. She transformed Dalí‘s sketch into a black silk crepe evening

gown with a high neck and long sleeves. The silk crepe was a natural choice

since it had been favored for decades as a fabric appropriate for mourning due

to its matte finish. Schiaparelli forms the bones with padded ridges following

Dalí‘s stylized design. (Figure 199) A pelvic bone with padded lines

emanating from it forms the leg bones; ribs hug the bust and continue onto

the back of the dress where a spine runs the length of the torso. (Figure 200)

595 “Cher Elsa j‟aime enormement c‟idee des „os a l‟exterieur.” My translation from a reproduction of

the sketch in: Blum, "Fashion and Surrealism," 147.



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The sleeves have a simple line running down them with a curlicue suggesting

the elbow joint.

Dilys Blum connects this design to the circus theme, citing the skeleton

man in the freak show as its origin.596 Yet this dress is more likely aligned

with the melancholy aberration of the Tear-Illusion dress in the collection.

Caroline Evans argues that images of the inside of the body and the skeleton

in fashion are always linked with death.597 This dress could thus be read in

line with the claw gloves as a humorous reflection of the idea of the femme

fatale, a woman whose aggressive sexuality threatens the men that she

ensnares. Many of Schiaparelli‘s designs played off of this idea, including her

metal claws gloves. The Skeleton dress brought to life the idea of sex and

death embodied in the figure of a woman, while also toying with a viewer‘s

expectations. As opposed to clinging to the body, the way an evening gown

was expected to in the 1930s, revealing every curve, this dress revealed a

woman‘s bones instead. The dress becomes even more strangely macabre

when seen with the hat Schiaparelli designed for it: a black circus tent veil

topped with a snail-shaped cap. With its morose veil, the gown becomes a

frightful image of mourning, an omen of the images of the emaciated victims

of Hitler. The Skeleton dress only appeared in one fashion magazine,

Harper’s Bazaar, which proclaimed this dress, and other garments in the

Circus collection to be ―Designed Especially for Coo Coo the Bird Girl by

596 Ibid, 147.597 Evans, Fashion at the Edge : Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness, 224.



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Schiaparelli‖ alluding to the malnourished figure the dress evoked.598 The

strange glamour of the design is evident in the accompanying illustration by

Vertés. (Figure 201)

The Tear-Illusion dress and particularly the Skeleton dress also moved

beyond this reference to current events to offer a commentary on fashion‘s

own connection with death. Writing at the same time Schiaparelli was

designing, Walter Benjamin most eloquently explained the w ay that fashion‘s

relentless quest for the new, tied it firmly to our own mortality.599 He

explains that ―fashion has opened the business of dialectical exchange

between woman and ware— between carnal pleasure and the corpse. The

clerk, death, tall and loutish, measures the century by the yard.‖600 Fashion is

a system predicated on obsolescence, it depends on the death of old styles to

create room for fresh ones. Thus, fashion always carries within it the specter

of its own death. For Benjamin the way in which obsolescence was built into

fashion is what makes fashion emblematic of modernity, in which everything

eventually becomes outmoded.

Benjamin argues that, ―fashion was never anything other than the

parody of the motley cadaver, provocation of death through the woman, and

bitter colloquy with decay whispered between shrill bursts of mechanical

598 “Harper's Folies," 71.599 Benjamin started the project in 1927 the same year a Schiaparelli‟s first collection, and work ceased

with his suicide in 1940.600 Benjamin, The Arcades Project , 62-3.



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laughter. That is fashion.‖601 In 1937 poet and artist Jean Cocteau described

Schiaparelli and her boutique in remarkably similar terms:

Schiaparelli is above all the dressmaker of eccentricity. Has shenot the air of a young demon who tempts women, who leads themad carnival in a burst of laughter? Her establishment on thePlace Vendôme is a devil's laboratory. Women who go there fallinto a trap, and come out masked, disguised, deformed orreformed, according to Schiaparelli‘s whim.602

Cocteau describes Schiaparelli as a devil, relating the metamorphoses she

enacts on her customers to deals made with death. Schiaparelli herself

reflects on this in her autobiography: ―Dress designing, incidentally, to me is

not a profession but an art. I found that it was a most difficult and

unsatisfying art, because as soon as a dress is born it has already become a

thing of the past…A dress cannot just hang like a painting on the wall, or like a

book remain intact and live a long and sheltered life.‖603 The Skeleton dress

represents the quality of death inherent in fashion. It also reflects the

mortality of its wearer, as it fuses with her body. Both the Skeleton dress and

the Tear-Illusion dress reassert the corporality and mortality of the clothed

body and emphasize its vulnerability. At the same time, they shield the

wearer from the voyeuristic gaze, upending the conventions of the slinky

evening gowns of the late 1930s.

601 Ibid, 63.602 Cocteau, "From Worth to Alex," 172.603 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 42.



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Surreal Shopping

In 1935 Schiaparelli had moved her business to Place Vendôme, where

it would remain until she closed her doors in 1954. Schiaparelli‘s first major

shop had been at 4 Rue de La Paix. (Figure 202) The space, like many of the

couture salons of Paris, looked more like a home than a shop. Schiaparelli

mixed art, books, and photographs with clever displays of scarves and

handbags. Her work table was a simple board laid over two saw horses, a

brilliant contrast to the parquet floors and an intricate fireplace at the center

of the room. Schiaparelli‘s new headquarters also blended the sleek and

modern with the antique. Designed by Jean Michel Frank, the space reflected

her avant-garde style. Frank streamlined the 98 rooms Schiaparelli had taken

on at 21 Place Vendôme, painting them white and using chintz, denim, cotton

pique and gingham to furnish the spaces. The sculptor Alberto Giacometti, a

refugee from Breton‘s camp, who had made jewelry for Schiaparelli,

contributed light fixtures and ashtrays.604 (Figure 203) It was Giacometti‘s

design work for Frank that had led to his expulsion from Breton‘s cadre.

Schiaparelli‘s new space included not only the traditional couture

salon, where collections were shown and women could be fitted in her

designs, but also a perfume shop and a boutique called alternately the ―Schiap

Shop,‖ ―Schiap Boutique‖ or the ― Boutique Fantastique.‖605 This was her own

unique innovation, adding to the custom couture business a shop where

604 “Schiaparelli at 21 Place Vendôme," Harper’s Bazaar (October 1935), 154.605 Schiaparelli calls it the “Schiap Boutique” in idem, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa

Schiaparelli, 65.



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customers could buy ―off the rack‖ dresses, knitwear, beachwear, lingerie,

hats, jewelry, and bags.606 Schiaparelli designed her atelier so that customers

were forced to walk through the boutique in order to approach the grand

staircase that led up to her salons on the second floor.607 This method of

directing visitors was used with great success by the Surrealists in their 1937

Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme. This idea was nothing new for

Schiaparelli though. According to biographer Palmer White, at her earlier

location on Rue de la Paix, her ready to wear items were displayed on ―glass

pickle jars decorated with eyelashes made of paper or feathers and red leather

lips.‖608 From the start, Schiaparelli‘s stores had embraced the ready -made

flea market aesthetic of Surrealism.

At her new home at 21 Place Vendôme, Schiaparelli was not only able

to innovate her business practices, but also her artistic ones. These worked

hand in hand to build her fame and reputation as ―madder and more original

than her contemporaries.‖609 Schiaparelli‘s shop appeared to be f urnished out

of the same Paris flea markets popular with the Surrealists. The perfume

shop became famous for the gilded cage that Frank had designed for its

window that mimicked the popular Victorian bird cages that Schiaparelli

collected.610 A new member of the Schiaparelli staff, Pascal, resided here.

606 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 71.607 White, Elsa Schiaparelli: Empress of Paris Fashion, 161.608 Ibid, 86.609 “Haute Couture," Time (13 August 1934), 50.610 Marisa Berenson, Schiaparelli‟s granddaughter, talks about her birdcage collection, and connects it

to Schiaparelli‟s favorite Picasso painting, The Bird Cage in: David Vincent, "Schiaparelli: The



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Pascal, an old fashioned wooden mannequin that Schiaparelli had acquired

for display, was eventually given a wife Pascaline. Bettina Bergery, who

traveled in the same artistic circles as Schiaparelli, was responsible for the

store‘s unique displays. Pascale was not used to display Schiaparelli‘s clothes,

but was a platform for Bergery‘s wildly imaginative ensembles that made the

―Schiap Shop‖ a must see destination for Paris tourists.

Bergery (formerly Bettina Jones) was an American who had been

working with Schiaparelli since the late 1920s. She was married to Gaston

Bergery, a prominent French politician who, according to the Chicago

Tribune, was ―making a name for himself as the future Stalin of France.‖611 In

addition to her political connections, Bergery was also well connected to the

Surrealists, particularly Dalí who, in his autobiography named her amongst

his closest friends, writing, ―the soul and biology of the Schiaparelli

establishment was Bettina Bergery, one of the women of Paris most highly

endowed with fantasy. She exactly resembled a praying mantis, and she knew

it.‖612 Bergerey‘s window displays were so famous that they even made it onto

the pages of Harper’ s Bazaar in 1937. The magazine showed photographs of

a mannequin made of code flags, a scarecrow holding Schiaparelli‘s perfumes,

and Pascal or Pascaline dressed ―in underwear of red roses, with the

Shocking Truth," Harper’s Bazaar (September 2009), 473. See for example photographs in: Boylan,"The Schiaparelli Dynasty," 130-135.611 In 1936 Schiaparelli traveled to the Soviet Union to participate in a French Trade Fair in Moscow.This trip was controversial particularly in light of Bergery‟s associat ion with Schiaparelli, giving fuelto a conservative French paper to accuse Schiaparelli of communist leanings. Taylor Edmond, "RedMob Stones French Police in Ballot Riot," Chicago Daily Tribune, 30 April 1934, 1. Blum, Shocking!:

The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 74.612 Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, 340.



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(inevitable) butterfly on her bosom.‖613 (Figure 204) Berger‘s displays shared

the Surrealist‘s esthetic, particularly for using found objects. For example, the

display with Pascal includes, ―one of those fearful Niagara Falls souvenir

boxes encrusted with shells.‖614 This is precisely the sort of unfashionable

knick-knack that Breton would have gravitated towards at the Paris Flea

Market. Breton and the Surrealists shared more with fashionable Parisians

then they may have cared to admit, since women such as Schiaparelli and

Bergery often frequented the Paris Flea Market. These women were looking

for the same kinds of outmoded found objects that the Surrealists were

interested in. Harper’s Bazaar included a spread on ―The Junk Markets of

Paris and London,‖ in its January 1934 issue, advising readers that at ―the

famous flea market of Paris…almost any Saturday or Sunday, you can pick up,

for a song, Louis XV bureaus, Directoire stools, music boxes, dressmakers

dummies, pewter, opaline, chessman, fleas.‖615 Through the Surrealists may

not have not looking for antique furniture, they would certainly have been

interested in the dressmaker‘s dummies. In addition to found objects from

the flea market, Bergery and Schiaparelli also enlisted some of Dalí‘s

Surrealist objects for use in the store, such as his sofa shaped like the lips of

Mae West, and the previously mentioned pink stuffed bear with bureau

drawers. The bear was dressed in a silk jacket and Bergery used the drawers

to display jewelry.

