A visionary, creative, cultured, enterprising, and extraordinary woman, this is Elsa Schiaparelli as told in a beautiful exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, which traces her intense professional and personal life, two dimensions that in this case are never separated.

The journey meanders through relationships and friendships that become inspiration and real collaborations: Salvador Dalì, Alberto Giacometti, Meret Oppenheim, Man Ray, Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Cocteau and Christian Berard bear witness to her relationship with culture and particularly with Surrealism and Dadaism, while in fashion, her encounter with Poiret is key. She invented the perfume (and colour) Shocking and chose to launch it a bottle created by Leonon Fini that was a reproduction of Mae West's bust, a revolutionary idea. She met and dressed Greta Garbo, Wallis Simpson, Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall, Ginger Rogers, Juliette Greco and employed 400 seamstresses in the 1930s.

She was the one to whom we owe the breakthrough in knitwear, when she created delicate, elegant patterns with trompe d'oeil designs, lifting it out of the shapeless, sporty sphere.

> Her idea to give a theme to the collections, one was called 'stop, look and listen', the array of accessories (hats, shoes) and the most unusual evening gowns were phantasmagorical, the white one with a lobster design being iconic. An interesting collaboration with the embroidery atelier Albert Lasagne resulted in the famous ray design, recreated on a bridal veil in the exhibition and the finely decorated 'Phoebus' cape on the shoulders. Concluding this immersive and engaging journey, there are more than five hundred pieces, the contemporary interpretation of Daniel Roseberry, who knows how to make the archive a new point of departure.

Giuliana Parabiago