Throwback Thursday " Schiaparelli at The Met"

Today's throwback is to 2012, and the fantastic fashion exhibit at The Met of Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations . This was such an amazing fashion exhibit, and this dress was one of my favorites. I believe it was from the 1920's but could easily be worn in 2016. This was the first press event I attended where I saw Bill Cunningham. That actually made me shake, I was so excited! The Met's new fashion exhibit for the winter Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion should be a truly wonderful display. It will run November 8, 2016 to February 5th 2017.

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Photo Gallery Thursday " Vintage Schiaparelli"

One of my favorite pieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations. I really had quite a love for her designs. They just made you want to stare and stare at them. The workmanship was over the top. The funny thing was, you could wear many of these items in 2013 and they would look amazing! They are now in the middle of a revival of The House of Schiaparelli. The former house closed it's doors in 1954, but Italian businessman Diego Della Valle is bringing the fashion house back. He has even restored the original location at 21 Place Vendôme to its former glory, complete with gilded mirrors, quilted sofas in Schiaparelli pink, and the works of Cocteau and Picasso hanging on the walls.Only time will tell who they will name the head of this design house and they will for sure have big shoes to live up to. 

Christian Lacroix had the pleasure of designing a tribute to Ms. Schiaparelli in July of this year, and you can view the awesome collection HERE . 

Be sure to enter the Salt of the Earth Bakery Giveaway 

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Photo Galley Thursday "Prada Flame Shoe"

To the right, the original flame shoe, by Prada, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit. What a fabulous shoe, even though I could never walk in it. But maybe, as it is a wedge, and I tend to do better with those than a regular heel. They offered in the gift shop, the exact replica of the shoe. A great little item to take home after you have viewed the amazing exhibit. Be sure to see it by August 19, 2012. 

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Top 5 Blog Posts for Week Ending June 30, 2012

"Waist Up/Waist Down" looks at Schiaparelli's use of decorative detailing as a response to restaurant dressing in the heyday of 1930s café society, while showing Prada's below-the-waist focus as a symbolic expression of modernity and femininity. An accessories subsection of this gallery called "Neck Up/Knees Down" showcases Schiaparelli's hats and Prada's footwear. 

Be sure to check out the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by August 19, 2012. 

The top 5 for this week are: 

• How to take pictures that reach the soul 
• First taste at Ktchn
• NY Design Guy
• Breakfast at Tiffany's Cupcakes
• Iced Horchata Recipe with Natural Bliss Sweet Cream

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Photo Gallery Thursday " The Surreal Body"

Another gorgeous display from "The Surreal Body" in the final gallery of the Schiaparelli and Prada Impossible Conversations exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Please be sure to check out this exhibit as it is quite fabulous! And you can see a video of the red carpet arrivals from the Met Ball on their website HERE. I think the exhibit gives you quite a bit of inspiration, Italian Style !!

On View May 10–August 19, 2012

The Met's Spring 2012 Costume Institute exhibition, Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, explores the striking affinities between Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, two Italian designers from different eras. Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias's "Impossible Interviews" for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, the exhibition features orchestrated conversations between these iconic women to suggest new readings of their most innovative work. Iconic ensembles are presented with videos of simulated conversations between Schiaparelli and Prada directed by Baz Luhrmann, focusing on how both women explore similar themes in their work through very different approaches.

The exhibition showcases approximately one hundred designs and forty accessories by Schiaparelli (1890–1973) from the late 1920s to the early 1950s and by Prada from the late 1980s to the present. Drawn from The Costume Institute's collection and the Prada Archive, as well as other institutions and private collections, signature objects by both designers are arranged in seven themed galleries: "Waist Up/Waist Down," "Ugly Chic," "Hard Chic," "Naïf Chic," "The Classical Body," "The Exotic Body," and "The Surreal Body."

Schiaparelli, who worked in Paris from the 1920s until her house closed in 1954, was closely associated with the Surrealist movement and created such iconic pieces as the "Tear" dress, the "Shoe" hat, and the "Bug" necklace. Prada, who holds a degree in political science, took over her family's Milan-based business in 1978, and focuses on fashion that reflects the eclectic nature of Postmodernism.