613 “Schiaparelli's Window Dolls " Harper’s Bazaar (June 1937), 143.614 Ibid 143.615 “The Junk Markets of Paris and London," Harper’s Bazaar (January 1934), 72-3.



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In addition to drawing in customers with clever and sometimes

shocking windows, Schiaparelli also used her name and signature in

prominent and clever ways on her clothes, accessories and perfume.

Schiaparelli managed to not only build her name as a fashion brand but also

as an artist's signature that guaranteed the avant-garde nature of her

creations. As part of her inaugural collection at Place Vendôme, she had

cotton and silk printed to look like a collage of newspaper clippings that she

had saved, both good and bad press on her work. The fabric, which some

fashion scholars have connected to Picasso‘s collages, was used for many

designs including hats inspired by the newspaper hats of Copenhagen

fishwives.616 (Figure 205) (Figure 206) Other designs featured her signature

S, including a clever belt with a lock emblazoned with the initial. (Figure 207)

Such designs married with Schiaparelli‘s signature, or simply the initial S,

helped to cement her reputation in the minds of followers of fashion who

knew she could be counted on for witty, unique, and unusual fashion.

Schiaparelli always insisted on speaking about herself as an artist. Chanel‘s

snide remark that she was ―that Italian artist who‘s making clothes,‖ must

have come as an unintentional compliment.617 Her revealing retort was that

Chanel was ―that dreary little bourgeoise.‖618 Of course being bourgeois was

code for being a conservative prude, everything that Schiaparelli and the

616 White, Elsa Schiaparelli: Empress of Paris Fashion, 134. Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The

Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 68. Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli,71.617 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 125.618 White, Elsa Schiaparelli: Empress of Paris Fashion, 92.



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Surrealists opposed. Using bourgeois as a slur was, for Schiaparelli, another

way of aligning herself with artists and the avant-garde.

By the mid-1930s, Schiaparelli‘s name had become synonymous with

artistic, whimsical, and daring fashions and accessories. She reliably provided

several eye-catching images for Vogue‘s column, ―Collection Caviar,‖ or Diana

Vreeland‘s column, ―Why Don‘t You…?‖ in Harper’s Bazaar. By July 1935,

Bazaar was referring to these classic flourishes as ―Schiaparelli-isms.‖619

Schiaparelli had turned her name into a brand, but more importantly a

fashion aesthetic. The value of this brand is apparent from the number of

products that used her endorsements in their advertisements in American

fashion magazines.620 Schiaparelli lent her name to everything from girdles

to nail polish to Wrigley‘s gum. Schiaparelli also ensured that women of all

means could afford at least some of her products. Unlike Chanel who insisted

on having the costliest perfume, Schiaparelli insisted hers be affordable,

particularly in the US and Britain where she had an enormous following.621

At the same moment Surrealism itself was shifting from being an

artistic movement to being a brand, eventually used to sell everything from

neckties and fur coats, to lipstick and perfume. In 1936 the word ―Surrealist‖

was copyrighted by the Celanese Corporation of America for a series of dress

619 “Schiaparelli-Isms," Harper’s Bazaar (July 1935), 30-1.620 It is worth noting that Schiaparelli was probably more famous and popular in American than shewas in France. Her designs certainly appeared much more frequently in American fashion magazines.Perhaps her eccentric style was too much for traditional French couture audiences, but it fit perfectlywith the American taste for shock and scandal.621 White, Elsa Schiaparelli: Empress of Paris Fashion, 158.



294

fabrics inspired by Miro, Dalí, and Ernst.622 While Breton may have resisted

this transition, the movement had spread into the popular and shamelessly

commercial realm. Covers of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the 1930s often

featured either the work of a Surrealist artist or a Surrealist-inspired

illustration. As early as 1935, Pierre Roy and Giorgio de Chirico were

illustrating the covers of Vogue. Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, and others were

creating Surrealist images inside of fashion magazines, often to complement

the Surrealist designs by Schiaparelli that they were illustrating. While many

credit MoMA‘s 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism as

bringing Surrealism to popular audiences in the United States, followers of

fashion would have been well aware of the movement through fashion

magazines. Dalí, in particular, was credited with helping to forge the

Surrealist ―brand‖:

Dalí‘s work after 1932 is often said to evince a loss of creativedrive. Another way of explaining it is to see his repetition aspart of a strategy…aimed at promoting familiarity, even a sort of brand loyalty… By the late 1930s, Dalí‘s burning giraffes andsoft watches were safe, proven, reliable Surrealism, the standard by which competitors were measured.623

Dalí never hesitated to brand his art as Surrealist, often using the word in

his titles. Dalí‘s collaborations with Schiaparelli were also a part of this brand

strategy.624

622 Dilys E. Blum, "Post-War American Textiles," in Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design, ed.Ghislaine Wood (London: V&A Publications, 2007), 235.623 Eggener, "'An Amusing Lack of Logic': Surrealism and Popular Entertainment," 42.624 Duchamp was an obvious precursor to this kind of “branding” in art; see chapter one.



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Schiaparelli‘s shop was a new kind of space in which art and commerce

met and mingled. She was going further than women such as Helena

Rubinstein, who used art as a merchandising tool in her salons. Schiaparelli

was using art, display techniques, perfume, and her fashion designs to create

a multisensory experience for her customer. In Schiaparelli‘s salon, art was

not just décor, it was what was for sale. Salvador Dalí wrote about her store as

the crux of Surrealism in the 1930s:

the war which was soon to break out and which was going to

liquidate the post– war [WWI] revolutions was symbolized, not by the surrealist polemics in the café on the Place Blanche, or bythe suicide by my great friend René Crevel, but the dressmakingestablishment which Elsa Schiaparelli was about to open on thePlace Vendôme. Here new morphological phenomena occurred;here the essence of things was to become transubstantiated;here the tongues of fire of the Holy Ghost of Dalí was going todescend.625

Dalí captured the way that Schiaparelli‘s boutique looked toward the future,

as fashion always does, predicting the coming war. Schiaparelli also talks

about the forward-looking nature of her practice:

so fashion is born by small facts, trends, or even politics,never by trying to make little pleats and furbelows, by trinkets, by clothes easy to copy, or by the shortening or lengthening of askirt… The world was being pulled from ever y side like a tired balloon. One could not forget that one carried, like a steel ballchained to the ankle, the stark business side, but one had tosense the trend of history and precede it.626

She also connects the boutique directly with Surrealism and the avant-garde.

Schiaparelli‘s shop used the trope of the readymade, invented by the Dadaists,

625 Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, 340.626 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 88-89.



296

and taken up by the Surrealists. She placed found objects alongside her

―ready to be taken away immediately‖ merchandise.627 She was selling

fashions and accessories, many of which looked like readymades. Belts with

locks, sword pins, and newspaper hats—in her salon all of these objects

became works of art.

The May 1936 Exposition Surréaliste d’Objets at Charles Ratton

reflected the same aesthetic as the ―Schiap Boutique.‖ The objects were

displayed at Ratton‘s gallery as commodities in vitrines and included

readymades such as Duchamp‘s Bottle Rack (1914) as well as objects that

directly engaged with fashion including Dalí‘s Aphrodisiac Dinner Jacket

(1936) and Meret Oppenheim‘s My Nurse (1936)—a pair of white pumps

trussed like a turkey, down to white paper frills on the heels.628 These objects

were shown alongside Hopi kachina dolls, masks from New Guinea, and

found objects-both natural and manmade. Alyce Mahon describes the

exhibition as, ―nodding to the grands magasins with their luxurious interiors

lined with display cases to seduce the bourgeoisie, the exhibition staged

fashion, objects and furniture in a peculiarly Surrealist shopping bazaar.‖629

Mahon contends that this exhibition demonstrated that the Surrealists were

the ―first to recognize, but also to overturn, the dramatic potential and

627 Ibid, 65.628 It is entirely possible that this work formed part of the inspiration for the mutton chop hat.629 Alyce Mahon, "Displaying the Body: Surrealism‟s Geography of Pleasure," in Surreal Things :

Surrealism and Design, ed. Ghislaine Wood (London: V&A Publications, 2007), 124.



297

libidinous signification of the department store.‖630 She argues that the

Surrealists recognized the erotics of shopping and turned this bourgeois

spectacle on its head. The erotic potential of fashion and shopping, however,

had been understood long before the Surrealists. After all, what was Paul

Poiret‘s Thousand and Second Night party in 1911 but a living breathing sexy

advertisement for his new harem trousers, linking them to the exotic tales of

Scheherazade.

Exhibitionist Mannequins

In 1937 Paris sponsored the Exposition Internationale des Arts et

Techniques dans la Vie Moderne. The exhibition was significant for a number

of reasons. As discussed above, the exhibition came at a crucial moment

during the run up to World War II. Both Hitler and Stalin used their national

pavilions, that faced one another on the Trocadero, to show the

accomplishments of their regimes. In the Spanish Pavillion, Picasso‘s

Guernica served as evidence of the disastrous consequences of the rise of

fascism. Meanwhile, in the Pavillon d’Elégance, Elsa Schiaparelli was

creating a furor of her own in her typically shocking style. This event may not

have had political consequences, but it did reflect the tenuous tenor of the

times and had a profound impact on the Surrealists.

The Pavillon de l’Elégance at the Exposition Internationale, which

opened in June of 1937, featured a display by the most prominent couturiers

630 Ibid, 124.



298

in Paris. Their work was exhibited on mannequins designed by Robert

Couturier in an Arcadian landscape devised by Émile Aillaud.631 The style of

the display had been influenced by the biomorphic branch of Surrealism.

Contemporary critics linked the bizarre faceless mannequins the designers

were given to the work of de Chirico. The Surrealist feeling of the exhibition

space was played up by the German photographer Wolf Schulze, also known

as Wols. Wols, also a painter, was the only photographer permitted to

photograph the Pavillon d’Elégance. These photographs appeared in

publications all over the world and were sold at the Pavillon as postcards.

(Figure 208) Wols emphasized the strange quality of the mannequins and the

spaces they inhabited. His photographs animated these bizarre faceless

women, giving them an uncanny presence. This is particularly evident in his

photographs of the installation of the exhibition that were even more surreal,

full of disembodied limbs and strange shadows. (Figure 209)

Schiaparelli did not see the beauty Wols did in these Surreal

mannequins. She thought that they were ―in some respects hideous. All one

could do was to hide their absurdity under voluminous skirts.‖632 The

mannequins looked like the hysterical women who fascinated the Surrealists.

(Figure 210) Their massive arms gesticulated wildly with splayed fingers.

These mannequins would not do for Schiaparelli:

I naturally protested…Could I use Pascale, my wooden figure,and thus retain the atmosphere of the boutique Fantastique?

