SCHIAPARELLI SPRING/SUMMER 2024 READY-TO-WEAR

AN EVERYDAY SENSATION In her private album, the actress Marisa Berenson describes a pivotal moment in the early career of her grandmother Elsa Schiaparelli. It was 1927, and Elsa was admiring a friend’s sweater. Upon learning it was made by some Armenian knitters, she tracked them down and commissioned a sweater of her own, which, Berenson writes, “she specified should look like the primitive drawing of a child in prehistoric times.” That piece, with its deliberately imperfect trompe l’oeil bow and its surrealist, offbeat humor, was an immediate sensation, and Elsa’s first signature hit. It also formed the beginning of what would be Elsa’s ethos for her maison: Begin with an everyday garment—in this case, a humble wool sweater—but make it a sensation. In Elsa’s hands, that workaday, utilitarian item became something to be discussed, something to be desired, something to provoke. From there, she’d go on to create iconic, era-defining pieces featuring skeletons, lobsters, insects and circus animals. But her philosophy never changed: Take something familiar. Now make it unfamiliar. From head to golden toes, Schiaparelli ready to wear is an exercise in making the everyday come to more vivid, more surprising life. I have found that the more familiar the item—a crisp white shirt, a fluid trench, a black smoking blazer—the more joyful it is to rediscover it anew when combined with the house codes, which often reveal themselves as secrets. Every button on the sleeves is a piece of