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Schiaparelli and Prada Press Preview at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

I am trying to come up with the appropriate words for this post. I am honored to say I am an approved member of the press for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This museum is one of the best in the world. It is a place where I remember being taken as a small child by my godmother, who got me hooked on New York City. My thoughts on this day, going as press, attending before anyone else, while the museum was closed to the public, I cannot express. I kept thinking, I hope they let me in! This is for sure a must see place on your list when visiting the city. Here we go: 

When I arrived, the unsung heros were there getting that red carpet ready. A father asked for a piece of it for his child while watching them work, they did give him some but I felt it was more maybe for the mom than the child.

The red carpet in the museum looked quite fabulous. This fashionable lady walking along with all the great statues around her. What a lovely scene!! 

The Met's Spring 2012 Costume Institute exhibition, Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, explores the striking affinities between Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, two Italian designers from different eras. Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias's "Impossible Interviews" for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, the exhibition features orchestrated conversations between these iconic women to suggest new readings of their most innovative work. Iconic ensembles are presented with videos of simulated conversations between Schiaparelli and Prada directed by Baz Luhrmann, focusing on how both women explore similar themes in their work through very different approaches. - from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Website 

It is very cool to see the 2 designers talking to each other throughout the exhibit 

This wedding gown was so breathtaking I could not even imagine being able to wear this 

Elsa Schiaparelli

Veil, spring 1938
Cotton net embroidered with blue glass bugle beads
Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gift of Mme Elsa Schiaparelli, 1969

Accessories that would make any woman fall to her knees!!

I found the waistlines very interesting 

Some of my absolute favorites were the following: 

Miuccia Prada
Skirt, autumn/winter 1999–2000
Green wool twill embroidered with blue plastic leaves and green and brown
leather insects
Courtesy of Prada

Bill Cunningham from the New York Times 

Can you spot Bill Cunningham's shadow? 

I also found in the gift shop, The Sartorialist, Scott Schuman, among those browsing around !! 

2 fashionable ladies leaving the exhibit, walking in front of me, possible to be photographed by Mr. Schurman at some point throughout the day!! 

Hope you enjoyed some views of this amazing exhibit! It runs until August 19, 2012 

Catalog can be purchased HERE 

Today's Words of Wisdom

Schiaparelli: Dalí was a constant caller. We devised together … the black hat in the
form of a shoe with a Shocking velvet heel standing up like a small column. …
There was another hat resembling a lamb cutlet with a white frill on the bone, and
this, more than anything else, contributed to [my] fame for eccentricity.
Prada: I’m more known for my shoes. For me, shoes are where I can express my
fantasy, my imagination. I think you have much more freedom to be outrageous
with shoes. There is more room for craziness, for exaggeration. In my spring 2012
collection, for instance, my shoes resembled Cadillacs, complete with tail lights.

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Costume Institute 2012 Exhibit

Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada to be Focus of Spring 2012 Costume Institute Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum


Gala Benefit May 7, 2012, with Honorary Chair Jeff Bezos and Co-Chairs 
Carey Mulligan, Miuccia Prada, and Anna Wintour; Baz Luhrmann Will Be Exhibition Creative Consultant with Nathan Crowley as Production Designer

Exhibition dates:  May 10--August 19, 2012
Location:              Special exhibition galleries, first floor


(New York, October 12, 2011) -- The spring 2012 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: On Fashion, it was announced by the Museum today.  The exhibition, on view from May 10 through August 19, 2012 (preceded on May 7 by The Costume Institute Gala Benefit), will explore the striking affinities between these two Italian designers from different eras.  Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias's "Impossible Interviews" for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton will originate fictive conversations between these iconic women to suggest new readings of their most innovative work.


The exhibition is made possible by Amazon.
Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.