631 Ibid, 134.632 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 73-4



299

Certainly not, cried the pundits. That would be conspicuous andrevolutionary. So after much discussion I went and made myown show myself. I laid the dreary plaster mannequin, naked asthe factory had delivered it, on some turf and piled flowers over

it to cheer it up. I then stretched a rope across an open spaceand, as after washing day, hung up all the clothes of a smart woman, even to panties, stockings, and shoes. Nothing could besaid. I had carried out most strictly the decrees of the Syndicatde la Couture, but in such a way that on the first day a gendarmehad to be sent for to keep back the crowds!633

Schiaparelli‘s vignette excited the crowds because she had shocked the

Arcadian elegance by making her mannequin look like a corpse. Harper’s

Bazaar described the scene on opening day: ―Schiaparelli stretches a nude

figure on the ground, partially covered by a rug of flowers. On the opening

day, someone threw a visiting card on the blanket with condolences, so now

that lady has been jerked up to a sitting position, with her discarded dress and

hat thrown on a garden chair.‖634 Even this more sanitized version of

Schiaparelli‘s stunt was provocative—so provocative that her display did not

appear in any of the major French fashion magazines that reproduced a

number of the other couturiers‘ vignettes.635 According to Christine Mehring,

the fashion pavilion itself toned down the Surrealism of the mannequins and

fashion magazines in turn toned down the Surrealism in Wols‘

photographs.636 While this argument is certainly debatable, it ignores

Schiaparelli‘s contribution to the pavilion that plays up the uncanny

633 Ibid, 95.634 “Within the Pavillon d'Elegance," Harper’s Bazaar (15 September 1937), 78.635 Schiaparelli‟s tableau in Pavillon d’Elégance is not illustrated or mentioned in Femina, L’Art et la

Mode, or Jardin de la Mode.636 Christine Mehring, Wols Photographs (Cambridge: Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1999), 19.



300

mannequin: ―the surrealist combinations of the half-alive and half-dead.‖637

Schiaparelli emphasizes the uncanny by showing the mannequin as a corpse.

This treatment is very much in line with Schiaparelli‘s treatment of

mannequins in other contexts. In her autobiography she talks about Pascal

and Pascaline, her shop mannequins, as through they were employees.

Schiaparelli also describes her commission to design costumes for Mae West

with great surrealist aplomb in her autobiography: ―Mae West came to Paris.

She was stretched out on the operating-table of my work room, and measured

and probed with care and curiosity. She had sent me all the most intimate

details of her famous figure, and for greater accuracy a plaster statue of

herself quite naked in the pose of the Venus de Milo.‖638 In fact, West herself

did not come to Paris; instead she sent a dress form. Schiaparelli refers to the

form as though it were the actress herself. She also invokes the famous

operating table of the Compte de Lautréamont. Schiaparelli was well aware of

the Surrealist performance she was enacting at the Pavillon d’Elégance.

Schiaparelli‘s provocative gesture inspired the Surrealists to, by their

own description, violate several more conventional mannequins for their own

exhibition that opened on January 17th of the following year. At the

Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme visitors were ushered in through

the Rue Surréaliste that was lined with mannequins dressed by the artists.

(Figure 211) Man Ray claimed that,

637 Ibid, 20.638 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 88.



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in 1937 nineteen nude young women were kidnapped from the windows of the large stores and subjected to the frenzy of theSurrealists who immediately deemed it their duty to violatethem, each in his own original and inimitable manner but

without any consideration whatsoever for the feelings of the victims who nevertheless submitted with charming goodwill tothe homage and outrage that were inflicted on them, with theresult that they aroused the excitement of a certain Man Ray who undid and took out his equipment and recorded theorgy…639

Like Schiaparelli, the Surrealists sought to provoke, but their interpretation

invokes sexual violence. For Schiaparelli the gesture, while sexually

provocative, was not about violence but about the deathliness of mannequins.In the Surrealists‘ hands, mannequins were sexually available figures.

Their uncanny state was not between death and life, but between real and

unreal, subject and object. The 1938 Surrealist exhibition was set up

according to the same logic as Schiaparelli‘s shop. It was carefully designed to

direct visitors in specific directions. Kachur notes the historical continuities

between art exhibitions and commercial marketing:

The ideological exhibition space coincides historically with therise of the marketing of brand name goods, as well as the spreadof the site consecrated to such display, the department store.Not surprisingly, the display as spectacle has its overlappinghistories in the commercial and fine art realms. Exhibitionspace is often where the two most obviously mingle andcompete. This is notably true of the Surrealists, as witness theirmannequins, borrowed from the fashion houses and dressed bythe artists along a gauntletlike entry corridor for the 1938show.640

639 Man Ray, La Résurrection des Mannequins (Paris 1966), Quoted in Mahon, "Displaying the Body:Surrealism‟s Geography of Pleasure," 134-5.640 Kachur, Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and Surrealist Exhibition

Installations, 7-8.



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While the Surrealist exposition certainly had many similarities to the

spectacle of shopping at a department store, it was perhaps more akin to

Schiaparelli‘s Boutique Fantastique. Her boutique, the first of its kind, was

the space in which she cemented her brand identity. She sold ready to wear

garments, accessories, and perfumes that were more affordable than her

couture garments. Many of these traits were copied by the American

department stores, which also helped to spread her brand. Her fantastic

displays and windows made the shop a destination for tourists. As discussed

above, her use of found objects and the Surrealist constructions of Dalí and

Bettina Burgery made the shop a space of exhibition for these objects and

Schiaparelli‘s own designs.

Schiaparelli‘s shop took notes from department stores, ensuring that

customers spent the maximum amount of time in the space so they were more

likely to buy. The Surrealist Exhibition also forced viewers to experience the

space in a certain order and ―celebrated excess, camouflaged entrances and

exits so as to create a sense of all-encompassing enclosure and

disorientation.‖641 Like the Boutique Fantastique, the Surrealist Exposition

immersed visitors in a world of its own, trying to keep them in as long as

possible. In the exhibition, objects filled dimly lit spaces and ―paintings were

hung on revolving doors of a kind typical to the Bon Marché department

store.‖642 Visitors were provided with flashlights to view the exhibition,

641 Mahon, "Displaying the Body: Surrealism‟s Geography of Pleasure," 129.642 Ibid, 131.



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leading to an even more surreal experience.643 The gallery was next door to

Jean-Michel Frank‘s boutique where the overflowing crowd on opening night

loitered until they could enter the exhibition. Dalí‘s Mae West Lips couch was

in his shop, no doubt amongst many other Surrealist designs. As visitors

arrived outside the exhibition at the Galerie Beaux-Arts they first approached

Dalí‘s Rainy Taxi, their first taste of the bizarre mannequins they would

encounter inside. An ivy draped taxicab, whose interior was drenched in rain,

was home to two mannequins and a number of real snails. According to

Vogue, the car‘s leaking rain soaked the evening slippers of the well dressed

guests.644

Once guests managed to enter the exhibition they walked down a long

corridor, the Rue Surréaliste. The corridor was lined on one side with sixteen

mannequins, each dressed by a different artist.645 Like Schiaparelli, the

Surrealists had rejected the first batch of mannequins they were sent that

were too modern and abstract, preferring old fashioned ‗realistic‘ mannequins

with curly synthetic wigs and eyelashes.646 Interestingly, the only mannequin

to be designed by a woman, Sonia Mossé, included a number of Schiaparelli‘s

favorite themes: ―one dummy had a chalk white body with water lilies here

and there, a green beetle on her mouth, and tiny green lobsters on her body —

643 Acacia Rachelle Warwick, "Prefabricated Desire : Surrealism, Mannequins, and the Fashioning ofModernity" (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2006), 38.644 Bettina Wilson, "Surrealism in Paris," Vogue (1 March 1938), 144.645 For detailed descriptions and images of all 16 mannequins see “Mannequin Street” in Kachur, Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations ,37-67.646 Warwick, "Prefabricated Desire: Surrealism, Mannequins, and the Fashioning of Modernity", 38.



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the whole veiled in green tulle.‖647 Beetles had just appeared in Schiaparelli‘s

Fall 1938 collection (shown in April 1938), adorning dolls hats, and on a

clever clear necklace covered in plastic bugs that seemed to climb around the

wearer‘s neck.

Duchamp‘s mannequin was transformed into a risqué garçonne,

playing off his Rrose Sélavy alter ego. (Figure 212) The mannequin is dressed

in a polished men‘s suit complete with a vest, shiny shoes and a fedora over

her mass of shiny curls, but missing trousers. In place of a handkerchief, a

red light bulb peeks from her breast pocket. Duchamp signs the mannequin

on the crotch Rrose Sélavy. In Raoul Ubac‘s photograph of the mannequin

taken from a low angle, someone has pulled back the blazer to reveal the

signature of Rrose. This photograph attests to the sexual charge of Duchamp‘s

mannequin and reveals the strange glamour of this figure. As in Schiaparelli‘s

designs, Duchamp‘s mannequin combines male and female, not in a way that

reconciles the genders, but in a way that brings attention to the contradiction.

The emphasis on the mannequin‘s crotch, in particular, is revealing since this

is perhaps the least realistic part of the mannequin, displaying a complete

absence of genitals, an uncanny lack of labia. The revelation of genitals that

would verify this transvestite performance is disrupted. Lewis Kachur writes

that Duchamp‘s figure calls attention to the other male artists‘ ultimately

monotonous fetishization of the female body.‖ He argues that Duchamp‘s

work critiques the space it occupies, and through the authorship of Rrose

647 Wilson, "Surrealism in Paris," 144.



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Sélavy draws attention to ―the rather token presence of women artists (usually

with only one or two works) in this exhibition.‖648 Kachur takes this

argument a bit far. Duchamp‘s mannequin, while it certainly draws attention

to the construction of gender and sexuality in a distinctly different way from

the other Surrealist‘s work, is not a radical departure from the other

mannequins. With the light bulb and missing pants, this mannequin does not

challenge the viewer‘s sexual gaze in the way that many of Schiaparelli‘s

garments do, nor does it upend the conventions of the exhibition the way that

Schiaparelli did at the 1937 Exposition.

Andre Masson‘s mannequin, which stood to the right of Duchamp‘s, is

more typical of the male Surrealists‘ treatment of these female figures. (Figure

213) Masson gags his mannequin with green velvet, covering her mouth with

a pansy. A bird cage filled with goldfish surrounds her head with a small door

open so we get a clear view of her face. Instead of in the cage, birds are

nestled in her armpits. The only ―clothing‖ on the mannequin is a mirror

surrounded by tiger eyes and festooned with plumes. Masson‘s mannequin

also shares a number of themes with Schiaparelli‘s designs in the years

immediately before this exhibition. Like her mirror jacket, the mannequin‘s

reflective undergarment returns the gaze of the viewer, catching them in the

act of their scopophilic gaze.649 The eyes around the mirror are akin to the eye

buttons that Schiaparelli featured in a number of collections. Masson also


Installations, 47.649 Ibid, 48.



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uses a cage and flower, frequent themes for Schiaparelli both in her shop and

designs.650 While Schiaparelli‘s woman is usually in a position to escape her

cage, Masson‘s is not. Masson surely would have been exposed to some of

Schiaparelli‘s designs, as they were frequently worn by Surrealist women and

patrons. Though there is no way to know whether Masson was influenced by

Schiaparelli, it is unmistakable that Schiaparelli was working with the same

ideas that the Surrealists were at the same time. Often she was turning these

ideas on their head, giving her woman the agency that artists like Masson

often robbed her of.

