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 animal