Wallis Simpson in Elsa Schiaparelli, Vogue,

June 1, 1937

Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph by Cecil Beaton,

Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby's

"Given the role Surrealism and other art movements play in the designs of both Schiaparelli and Prada, it seems only fitting that their inventive creations be explored here at the Met," said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  "Schiaparelli's collaborations with Dalí and Cocteau as well as Prada's current Fondazione Prada push art andfashion ever closer, in a direct, synergistic, and culturally redefining relationship."
To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum's Costume Institute Benefit will take place on Monday, May 7, 2012.  Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com, will serve as Honorary Chair.  Co-Chairs will be actress Carey Mulligan, designer Miuccia Prada, and Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue.  This fundraising event is The Costume Institute's main source of annual funding for exhibitions, acquisitions, and capital improvements.

The exhibition is organized by Harold Koda, Curator in Charge, and Andrew Bolton, Curator, both of the Met's Costume Institute.  Film director, screenwriter, and producer Baz Luhrmann will be the exhibition's creative consultant, working with film production designer Nathan Crowley, who will serve as production designer (he was creative consultant for the Met's exhibitionsSuperheroes: Fashion and Fantasy and American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity).  The design for the 2012 Costume Institute Gala Benefit will be created by Baz Luhrmann with Nathan Crowley and Raul Avila, who has produced the Benefit décor since 2007.


The ExhibitionThe title, Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: On Fashion, is based on Umberto Eco's booksOn Beauty and On Ugliness, which explore the philosophy of aesthetics that have informed our sensibilities from the classical world to modern times. Videos in the galleries of simulated conversations between Schiaparelli and Prada will follow the book's paradigm, and will beorganized by topics such as On Art, On Politics, On Women, On Creativity, and more.
"Juxtaposing the work of Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada allows us to explore how
the past enlightens the present and how the present enlivens the past," said Harold
Koda, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute. "The connection of the historic to the modern highlights the affinities as well as the variances between two women who constantly subverted contemporary notions of taste, beauty, and glamour," added Andrew Bolton, Curator in The Costume Institute.

Elsa Schiaparelli circa 1940's in her own design 

The exhibition, in the Metropolitan Museum"s first-floor special exhibition galleries, will feature approximately 80 designs by Elsa Schiaparelli (1890--1973) from the late 1920s to the early 1950s and Miuccia Prada from the late 1980s to the present. Drawn primarily from The Costume Institute's collection and the Prada Archive, as well as other institutions and private collections, signature objects by both designers will be compared and contrasted to explore the extraordinary impact of their aesthetics and sensibilities on contemporary notions of fashionability.  Ms. Schiaparelli, who worked in Paris from the 1920s until her house closed in 1954, was closely associated with the Surrealist movement and created such iconic pieces as the tear dress, the shoe hat, and the insect necklace.  Ms. Prada, who holds a Ph.D. in political science, took over her family's Milan-based business in 1978, and focuses on fashion that reflects the eclectic nature of Postmodernism.

 Guido Harari (Italian, born Cairo, 1952)

Portrait of Miuccia Prada, 1999

Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Guido Harari/Contrasto/Redux

The exhibition will explore how both women employed unconventional textiles, colors, and prints to play with conventional ideas of good and bad taste, and how they exploited whimsical fastenings, fanciful trompe l'oeil details, and deliberately rudimentary embroideries for strange and provocative outcomes.  Experimental technologies and modes of presentation will bring together masterworks from the designers in an unexpected series of conversations on the relationship between fashion and culture.  


A book by Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton will accompany the exhibition.  It will be published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.
The Museum's website at www.metmuseum.org will feature the exhibition. 