In Salvador Dalí‘s mannequin, Schiaparelli found a small place of her

own in the exhibition. Dalí used Schiaparelli‘s Shocking pink chullo to cover

the head of his mannequin, a fact dutifully noted by Vogue.651 (Error! Reference

source not found.) The hood, which covered the entire head and shoulders of

the wearer, was inspired by a Peruvian chullo (a knitted hood) thatSchiaparelli saw in the Peruvian pavilion at the Paris Exposition. The hood

and a number of other items in her winter 1937-38 were inspired by the

garments in the Peruvian pavilion. (Figure 214) It‘s entirely possible that the

gloves and belt the mannequin wears were Schiaparelli‘s designs as well.652

650 The cage may have also been derived from Mrs. George Crawford‟s costume for Caresse Crosby‟s

1935 dream ball given in Dalí‟s honor. A clipping posted by Dalí with Crawford‟s photograph would

have lead viewers to draw this connection. A number of cages occupied the rest of the exhibiton aswell, both in paintings and Surrealist objects. Ibid, 50-1.651 This somewhat menacing garment was also worn by Chick Austin for his Surrealist “Magic on

Parade” show at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in 1939. Wilson, "Surrealism in Paris," 144.652 While no belts are pictured, in an article on Schiaparelli‟s Peruvian accessories, belts are given

special attention and it is reasonable to assume that she created some Peruvian inspired belts.“Peruvian Magic," Harper’s Bazaar (October 1937), 72.



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Dalí places a penguin head over the chullo and spoons cover the body of the

mannequin, again suggesting the idea of sexual consumption.653 A spoon-

covered mannequin inspired by Dalí‘s appeared in a shop on the Rue du

Faubourg Saint-Honoré during the run of the exposition. The mannequin

also sported men‘s shoes like Duchamp‘s mannequin and an oversized flower

at her waist.654

Alyce Mahon contends that, ―in presenting a vampish display of

fashionable femmes fatales, [the Rue Surréaliste] pointedly turned on its head

the poise and elegance of the exhibition of mannequins in an Arcadian setting

at the Pavillon de l’Elégance.‖655 As we have seen however, Schiaparelli‘s

nude mannequin had already disrupted the elegance of Exposition within the

space of the pavilion itself. In light of her radical gesture within the

Exposition, the Surrealist mannequins might even be seen as derivative and

simplistic. The thematic similarities between the Surrealists‘ mannequins and

Schiaparelli‘s designs prove that Schiaparelli neither translated Surrealist

ideas into fashion nor stole them. She was engaged with Surrealist ideas, and

often found ways to reconfigure them to reflect her own ideas about women‘s

changing role in society.


Installations, 57.654 Ibid, 58.655 Mahon, "Displaying the Body: Surrealism‟s Geography of Pleasure," 131.



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Mae West and Nostalgia

Articles of clothing of all sorts appeared throughout the Surrealist

exhibition—and not just on the mannequins. A Kurt Seligmann stool

(Ultrameuble, 1938) sported legs in pink stockings wearing black and pink

heels, a decidedly contemporary fashion surely inspired by Schiaparelli‘s own

Shocking pink. (Figure 215) One room in the exhibition was topped off by a

giant pair of bloomers, a garment from the nineteenth century, acting as a

chandelier. Oscar Dominguez‘s Jamais also fused a nineteenth century

Victrola with a pair of high heel shod legs emerging from the horn and an arm

in the place of the mechanical arm and needle, hovering over a pair of breasts

where the record should be. Both of these Victorian-inspired constructions

appeared in the Vogue spread on the exposition. (Figure 216)

Throughout the second half of the 1930s, nostalgia was becoming

increasingly important to visual culture in the United States and Western

Europe, particularly in fashion. This nostalgia, which was the result of the

impending war, was a longing for an imagined idea of the nineteenth century.

On January 17, 1938 the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme

opened, and the following month Schiaparelli showed her Circus collection.

Just a little over a month later, on March 12, 1938, Germany annexed Austria,

and that September the Munich Agreement giving Germany Czechoslovakia

would be a last pathetic effort by France and Britain to avoid war with



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Germany. The Germans invaded Poland September 1, 1939 and two days later

France and Britain declared war.

Even as early as February 1937, the Los Angeles Times was reporting

on ―War Influences Seen in Coming Fashions.‖ According to Hollywood

costume designer Adrian, ―the Vogue for short skirts is a natural outcome of

conditions of war time. In the first place short skirts are more suitable for

action of unsettled times.‖656 As each month passed, war in Europe seemed

increasingly inevitable. The nineteenth century, a time before the horrors of

industrialized warfare had been realized, seemed simpler and slower as the

world seemed to spiral out of control in the 1930s.

The Surrealists had been turning to the nineteenth century in their

work since the beginning of the movement in the 1920s. Eugene Atget‘s

photographs of the spaces of nineteenth century Paris were particularly

appealing to Surrealists. These were the spaces that Breton haunted in Nadja

(1928), hoping to experience the uncanny, and finding it in the person of his

mysterious muse Nadja. Surrealists were fascinated by the outdated and

outmoded, the time when their parents were young. Walter Benjamin‘s

writing was also an important part of this project, in ―Surrealism: The Last

Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia‖ he writes that ―[Breton] was the first

656 Adrian was one of Schiaparelli‟s American disciples who had taken up padded shoulders

enthusiastically, particularly in his designs for Joan Crawford, a Schiaparelli client: “[Adrian] upholds

the Vogue of wide shoulders which slenderize the hips. It‟s a fad which has become a fashion classicand is here to stay he believes.” "War Influences Seen in Coming Fashions," Los Angeles Times, 17February 1937, B7. Schiaparelli talks about Adrian in Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography

of Elsa Schiaparelli, 56-7.



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to perceive the revolutionary energies that appear in the ‗outmoded,‘ in the

first iron constructions, the first factory buildings, the earliest photos…the

fashions of five years ago…‖657 Benjamin praised Surrealism‘s ability to look

at the old with fresh, and critical eyes.658 In a time when technology, culture,

art, and fashion were moving faster than ever before, those objects and styles

that had just gone out of fashion represented the specter of obsolescence and

death always present in the modern world.

In her book, The Future of Nostolgia, Svetlana Boym explains that, ―a

cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a superimposition of two

images—of home and abroad, past and present, dream and everyday life.‖659

This description of nostalgia fits perfectly with the Surrealist aesthetic of

double images and dreamlike juxtapositions. Boym describes nostalgia as

―coeval with modernity itself‖660 I would argue that it is also coeval with the

cycles and trends of modern fashion. Fashion designers have always looked to

outmoded fashions for inspiration. The modern couturier‘s way of working

was predicated on finding some inspiration for a collection. This formula is

cemented in the 1930s fashion press and continues to be true in contemporary

fashion. As we saw in chapter three, for example, foreign cultures are often

the source of such inspiration. In the early 1930s, Schiaparelli and other

designers used the styles of the First Empire period, including high waistlines

657 Benjamin, "Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia," 181.658 Fijalkowski, "Black Materialism: Surrealism Faces the Commercial World," 103.659 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), xiii-xiv.660 Ibid, xvi.



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and long trains.661 This allusion to the past continued throughout the 1930s.

In 1936, for example, Schiaparelli was inspired by the victory of the Popular

Front government and began to produce ―Phrygian‖ bonnets, an ode to the

Sans Culottes of the French Revolution. In fact the Sans Coulottes had

adopted these hats from ancient Rome where they were worn by emancipated

slaves. Ulrich Lehmann argues that fashion is modernity: ―essentially, la

modernité equals la mode, because it was sartorial fashion that made

modernity aware of its constant urge and need to quote from itself.‖662

Fashion made modernity aware of its own need for nostalgia.

The turn of the nineteenth century, the so called ―gay nineties‖ was also

becoming increasingly popular in popular culture, particularly through Mae

West. West had parlayed her popular and often controversial performances

on Broadway into a Hollywood film career. Her first leading role was in the

1933 film She Done Him Wrong in which she co-starred as Lady Lou with a

young Cary Grant. The movie had been a huge hit in the US and Paris.663 In

this performance, as in many of her films, West literally embodied a fantasy of

life in the ―gay nineties,‖ her incredible hourglass figure the epitome of the

bustled beauties of the turn of the century. Her bawdy humor always got her

what she wanted in her movies. In Harper’s Bazaar, Stanley Walker wrote

that, ―Mae West, by adding a slightly burlesque overtone to the by-play

between the sexes, made everybody more comfortable—except the censors…

661 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 294.662 Ulrich Lehmann, Tigersprung : Fashion in Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), xx.663 Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 102.



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With her small-waisted figure, her undulating hippy strut, her nasal whine

and her meaty lips, she has made sex a thing gorgeously panoplied.‖664 Mae

West had found a way to use her figure to its best advantage, writing plays and

then films for herself that took place in the ―gay nineties,‖ a time when her

figure type had been the ideal.665 She resisted both the conventions first of

the slim androgynous flapper in the twenties and then the hard chic of the

early 1930s. Her style of dress was highly feminine, but her attitude was far

from it. She was brash, outspoken, and always in control. West was a perfect

advocate of strange glamour, self possessed, mature, and one of a kind.

Dalí, obviously a fan of Mae West, was fascinated by her strange

glamour. West‘s celebrity captured Dalí‘s imagination. Like Dalí and

Schiaparelli, she used shock to publicize her work. West was jailed for ten

days for ―staging an indecent performance,‖ her play Sex .666 Her plays and

films always pushed the limits of what would be permissible on the stage and

screen. She encapsulated the sexy underbelly of the turn of the century,

opposed to the stereotyped idea of Victorian prudery. Dalí responded to Mae

West, transforming a photograph of her into the basis for a Surrealist interior

design in Mae West’s Face which May Be Used as a Surrealist Apartment

(1934-5).(Figure 217) He painted over a magazine photograph of her face,

664 Stanley Walker, "Sex Comes to America: A Chapter from Mrs. Astor's Horse," Harper’s Bazaar 1935), 59.665 West had perhaps learned the hard way that her body was not built for all roles while playing ayoung flapper in The Wicked Age (1927). See: Emily Wortis Leider, Becoming Mae West (New York:Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997), 174.666 Walker, "Sex Comes to America: A Chapter from Mrs. Astor's Horse," 161.



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making her lips into a sofa, her nose a fireplace, her eyes into Surrealist

paintings and her golden hair into cascading drapes. With the help of his

patron, Edward James, Dalí was able to have the Mae West Lips Sofa

manufactured in 1938. One was manufactured in Schiaparelli‘s new shade

Shocking pink. James used a lipstick to get the right color for the satin sofa.

