The Skeleton Dress

The Skeleton Dress - Elsa Schiaparelli - Fashion unpicked - V&A

1)

So here we have Schiaparelli's "Skeleton" dress.

It was a collaboration with the artist Salvador Dali.

Elsa Schiaparelli was an Italian-born, French couturier.

She was born in Rome in 1890 and found herself in Paris in the early 1920s through her collaborations with the Surrealists; she created some of her most striking designs. Still, although those are perhaps the designs for which she is best known, they were not her only contribution to fashion.

2)

This dress is made from a very supple black silk crepe, a luxurious, lightweight, very sheer material, and Schiaparelli has achieved the effect of tracing the kind of skeleton of the body through an elaborate quilting technique.

She references some of the works on paper and paintings that Salvador Dali himself made that feature prominent skeletons in the landscapes.

3)

On the surface of the dress, Schiaparelli has stitched the outlines of each of the bones, and then through the lining of the dress, Schiaparelli has fed through a kind of padding or wadding that then has the effect of raising the dress fabric away from the skin.

As a result, she's created a kind of skeleton on the surface of the dress that's straightforward in contrast to the elegant, curved line of the garment.

4)

The bones start up through the tight, then connect to the ribcage into a collarbone, and then continue down the arms, so you can see that this raised outline of the arm bones continues down to the wrist.

The dress itself is sheer, almost transparent, which would have meant that the wearer, the American actress Ruth Ford, would have worn it over a dress of the same black color.

While we don't have a quote from her to describe what it was like wearing the dress, we can say that this was one example of a whole series of really shocking Schiaparelli designs that Ford had in her wardrobe.

5)

In addition, Schiaparelli has finished this couture garment with two zips across the shoulders, allowing the wearer to get in and out of the dress.

It's a bit of a surprise because zips at this time were a novelty, and they often were made more functional or were used for more functional garments. Still, Schiaparelli is making a feature of them, embracing this new element of fashion finishing.

6)

Now we're going to explore the back, so I'm just going to turn this dress over.

So I think what's immediately visible is that the ribcage carries on to the back. A spine is stitched prominently down the center of the back, and all the vertebrae are individually visible.

It's a very noticeable prominent feature of the design.

7)

At the dress's hem, you can see that the fabric has been tucked and pleated, gathered to create a wonderful voluminous sense of air that would have caught the inside of the dress as the wearer walked.

It is among Schiaparelli's most well-known designs.

It represents her collaboration with Surrealist artists, in this case, Salvador Dali.

It represents the pinnacle of haute couture with remarkable craftsmanship and techniques. Still, it also combines those techniques and the use of luxurious materials with a very macabre sense of art and design, in this case, superimposing onto the dress the outline of a skeleton, a remarkable example of Schiaparelli's work.