Today's Words of Wisdom: 

Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women. -Elsa Schiaparelli

Always the problem with wanting to do structure is to do them in a way that still moves and is still comfortable, not really stiff - Miuccia Prada 

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Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada : On Fashion

Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada to be Focus of Spring 2012 Costume Institute Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum


Gala Benefit May 7, 2012, with Honorary Chair Jeff Bezos and Co-Chairs 
Carey Mulligan, Miuccia Prada, and Anna Wintour; Baz Luhrmann Will Be Exhibition Creative Consultant with Nathan Crowley as Production Designer

Exhibition dates:  May 10--August 19, 2012
Location:              Special exhibition galleries, first floor
(New York, October 12, 2011) -- The spring 2012 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: On Fashion, it was announced by the Museum today.  The exhibition, on view from May 10 through August 19, 2012 (preceded on May 7 by The Costume Institute Gala Benefit), will explore the striking affinities between these two Italian designers from different eras.  Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias's "Impossible Interviews" for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton will originate fictive conversations between these iconic women to suggest new readings of their most innovative work.
The exhibition is made possible by Amazon.
Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.
"Given the role Surrealism and other art movements play in the designs of both Schiaparelli and Prada, it seems only fitting that their inventive creations be explored here at the Met," said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  "Schiaparelli's collaborations with Dalí and Cocteau as well as Prada's current Fondazione Prada push art andfashion ever closer, in a direct, synergistic, and culturally redefining relationship."
To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum's Costume Institute Benefit will take place on Monday, May 7, 2012.  Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com, will serve as Honorary Chair.  Co-Chairs will be actress Carey Mulligan, designer Miuccia Prada, and Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue.  This fundraising event is The Costume Institute's main source of annual funding for exhibitions, acquisitions, and capital improvements.
The exhibition is organized by Harold Koda, Curator in Charge, and Andrew Bolton, Curator, both of the Met's Costume Institute.  Film director, screenwriter, and producer Baz Luhrmann will be the exhibition's creative consultant, working with film production designer Nathan Crowley, who will serve as production designer (he was creative consultant for the Met's exhibitionsSuperheroes: Fashion and Fantasy and American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity).  The design for the 2012 Costume Institute Gala Benefit will be created by Baz Luhrmann with Nathan Crowley and Raul Avila, who has produced the Benefit décor since 2007.
The ExhibitionThe title, Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: On Fashion, is based on Umberto Eco's booksOn Beauty and On Ugliness, which explore the philosophy of aesthetics that have informed our sensibilities from the classical world to modern times. Videos in the galleries of simulated conversations between Schiaparelli and Prada will follow the book's paradigm, and will beorganized by topics such as On Art, On Politics, On Women, On Creativity, and more.
"Juxtaposing the work of Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada allows us to explore how
the past enlightens the present and how the present enlivens the past," said Harold
Koda, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute. 
"The connection of the historic to the modern highlights the affinities as well as the variances between two women who constantly subverted contemporary notions of taste, beauty, and glamour," added Andrew Bolton, Curator in The Costume Institute.

Elsa Schiaparelli circa 1940's in her own design 

The exhibition, in the Metropolitan Museum"s first-floor special exhibition galleries, will feature approximately 80 designs by Elsa Schiaparelli (1890--1973) from the late 1920s to the early 1950s and Miuccia Prada from the late 1980s to the present. Drawn primarily from The Costume Institute's collection and the Prada Archive, as well as other institutions and private collections, signature objects by both designers will be compared and contrasted to explore the extraordinary impact of their aesthetics and sensibilities on contemporary notions of fashionability.  Ms. Schiaparelli, who worked in Paris from the 1920s until her house closed in 1954, was closely associated with the Surrealist movement and created such iconic pieces as the tear dress, the shoe hat, and the insect necklace.  Ms. Prada, who holds a Ph.D. in political science, took over her family's Milan-based business in 1978, and focuses on fashion that reflects the eclectic nature of Postmodernism.

Miuccia Prada 

The exhibition will explore how both women employed unconventional textiles, colors, and prints to play with conventional ideas of good and bad taste, and how they exploited whimsical fastenings, fanciful trompe l'oeil details, and deliberately rudimentary embroideries for strange and provocative outcomes.  Experimental technologies and modes of presentation will bring together masterworks from the designers in an unexpected series of conversations on the relationship between fashion and culture.  


A book by Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton will accompany the exhibition.  It will be published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.
The Museum's website at www.metmuseum.org will feature the exhibition.