Schiaparelli also had a connection to Mae West, whose costumes she

designed for the 1937 film Every Day’s a Holiday. As discussed above,

Schiaparelli was sent a mannequin to use to fit West‘s costumes.667

Schiaparelli‘s costumes were in classic Mae West style emphasizing her

gorgeous curves, but the designer added her own flair, bringing attention to

the shoulders. In a ―lilac broadcloth coat dress, the skirt lapped over in front,

the edges scalloped and outlined with pink and mauve cording. [Worn with a]

purple hat with brim turned up on one side and trimmed with a bright red

feather,‖ she played up the shoulders using the pink and mauve cording to

create epaulets.668(Figure 218) Another dress featured secret pockets in the

mutton chop sleeves, perfect for West‘s character Peaches O‘Day, a practiced

pickpocket. One of West‘s most extravagant costumes in the film was a

sequined black gown paired with a lavish fur and lace cape.

667 The mannequin, it turned out, was too small by the time of the making of the film and all of thecostumes had to be remade in Hollywood. White, Elsa Schiaparelli: Empress of Paris Fashion, 109-10. Blum, Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 115668 Schiaparelli‟s original costume was not used in the film because West had gained weight by the

time the film went into production. The dress was remade in a slightly darker color scheme, but withthe same design. Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 88. Blum,Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli, 115.



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This ensemble influenced one of the looks in Schiaparelli‘s fall

collection that year, an exuberant tiered pleated tulle cape. (Error! Reference

source not found.) Other designs in the collection were inspired by the film,

which began on New Year‘s Eve 1899, and by West herself. According to the

Washington Post ―Schiaparelli and Mae West are responsible for the startling

change in hats.‖669 These hats were upswept off the face. Vogue proclaimed

Schiaparelli‘s collection a ―Merry Widow Revival,‖ noting Schiaparelli‘s

designs for Mae West as the influence for the ―sly hint of pre-War opulence

[in] her Mid-Season collection.‖670 (Figure 219) Mae West influence on

fashion had started even earlier in the 1930s. In January 1935 a letter to

Photoplay complained that ―along with the Mae West influence and the ‗Gay

Nineties‘ styles, large hats have reappeared,‖ obscuring views at the movie

theater.671 As we saw above Schiaparelli played off the return of the hourglass

silhouette with her ―falsies‖ dress. She continued to comment on the return of

this silhouette in one wool suit for Fall 1937 that included buttons shaped like

Mae West‘s torso. Another suit in Shocking pink had ―cancan‖ dancer

buttons.

Mae West‘s torso provided not only the inspiration for buttons in this

collection, but also for the bottle of Schiaparelli‘s‘ new perfume, which was to

become her most famous. Schiaparelli asked fellow Italian artist Leonor Fini

669 Ethel Ehlen, "Black Is the Raining Color for Mid-Season While Silk Jersey Leads National Parade,"Washington Post , 18 July 1937, S6.670 The “Merry Widow” hats had been made famous by Lily Elsie in 1907 in the opera of the same

name. “Merry Widow Revival," Vogue (1 June 1937), 50.671 “Brickbats and Bouquets, Letters from Photoplay Readers," Photoplay (January 1935), 12.



315

to design the bottle. Fini used the mannequin Mae West had sent as the basis

for the bottle.672(Figure 220) The clear dress form was draped with a

dressmaker‘s tape measure with the name of the perfume in Schiaparelli‘s

handwriting. The tape crossed over just below the bust of the figure, and was

secured with a golden circle with Schiaparelli‘s ―S.‖ The measuring tape

combined with the dress-form underlines the literal construction of garments,

the construction of beauty by fashion. The packaging of the bottle, along with

its nod to Mae West, creates a Victorian aesthetic. Fini covered the bottle in a

glass dome with a painted scalloped border resembling lace with Schiaparelli‘s

signature on the front. This Victorian dome was a popular motif at the time

and appeared in fashion photographs in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar as well

as a 1930 Man Ray photograph, Hommage à D.A.F. de Sade (Tanja Ramm

and a Bell-Jar).673 The original bottle design was deemed ugly by

Schiaparelli‘s commercial director, who insisted that flowers be added. They

were placed on the bottle top, perhaps a nod to Dalí‘s flower headed figures.

In her own work, Fini was preoccupied with historic costume. She

created her Corset Chair in 1939. This chair was a part of an exhibition

organized by Fini at Leo Castelli‘s first gallery, Galerie Drouin, next door to

Schiaparelli‘s establishment on Place Vendôme. The show, which opened in

672 Peter Webb credits the idea of using the mannequin to Fini, and it certainly fits in with her aesthetic.Palmer White gives the credit to Schiaparelli; like all of Schiaparelli‟s collaborations, it is difficult to

know whose idea was whose. Webb, Sphinx: The Art and Life of Leonor Fini, 64. White, Elsa

Schiaparelli: Empress of Paris Fashion, 157.673 Haworth-Booth, The Art of Lee Miller , 47-48. Haworth-Booth notes that this photograph may be acollaboration between Man Ray and Lee Miller as Tanja Ramm was her flat-mate at the time.



316

May 1939, also included a pair of decorative panels by Fini adorned with

figures representing Painting and Architecture. (Figure 221) Their

Renaissance-style costumes are constructed from the tools of their respective

trades creating surreal costumes that Schiaparelli must have appreciated.

George Hoyningen-Huene used the exhibition as a backdrop for a Harper’s

Bazaar spread. (Figure 222) Fini‘s work in the 1930s often referred to

historical costume, corsets, armor, and Victorian stripes. Her atmospheric

watercolors of two Schiaparelli ensembles for Harper’s Bazaar in 1940 reflect

this timeless aesthetic: set against muddy vague backgrounds, the two models

hold fantastic hybrid creatures by their leashes. (Figure 223)

Schiaparelli continued to use the nineteenth century as an influence on

her collections. For the Summer of 1939, she and many other designers

brought back the Victorian bustle. Schiaparelli sent four of these bustle

dresses worn by society women to a ball to celebrate the anniversary for the

Eiffel tower. The designs with their stripes and bustles recalled 1889 when

the tower was built. One gown was even printed with women in the style of

Mae West. (Figure 224) This summer turned out to be the last one before the

declaration of war on Germany by France and Great Britain in September

1939.



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Conclusion

While the war did not entirely put a stop to Schiaparelli‘s mad creation,

it certainly slowed her down. Her designs from 1940 had ingenious pockets

and clever utilitarian designs for women who might have to hurry to a bomb

shelter at any moment. By 1941, Schiaparelli, along with many of the

Surrealists, including Duchamp and Breton, decided that occupied France was

too dangerous for a radical Italian designer. She moved to New York, and

encouraged her house in Paris to carry on without her, never designing while

living in the U.S. lest she compete with her French compatriots. Her exile,

however, did not mark the end of her association with the Surrealists for she

spearheaded the famous First Papers of Surrealism exhibition in New York in

1941.

As this chapter has demonstrated, Schiaparelli‘s connection to the

Surrealists was far from casual. She was deeply interested in the same ideas

that the artists were experimenting with. What made Schiaparelli unique was

that she used Surrealist themes to create clothes for a strong modern

woman—a woman like herself. She created an image of strange glamour that

best fit Surrealist women such as Leonor Fini and Frida Kahlo who did not

comfortably fit into the male-dominated movement. Breton‘s infamous

description of Kahlo‘s work as ―a ribbon around a bomb‖ is an apt description



318

of the strange glamour embodied by Kahlo, Fini and Schiaparelli, in their

distinctive personal styles as well as their work.674

Schiaparelli used Surrealist motifs to create clothing that had a

different kind of sex appeal. Not vulgar or girlish, it was mature. It

acknowledged the scopophilic gaze, often thwarting it, or winking back.

Schiaparelli understood the unique ability of clothes to fuse with the body.

She understood the potential of clothing to create an uncanny image: a live

bureau, a lobster in a woman‘s lap, a mutton chop worn as a hat.

The unique commercial spaces she created are undoubtedly linked to

the exhibition practices of the Surrealists. Most notably perhaps, her radical

disruption of the Pavillion d’Elegance inspired the Rue Surrealist at the

Exposition international du Surrealism.

674 André Taylor Simon Watson Breton, Surrealism and Painting / Uniform Title: Surréalisme Et La

Peinture. English, 1st artWorks ed. (Boston, Mass. : MFA Pub.: New York, NY, 2002), 144.



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Conclusion

Legacies of Strange Glamour

In August 1949 Elsa Schiaparelli showed a slinky evening gown called

―Forbidden Fruit‖ in a dark maroon color of the same name. (Figure 225) The

strapless bodice of the dress appeared to be slipping down to reveal a pale

pink brassier embroidered with gold and laden with crystals. Brenda Helser

of the Chicago Tribune explained, ―while the rest of the world tries vainly to

invent a brassiere which doesn‘t show with the deep V necks, Schiaparelli

publicizes this intimate little harness in bright gay colors, and even sports

several in velvet with fur trim.‖675 Schiaparelli may herself have worn the

gown, whose illusion was so successful that a party guest thought that one of

her breasts had actually been exposed.676 Another dinner dress in the

collection in black taffeta featured a deep v-neck revealing a royal blue velvet

brassiere. (Figure 226)

This kind of shocking display of brassieres was not surprising from a

designer who sold Shocking perfume in a bottle shaped like the curvaceous

torso of Mae West, designed gowns with ―falsies‖ sewn on the outside in 1936,

and made hats shaped like genitalia in 1933. Schiaparelli was responding to

the development of Christian Dior‘s ―New Look‖ in 1947. Carmel Snow came

up with this name for Dior‘s first collection of dresses that used a softshoulder, cinched waist and voluminous skirt. Many designers, including

675 Brenda Helser, "Schiaparelli Changes Her Pace in Fashion Offerings for Fall," Chicago Daily

Tribune, 8 August 1949, A7.676Kennedy Fraser, "Simply Shocking," Vogue (October 2003), 356.



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Schiaparelli, and Chanel—though she was still in exile in Switzerland—

strongly objected to this look.677 They saw it as regressive and anti-modern,

not to mention impractical. Dior‘s success marked the beginning of the end of

the age of the great couturière and the rise of the male couturier.678 In the

United States though, a number of women were emerging and contributing to

a rising American ready-to-wear and sportswear industry. Women such as

Claire McCardell, Tine Leser and Carolyn Schnurer built on the successes of

Seventh Avenue during World War II when the U.S. was largely cut off from

Paris fashions. The revealing dresses of Schiaparelli‘s Winter 1949-50

collection mocked the new styles of Dior and even Claire McCardell. (Figure

227) Schiaparelli turned these highly feminine looks into provocation, once

again finding ways to stare back at the sexualized male gaze.

About the same time these dresses were shown, Schiaparelli was

launching a new wholesale business in the United States creating ready-to-

wear suits, coats, and few gowns. In the wake of Dior‘s meteoric rise with the

―New Look,‖ Schiaparelli‘s business had been struggling. One reporter

described her ―going everywhere, parties, balls, concerts, anywhere she would

be seen and photographed…Schiaparelli made an entrée at a assortment of

fancy dress balls dressed in a weird variety of costumes—a popular song, a

677 Chanel, who had a relationship with a German officer during the war, was arrested as a collaboratorin September 1944 after the liberation of France, but managed to secure release after just three hours,according to many because her friend Winston Churchill stepped in. Some speculated that Churchillstepped in because Chanel could have revealed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor‟s cozy relationship

with the Germans. It is unclear to what extent she actually was a collaborator with the Germans, butshe was perceived as one by the French public in the years immediately after the war.678 Steele, Women of Fashion: Twentieth-Century Designers, 11, 14.



