Une présentation chez Schiaparelli

In the mid-1930s, Raoul Dufy executed several paintings and drawings depicting the atelier of Elsa Schiaparelli, the trailblazing Italian haute couture designer. The present work depicts the Hôtel de Fontpertuis, where the Maison Schiaparelli moved its headquarters in 1935. This five-story, eighteenth-century Parisian hôtel particulier was renovated by interior designer Jean-Michel Frank and sculptor Alberto Giacometti to include a showroom, with large windows overlooking the Place Vendôme. In this fabulous, ornate space, svelte young women modeled Schiaparelli's innovative collections. Schiaparelli cultivated elegance and extravagance in both her fashion designs and shows, the sparkling energy of which is encapsulated in Dufy's Une présentation chez Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli's clothing, accessories and perfume bottle designs provide further evidence of her engagement with the Parisian avant-garde in the 1920s and 1930s. She was inspired by and often worked directly with modern artists, including the Surrealists Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and Man Ray. In the words of fashion historian Rebecca Arnold, Schiaparelli's commercial collaboration with the visual art of Surrealism "brought the movement's love of juxtapositions... into the physical realm, with Schiaparelli's wearers turning their bodies into statements on art, culture, and sexuality" (Fashion: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2009, p. 42) . In his preparatory painting Une présentation chez Schiaparelli, Dufy, who himself worked as a textile designer, paid homage to Schiaparelli's own creative, fashion-forward brand of genius.