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radish, a mineral queen‖[sic] all in an effort to drum up publicity for her

waning brand. The effort looked like a success in 1949, but by 1954

Schiaparelli showed her last couture collection. The most famous couturière

of the 1930s, whose work once covered the pages of fashion magazines, would

slowly become a dim memory brought up when designers used her shade of

Shocking pink or came up with a clever hat reminiscent of her brilliant

designs.

Schiaparelli, if she is present at all, has been reduced to a footnote in

most histories of Surrealism. In histories of fashion, she is often placed in

opposition to her great nemesis Chanel—fashion loves a good cat fight after

all. Compared to Chanel, who has been the subject of dozens of biographies

and monographs, Schiaparelli has only been treated to two major studies, first

by Palmer White in 1986, and recently in a lavish exhibition and catalog by

Dilys Blum in 2003.679 While Schiaparelli has been written out of most

histories of Surrealism, she is perhaps one of the most important figures in

ensuring the movement‘s legacy.

She was a key instigator of one of the most important Surrealist

exhibitions in New York during the war, The First Papers of Surrealism.

Schiaparelli had been forced, like so many of her friends, to ride out the war in

the United States, abandoning her beloved Paris and her couture house.

While the business carried on without her, it was not quite the same

679 Karl Lagerfeld, the designer now at the helm of La Maison Chanel has made a kind of cottageindustry of books and films on Chanel, contributing to a number of projects in recent years includingthe 2009 films Coco Avant Chanel and Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky.



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powerhouse when she returned. The war, however, did not sever

Schiaparelli‘s ties with the artistic avant-garde. Most of the Surrealists had

retreated to the city as well, including Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp.

She explained:

New York was not New York, and certainly was not America,especially the milieu I frequented. The city was invaded bypeople from many nations and paths of life who, for somereason or other had been obliged to leave their homes, or hadsimply abandoned them because they were scared or found waruncomfortable. Some had left everything, some managed toretain a great deal; some worked for a living, others made a very

unnecessary display of their wealth.680

While in New York, Schiaparelli had been working to aid France in a number

of ways. Her first trip to the U.S. during the war in 1940 was for a lecture

tour. Schiaparelli designed a collection to be produced in America, with some

of her profits going to benefit unemployed dressmakers in Paris, and in many

cities the proceeds of her lectures benefitted children in unoccupied France.681

In 1942 Elsa Schiaparelli spearheaded the organization of the First

Papers of Surrealism exhibition at the French Relief Societies headquarters in

Reid Mansion in New York City.682 She had been connected to Breton

through Peggy Guggenheim. Despite his aversion to fashion and commerce,

Breton was in no position to refuse this opportunity since he was struggling to

get by in New York as a refugee from the War.683 In her autobiography

680 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 127.681 Ibid, 113.682 Kachur, Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and Surrealist Exhibition

Installations, 171.683 Ibid, 172.



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Schiaparelli does not mention Breton but says that she called on Duchamp to

help her organize the exhibition.684 Duchamp himself acknowledged

Schiaparelli as a partner in the exhibition along with Breton in a 1943 letter to

his friends Walter and Magda Pach.685 Breton appears to have taken the lead

in contacting artists to participate in the show. A review in Newsweek noted

that Dalí was noticeably absent from the show after being expelled from the

movement and dubbed Avida Dollars.686

Asked by Schiaparelli to keep the costs low, Duchamp decided to use

twine for his installation in the show. He created Mile of String, an intricate

web of string that wound its way throughout the exhibition in the heavy and

gaudy space of Reid Mansion. (Figure 228) The exhibition was just one of a

number of exhibitions of the work of exiled artists living in the United States.

The show also included the work of some American artists as well as Native

American dolls, masks, and figural sculpture.687 This exhibition was unique

because it involved several American artists along with the Europeans,

particularly of the younger generation including David Hare, Robert

Motherwell, Barbara Reis, and William Baziotes.

Histories of Surrealism tend to credit the emigration of Surrealists to

the U.S. during the war, and The First Papers of Surrealism, as well as Peggy

684 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 135.685 Duchamp‟s letter translated in: Francis M. Naumann, "Amicalement, Marcel: Fourteen Lettersfrom Marcel Duchamp to Walter Pach," Archives of American Art Journal 29, no. 3/4 1989), 47. Alsocited in Kachur, Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and Surrealist

Exhibition Installations, 173.686 “Agonized Humor," Newsweek (26 October 1942), 76.687 “Inheritors of Chaos," Time 40, no. 15 (2 November 1942), 47.



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Guggenheim‘s contemporary exhibition, Art of this Century as leading

logically to the development of Abstract Expressionism. This linkage, though,

is loose and privileges the more abstract tendencies in Surrealism. Writing in

1968, William Rubin explained that, ―it appeared by 1955 as if the entire

Dada-Surrealist adventure was a kind of anti-modernist reaction situated

parenthetically between the great abstract movements prior to World War I

and after World War II. But the force of this conviction has been

compromised by a subsequent reaction in favor of Dada—and to a much lesser

extent Surrealism—on the part of many younger artists who have matured

since 1955.‖688 Dada has certainly been resurrected in the ensuing years, with

Duchamp replacing Picasso as the pivotal figure in some art historians‘

narratives of modern art.

The catalogue for Surrealism USA, a 2005 exhibition at The National

Academy Museum in New York, traces the ways in which Surrealism fell out

of favor in the years following World War II. Robert S. Lubar writes that in

addition to Dalí‘s work for Vogue and his advertising campaigns for various

products (most of which were notably associated with women and fashion),

―Dalí‘s work for the commercial film industry sealed his fate as an artist who

had sold out.‖689 Isabelle Dervaux explains that Surrealism came to be most

closely associated with the work of Dalí, who was often seen as regressive and

688 Rubin et al., Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage, 182.689 Robert S. Lubar, "Salvador Dalí in America: The Rise and Fall of Arch Surrealism," in Surrealism

USA (New York: National Academy Museum, 2005), 27.



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academic even before he began his major commercial endeavors. Dervaux

writes that Surrealism‘s fall from favor

between 1944 and 1947 can be explained by the anti-Surrealistcampaign waged by influential critic Clement Greenberg in themid-forties. Greenberg denigrated Surrealism as ―literary andantiquarian.‖ ―For the sake of hallucinatory vividness theSurrealists have copied the effects of calendar reproduction,postal card chromeotype, and magazine illustration.‖690 [sic]

Greenberg would go on to align the Abstract Expressionists with Cubists and

other European abstractionists. Scott Rothkopf describes the reemergence of

Surrealism in American art in the 1960s through critics Gene Swenson andLucy Lippard. Rothkopf argues that Lippard and Swenson each produced a

cleaned up version of Surrealism that matched the climate of their time:

By viewing Surrealism through the lens of Pop [Swenson] wasable to retain its essential potency, while avoiding thenarcissistic introspection made taboo by the demise of AbstractExpressionism. If…Pop learned the lessons of the readymadeand the psychosexual fetish from Dada and Surrealism, thenconversely, Swenson taught Surrealism a lesson in cool fromPop.691

Lippard, on the other hand, championed the abstract surrealists, such as

Andre Masson, Joan Miro, and Arshile Gorky, linking their works to Post-

Minimalists such as Eva Hesse. Neither Swenson nor Lippard, however, was

interested in reviving the Surrealism of Dalí or Magritte.

Art historians have been wary of artists such as Dalí, Magritte, and Di

Chirico, particularly because these artists directly engaged not only with

690 Dervaux, "A Tale of Two Earrings: Surrealism and Abstraction, 1930-1947," 54.691 Scott Rothkopf, "Returns of the Repressed: The Legacy of Surrealism in American Art," inSurrealism USA, Isabelle Dervaux , ed. (New York: National Academy Museum, 2005), 69.



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commerce, but with fashion. It is precisely in fashion where we can see the

legacy of the ―dirtier‖ parts of Surrealism, those which did not fit in with the

stories art historians told about art after World War II.692 While Schiaparelli‘s

business fizzled after World War II, American designers Charles James and

Gilbert Adrian took up Surrealism in their work. James reached the peak of

his fame between 1947-1954, designing incredible evening gowns that

combined historical styles and techniques of body shaping with modernist

forms to create garments more akin to biomorphic sculpture than party

dresses. James‘ Surrealism was subtle and sculptural. (Figure 229) He used

his clothing to abstractly reshape his clients‘ bodies into forms akin to flowers,

birds, and butterflies.

Adrian had begun his career as head costume designer for MGM, and

staged a star studded fashion show and party to welcome Schiaparelli to

Hollywood in 1933.693 Adrian had taken up Schiaparelli‘s toy soldier style

and was using it to great advantage on stars such as Joan Crawford, a fact

which Schiaparelli noted in her autobiography.694 By 1939, with his costumes

for The Women, it was clear that Adrian was taking up strange glamour and

making it his own. In the opening scenes, Rosalind Russell wears a blouse

embroidered with three eyes and bolero style jacket that is also adored with

692 It is hard to imagine that Dalí was not at least a partial influence on Warhol in his courting of an art-star persona, and Marcel Broodthaers wrote about Magritte as an important influence on Pop Art:Marcel Broodthaers, "Gare au defil Le Pop Art, Jim Dine et l'influence de Rene Magritte," Journal des

Beaux-Arts, no. 1029 (November, 1963).693 Merrick Mollie, "Hollywood in Person," The Atlanta Constitution, 16 March 1933, 6.694 Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, 57.



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eyes. Schiaparelli had used eyes as buttons in several collections. Adrian‘s

Surrealist flourish was rather apt since Russell‘s character Sylvia Fowler is an

enormous gossip. (Figure 230) Many of the styles in the film echo

Schiaparelli‘s designs, dolls‘ hats and military inspired suits, for example. The

film also included a lavish Technicolor fashion show in the middle of the black

and white film. Many of the dresses in this extravaganza are clearly inspired

by Schiaparelli. A bathing costume includes a loose jacket with a sculptural

hand reaching around the collar holding a rose. (Figure 231) This detail

mimics the print of hands holding roses that lines the jacket and adorns the

swimsuit. This design is a clear reference to Schiaparelli‘s collaborations with

Cocteau. Adrian takes the uncanny representation of the body a step further

with his hand closure, which seems to have been chopped off of a mannequin,

a favorite prop of the Surrealists. A green dress includes a bizarre turban with

a transparent plastic top. (Figure 232) One of the final looks of the fashion

show is a tan dress with dolman sleeves and a hood adorned with a black

feather flourish. (Figure 233) The ensemble is worn with green gloves that

appear to have light bulbs or door knobs projecting from them. This gown is

even more surreal in the context of the setting in which it is shown, an

outsized laboratory with flasks and beakers that make the model appear to

have been shrunken in some science fiction experiment. Russell wears a

similar ensemble toward the end of the film with a hooded headpiece



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reminiscent of Schiaparelli‘s Circus Tent veils from her Summer 1938. (Figure

234)

Adrian continued to experiment with surrealist themes in the

collections he created under his own label that he started in 1942. A design

from one of his first collections, a beautifully draped white silk day dress,

included the surreal presence of a guard in full armored regalia printed on

fabric that drapes from the wearer‘s left shoulder. (Figure 235) Adrian

produced smart suits and artful gowns, often inspired by modern art He

created a series of dresses inspired by modern art including a several gowns in

the series ―Shades of Picasso,‖ which were made from abstract shapes of crepe

immaculately pieced together. (Figure 236) These gowns not only evoke

Picasso‘s abstractions and collages, but also the Surrealist abstractions of

Hans Arp and Juan Miro. Adrian also used fabrics designed by Dalí for

several gowns in his March 1947 collection.695 (Figure 237) He also designed a

dress for Gala Dalí, which like many of his dresses and suits used gingham

fabric, reminiscent of one of his most famous costumes, Dorothy‘s blue

gingham dress in the Wizard of Oz.696 Gala rejected the dress and refused to

wear it.697 Adrian‘s gesture of integrating a simple American fabric like

695 Dilys Blum details the manufacture and use of Dalí‟s textiles as well as those made by other

Surrealists and in the style of Surrealism in the years after World War II in: Blum, "Post-WarAmerican Textiles," 235-45.696 For an example of Adrian‟s use of Gingham, see fig. 100 in Patricia Mears, American Beauty:

Aesthetics and Innovation in Fashion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 139.697 Christian Esquevin, Adrian : Silver Screen to Custom Label (New York: Monacelli Press, 2008),153-4.



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gingham into a high fashion garment is just the kind of mixing of high and low

that Schiaparelli and Dalí himself would have appreciated.

Adrian also followed the lead of Lilly Daché, taking inspiration from

Mexico and Native American sand paintings, as well as his own travels to

Africa. In 1948 he created a dress and cape ensemble printed with designs

from Native American sand paintings. A 1949 trip to Africa, through the

Sudan, Kenya, and the Congo, led to a collection filled with inspiration from

the animals of the country, including leopard and snakeskin prints.698

Interestingly the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper,

included a long report on this collection noting: ―included in the African-

inspired series were suits decorated with replicas of the tribal body plaques

worn by the Mangbetu.‖ The article also notes woolen fabrics in the collection

inspired by ―African head cloth,‖ and ―tall rounded caps of brushed beaver

inspired by the elongated bound heads of the Mangebetu babies.‖ [sic] The

paper also noted one gown inspired by the costume of a Maasai woman,

―topped by a cape made of a whole antelope skin dyed [tawny rose] and drawn

through a huge beaten gold ring.‖699 Both Lilly Daché and American milliner

Sally Victor continued to create hats inspired by global cultures. Along with

Adrian their work helped to carry through the thread of fashionable

primitivism in strange glamour.

698 Apparently he included tiger prints as a joke in the collection, since tigers are not from Africa. Ibid,167.699 "Noted Designer Sees African Influence in Winter Wear," The Chicago Defender , 31 December1949, 18-9.



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Strange Glamour in Postmodern Fashion

By the 1960s and 1970, Caftans, saris, African prints, fringed Native

American style tunics and gypsy skirts all became popular as ways of

demonstrating sartorially a return to nature and radical political views. These

looks, however, had more in common with the costume of Paul Poiret than

the juxtapositions of Ethnographic Surrealism that appeared in the work of

Daché and Victor. This Fashionable Primitivism, however, returned, perhaps

most exuberantly in John Galliano‘s collection for Dior in the late 1990s.

Mixing African beading with Dior‘s ―New Look‖ silhouettes, or Native

American textiles with 16th century European costume Galliano became

famous for his ―neo-colonial fusions.‖700 (Figure 238) These combinations

clearly evoke the constructed, collaged aesthetic of strange glamour.701

Other aspects of strange glamour are also clearly evident in

contemporary fashion. Alexander McQueen‘s dictum: ―I want people to be

afraid of the women I dress,‖ mirrored Schiaparelli‘s own use of clothing as a

700 Evans, Fashion at the Edge : Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness, 29.701 Galliano is clearly indebted to Surrealism and strange glamour. His Spring 1999 collection for Diorcouture was an ode to Surrealism and included nods to Schiaparelli including and several riffs on her“backwards suit” from the Circus collection, as well as some Shocking pink suits, one adorned with a

doll‟s hat and chess pieces. Several couples walked together in the show styled after Salvador andGala Dalí. The Dalí models had tendrils of hair made into curls which played the part of Dalí‟s famous

mustache. Large eye brooches referred to Dalí‟s own jewelry designs. A trio of dresses used Cocteausketches as the inspiration for their large scale prints. The show even had its own Minotaure, andseveral Surrealist tableau vivants, including some centered around a dress with black hands printed onit across the hip and buttocks, worn with a mannequin hand hat. Men in Magritte bowler hatsaccompanied the traditional finale: a bridal gown with skirts of tulle and cellophane whose veil was afisherman‟s net adorned with shells. This dress, as well as several others drew inspir ation from theSurrealist photographs of British artist Madame Yvonde. Interestingly, Galliano mentioned the Dalís,Cocteau, and Madame Yvonde in his introduction, but not Schiaparelli. Lisa Armstrong, "Dior GetsFashionably Surreal," The Times of London, 19 January 1999, 11.



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kind of armor for the women who wore it.702 While the dark often morbid

sensibility of McQueen‘s aesthetic would seem to be at odds with the

whimsical Surrealist tendencies of Schiaparelli, both designers thought of

clothes as arming women for the penetrating gaze of viewers as they went out

into the world. Like Schiaparelli, McQueen also created a collection centered

around circus imagery, his Fall/Winter 2001-2 collection What a Merry-Go-

Round .

This collection, like Schiaparelli‘s Summer 1938 collection, was

inspired by the circus and images of childhood. Yet, McQueen‘s

interpretation was more sinister than Schiaparelli‘s. Caroline Evans explains

that, ―although the circus is a locus of spectacle, fun and abandon, it is also a

twilight world of refuge, danger and loss of self.‖703 Like fashion, the

spectacle of the circus is fleeting—the big top can be filled with the excitement

of the show one night, and the next, only an empty field where the tent once

stood. McQueen populated his circus with women made up as melancholy

clowns dressed in a bricolage of historical styles. Other models, styled after

1920s cabaret performers, were outfitted in military styles with a distinctly

sexy edge. (Figure 239) These ensembles reflect McQueen‘s interest in the

idea of childhood revolt, ―‗You know, when your parent says you shouldn‘t do

702 Quote from Vogue (October 1997), 435. Cited in Caroline Evans, Fashion at the Edge : Spectacle,

Modernity, and Deathliness (Yale University Press, 2003), 149. Lisa Armstrong, "Clever Is BetterThan Beautiful," The Times, 31 May 2004, n.p.703 Ibid, 99.



332

something, but you do it anyway.‖704 The show also commented more broadly

on the fleeting spectacle of fashion, and unmistakably represented the

haunting of fashion by death in the figure of a clown/model dragging a gold

skeleton at her feet. (Figure 240) The fashionable woman is followed by an

image of death—as soon as the dress departs the catwalk it will be obsolete,

the next season‘s designs already being dreamed up.

Schiaparelli‘s skeleton has been a recurring image in contemporary

fashion. McQueen for example, commissioned Shaun Leane to make a corset

for his Spring/Summer 1998 collection. (Figure 241) It was made from

aluminum and shaped like the spinal column and ribcage cast from a human

skeleton, which morphs into an animal, with a tail coming off the back. In

this corset, the wearer can be read either as a human animal hybrid —a

concept that McQueen explored in his final collection before his death in

2010—or as a huntress wearing the remains of her prey as a memento mori , a

reminder of death. Both readings suggest the femme fatale, ―whose sexuality

was dangerous, even deathly and for whom, therefore, male desire would

always be tinged with dread.‖705 This is precisely the kind of woman

McQueen was interested in evoking with these clothes, one who would

provoke fear. These are the same sorts of images Schiaparelli conjured up

with her claw gloves, and with the Skeleton and Tear-Illusion gowns.

704 Horyn Cathy, "McQueen Nods to a Prince, but Genuflects toward Milan," New York Times, 27February 2001, B9.705 Evans, Fashion at the Edge : Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness, 145.



333

Most recently Jean-Paul Gaultier resurrected the Skeleton gown in his

Fall 2010 collection. This collection was inspired by Schiaparelli‘s designs

with wide shoulders, cinched waists, and even a bit of her signature Shocking

pink. A number of the designs directly quote those of Schiaparelli. Dresses

and suits included pronounced pockets, a Schiaparelli signature. A polo neck

top with Gaultier‘s infamous cone breasts evokes Schiaparelli‘s ―falsies‖

dresses. A deep purple dress with lavishly embroidered shoulders is

reminiscent of Schiaparelli‘s evening capes with embroidered and beaded

shoulders. The collection also included a number of garments and accessories

adorned with skeletal motifs that reference Schiaparelli‘s Skeleton dress. A

black top and skirt included padded and piped lines of a stylized skeleton,

with particular emphasis on the arms and hip bones. Gaultier repeated the

motif of the hip bones on a number of garments in the collection. A little

black dress featured rib shaped padding across the torso. (Figure 242) One

purse was covered in bone shapes covered in black sequins, another had a

spine curving around it with spangled rips running its width, while shoes

featured bone shaped appliqués. All of these designs built on Schiaparelli and

Dalí‘s idea of putting the bones on the outside of the body.

In Gautier‘s show, these designs were linked to the idea of the femme

fatale. His models sauntered down the runway smoking with long cigarette

holders, their hair upswept in exuberant turbans. Burlesque star Dita Von

Teese closed the show with a striptease, revealing one of Gaultier‘s designs for



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a new line of undergarments for La Perla. (Figure 243) Gaultier coved a nude

corset in padded black sections forming the skeleton, embellished with black

beading. The hip bones again are exaggerated, forming the garter belt,

complete with bone-shaped suspenders for the stockings. Gautier explained

that the collection "was all about structure, about bringing the bones, the very

foundation of what makes a garment, to the surface. It's about bones, but not

in a ghost kind of way--unless we're talking about the ghost of couture." 706

The Skeleton corset is, in part, a visual pun, putting literal bones on a boned

corset. The Skeleton corset, like Schiaparelli‘s Skeleton gown, also reasserts

the corporeality of the female body, resisting the ways that fashion transforms

the body into a spectacle. The revelation of the skeleton underneath the gown

also functions as a powerful reflection of Benjamin‘s contention that death

always lies beneath the surface of fashion: Teese literally is the ―ghost of

couture,‖ the femme fatale. Her ghostly white gloves with their long black

nails, another Schiaparelli reference, complete the image of glittering specter

of death in fashion.707

Isaac Mizrahi‘s Spring 2011 ―IM Xerox‖ collection took a more playful

note from Schiaparelli for its inspiration, her early trompe l‘oeil sweaters.

(Figure 244)(Figure 245) The collection features classic work-wear with

details such as pockets and collars printed on as if by a Xerox machine.

706 "Dita Von Teese Strips at Jean Paul Gaultier Haute Couture Show," Huffington Post (8 July 2010),http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/08/dita-von-teese-strips-at_n_638862.html.707 Schiaparelli created black and white gloves with colored snakeskin nails to go with her BureauDrawer suits and coats, a collaboration with Dalí in 1936.



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Cleverly playing on the mass production of clothing, Mizrahi reinvented

archetypal garments such as the trench coat or button down shirts as sleek

simple sheaths and tunics. A number of collections in Fall 2009 looked back

to Schiaparelli. In the midst of ―the Great Recession,‖ designers were looking

to Schiaparelli for a model of how to create fantasy in a world with a bleak

economic reality. Cathernine Malandrino‘s Fall 2009 collection appears to

have been inspired by many of the garments that appeared in Richard

Martin‘s book Fashion and Surrealism. Malandrino‘s collection used the bird

and feather imagery from Martin‘s chapter, ―Natural Worlds and Unnatural

Worlds,‖ and quoted from Schiaparelli‘s collaborations with Jean Cocteau.

Dolce & Gabbana‘s exuberant Fall 2009 collection used Schiaparelli‘s

leg-of-mutton sleeves, her signature Shocking pink, eccentric buttons, and

drew on the designer‘s love of gloves, turning them into scarves and hats.

Harper’s Bazaar ran an article on Schiaparelli in their September 2009 issue

that included a photograph of one of the Dolce & Gabbana ensembles.

Another spread in the issue, ―Fashion…and All that Jazz: the fabulous ‗40s

live on in gorgeous details, wonderful prints, and all-out glamour,‖ included

one of the Dolce & Gabbana dresses with its eccentric shell buttons, worn with

a vintage Lilly Daché hat.708 (Figure 246)

Schiaparelli‘s presentation of the boutique space as an artistic

installation has also had an important legacy in the continued ties between

the art and fashion worlds. The 1960s bourgeoning boutique scene in New

708 “Fashion…and All That Jazz," Harper’s Bazaar (September 2009), 368.



336

York was enmeshed with the Pop Art movement. For example, designer Betsy

Johnson‘s fit model was Edie Sedgwick, perhaps the most famous ―superstar‖

in And y Warhol‘s factory. Johnson was designing for the boutique

Paraphernalia, which was opened in 1965 by British entrepreneur Paul

Young. This boutique encouraged a generation of American designers who

saw clothing as a form of performance art, made from non-traditional

materials, and perfect for dancing in New York‘s club scene. The interior of

the shop was often more like an art installation than a boutique. In 1968, the

store was reconfigured so that customers could not see the actual clothes, but

were given a remote control to scroll through images of the clothes projected

on a screen. (Figure 247) This installation brilliantly presaged the

phenomenon of internet shopping.

The mingling of artists and fashion designers has continued to bear

fruitful collaborations through the 1990s and into the present. Rei Kawakubo,

designer of the label Comme des Garçons has collaborated with numerous

artists for advertising campaigns. Cindy Sherman, for example, created a

series of photographs in 1993 and 1994 used on postcards and posters from

Comme des Garçones. (Figure 248) These photographs fit so seamlessly into

Sherman‘s oeuvre, that they are often not even identified as commissioned

work. In them she uses her familiar technique of self portraiture to create

avant-garde fashion photographs for Kawakubo‘s cutting edge designs. The

clothes themselves are often lost in the mysterious quality of Sherman‘s poses



337

and props. This was not the first of Sherman‘s fashion collaborations. Since

the early 1980s she had been commissioned by designers and magazines to

create fashion photographs. Some of her most recognizable color

photographs from the early 1980s are part of a series for the New York

boutique Diane B. that were published in Interview magazine.709 (Figure 249)

A number of these photographs, as well as some from a series she made for

Dorothee Bis Knitwear in 1984 appear in a 1987 catalogue of her work from

an exhibition at the Whitney Museum.710 Peter Schjeldal barely acknowledges

these images as fashion photographs, describing them as ―the ‗costume

dramas,‘ Sherman‘s finest work to date, evolved through experimentation

with a wardrobe made av ailable to her by a dress designer.‖711 Lisa Phillips

notes in her essay that the clothes actually come from Diane Benson‘s

boutique and were made for Interview, but is quick to quote Sherman herself

explaining that she is ―trying to make fun of fashion.‖712 Interestingly though,

Sherman continues to make work for designers and magazines. She created a

spread for the August 2007 issue of French Vogue with clothes by Balenciaga

and appeared in a Narciso Rodriguez gown in her own photograph for

709 For more on Sherman‟s fashion work see: Hanne Loreck, "De/Constructing Fashion/Fashions ofDeconstruction: Cindy Sherman's Fashion Photographs," Fashion Theory 6, no. 3 (September 2002),255-75.710 See for example Peter Schjeldahl and Lisa Phillips, Cindy Sherman (New York: Whitney Museumof American Art, 1987), cat. 81, 83,89, 91, and 94.711 Peter Schjeldahl, "The Oracle of Images," in Cindy Sherman (New York: Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art, 1987), 10.712 Lisa Phillips, "Cindy Sherman's Cindy Shermans," in Cindy Sherman (New York: WhitneyMuseum of American Art, 1987), 15.



338

American Vogue’s ―Age Issue.‖713 The article notes Sherman‘s own extensive

designer wardrobe and friendships with designers Rodriguez and Todd

Oldham. Sherman is also a regular at the runway shows for Balenciaga,

Narciso Rodriguez, and Marc Jacobs, who she has also collaborated with on

advertisements. Sherman‘s work is just one example of the way in which the

kinds of artistic collaborations Schiaparelli and other early 20th century

designers and artists participated in have only grown more common at the

turn of twenty-first century.714

Conclusions

By reimagining the relationship between Surrealism and Fashion in the

years between the wars, it is also possible to look at the interaction of art and

fashion throughout the twentieth century to the present with fresh eyes.

Cindy Sherman‘s work might be fruitfully examined alongside the radical

designs of Rei Kawakubo, for example. It is not only these legacies of

Surrealism, and legacies of fashion and art collaborations that I want to point

to in this conclusion. I also want to point back to the years between the wars

as demanding further study. By considering art and fashion as existing

713 The Balenciaga collaboration continued for Fashion‟s Night Out 2010 in New York. Balenciaga

designer Nicolas Gehesquière held an opening for a showing of Sherman‟s Balenciaga photographs at

the house‟s flagship store in New York. The designer‟s fall 2010 collection included a clever riff on

Schiaparelli‟s newsprint fabric, using text from interviews with Sherman and reviews of her work to

create dynamic prints used in several garments which also included prominent zippers à laSchiaparelli.714 Other examples include performance artist Marina Abramovic, who has incorporated RiccardoTisci‟s designs for Givenchy into her work, and Louis Vuitton‟s numerous collaborations with artists

such as Richard Prince and Takashi Murakami.



339

together within the same visual culture of the interwar years, new practices

become legible as both art and fashion. For example, Leonor Fini was often

photographed in eccentric ensembles that drew on historic costume and

modern style. How was she using such fashion to create a sartorial image of

herself as an artist? How did these styles play into her paintings? What

relation did they have with the work of fashion designers who were her

contemporaries? There were a number of women artists in this period who

used fashion as a means of expressing themselves, as much as they used

painting, photography or sculpture. Frida Kahlo and Claude Cahun both used

fashion in their art and personal lives, experimenting with its expressive

possibilities.

Fashion need not always be read as an imposition. It has the potential

to be transformative, revolutionary and significant. Strange glamour, as it

developed in the 1930s, revealed this potential. The androgynous looks of the

1920s freed women‘s bodies to participate in public life in new ways, playing

sports, driving cars, or working in offices. In the 1930s, designers like Elsa

Schiaparelli began to look beyond gender to explore issues of sex. Strange

glamour developed new possibilities for women, to dress in ways that freed

the body, but which could also affirm their sexuality. Women were no longer

dressing like men to express their political beliefs, but rather were mixing and

juxtaposing masculine and feminine in uncanny ways. They were wearing



340

clothing that was meant to stand out. This was a bold structured answer to

the limp shapeless silhouettes of the 1920s.

Fashionable primitivism also contributed to the boldness of these

silhouettes. Outfitting women with the hats of Congo chiefs, or shaped like

the coiffeurs of Mangbetu women, designers such as Lilly Daché created hats

that did not match the clothes they were worn with, but rather contrasted with

them in exciting ways. These accessories gave women new ways to express

exoticism and eroticism, mixing it with modernity. Strange glamour

transformed the varied global influences that have always been a part of

European and American fashion from costumes into constructions. Working

in the same vein as the Surrealists, these designers used the evocative

qualities of clothing from Africa to create juxtapositions with modern

European and American fashion.

Strange glamour resisted the notion that fashion merely objectifies a

woman‘s body. This is a concept that Schiaparelli clearly poked fun at over

and over in the Bureau Drawer suit, Mutton Chop and Inkwell hats. These

garments were provocations, examples of Breton‘s idea of convulsive beauty,

looks that affected viewers on a visceral level. These clothes defied

expectations, presenting padding instead of breasts, claws instead of nails, or

even a nude mannequin instead of a clothed one.

Strange glamour‘s provocative, confrontational and complex history

shows clearly the way in which fashion can transcend the utilitarian and



341

frivolous and act as a genuine expression of its designer, wearer, and

historical moment. Schiaparelli saw the ways in which fashion was portrayed

as the imposition of absurd trends on a duped female public. She responded

during her 1940 U.S. lecture tour, ―to the distinguished guests gathered at the

Copley-Plaza Hotel for the event that woman is really not as hapless a victim

of industry... For after all, she pointed out, it is ‗women who make the clothes

that make the woman.‘‖715 This legacy of women‘s domination of fashion

design has waned in the years after the World War II, but the legacies of these

female designers have not.716 Strange glamour and Surrealism live on in the

work of many contemporary designers who have used the uncanny in their

work, conflating clothing with the body itself. Other designers have continued

to explore fashionable primitivism in the new context for the multicultural

nation, as well as the new global markets. Shock has also continued to be a

vital part of contemporary fashion whether in Gaultier‘s designs for Madonna

in the 1990s, or McQueen‘s designs for Lady Gaga.

In the early twentieth century, ―women who make the clothes that

make the woman‖ blazed the trail of strange glamour that is still at the heart

of contemporary fashion.

715 Josephine B. Ripley, "Paris Comes to Boston for a Day," The Christian Science Monitor , 7 October1940, 9.716 For more on this phenomenon see Robin Givhan, "New York Fashion Week's Mean Girls," The

Daily Beast , no. 15 February (2011), http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-15/new-york-fashion-week-mean-girls-sneer-at-victoria-beckham/. Steele, Women of Fashion:

Twentieth-Century Designers, 114-123, 190-211.



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Pass (2011) Fashion and Surrealism in the Years Between the World Wars TESIS DOC UNIV ROCHESTER

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