Elsa Schiaparelli, L’Officiel,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit “Impossible Conversations,” features two infamous Italian designers Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada. From May 10th – August 19th, museum-goers could view and listen to the two designers converse, even though they are from two different eras. This show was fashioned after the 1930s Vanity Fair article “Impossible Interviews”, which created conversations between well known innovators whom would never in actuality meet or converse in person. Applying this format to a conversation between Prada and Schiaparelli, the exhibit leads to a comical insight into the minds of two great Italian designers that may have never otherwise had this impossible conversation.
When entering the exhibit, there is a long and black plastic bench set before a large screen in a black room playing a simulated conversation between Prada and Schiaparelli, which immediately teaches that Schiaparelli designed from the late 1920s until the 1950s, and Prada from the late 1980s till present day, and yet have the ability to seamlessly overlap and intertwine in dialogue and in style. In the films, directed by Baz Luhrman, Prada plays herself and Australian actress Judy Davis plays Schiaparelli, who died in 1973. In each film Prada and Schiaparelli (her lines taken from her writings and interviews) are sitting across from each other at a long dining room table set with flutes of champagne and decanters of crystal. The room’s darkness and gothic decor gives a feel of anonymity adding a severity to every spoken word. The short films throughout the exhibit tell the story of each designer’s individual approach and opinion regarding women’s fashion, design in their respective era, definition of an artist, and the meaning of life.
After watching the first film, I was able to see the slight awkwardness that was about to unfold. At the end of the discussion, they concluded that fashion is too difficult to discuss with another designer; but life was the one thing that they could both agree on. And yet, even there they couldn’t quite agree. Schiaparelli spoke about her wild past and how she always marched to the beat of her own drum, which always inspired her lavish designs. In her time, women’s fashion was mainstreamed into specific styles, so she didn’t design with an audience in mind in order to explore her own opinion of beauty. For her, fashion wasn’t a money making career, it was what made her feel unique and free. In contrast, Prada’s approach was to beautify the everyday woman. Living in an era of individuality opened more room for creativity. Her work is commercialized and is made in order to please a public.
The first display, and in my opinion most poignant, “Waist up/Waist down”, displayed Schiaparelli’s elaborate waist up designs suiting the cafe era in the 1930s. Each suit jacket or blouse stole the show, since many women lived in cafes, and barely showed their skirts or slacks under the café tables. In opposition, Prada’s elaborate waist down creations extenuated femininity by elaborating the details and movement of skirts, which she believed deserved ample attention. The difference in focus demands every shopper to rethink the reason why they shop, and if they prefer to shop for tops or bottoms.
I found the third section, “Hard Chic’s” focus to be fascinating. In this section the designers were exploring the juxtaposition of women’s’ fashion and men’s work uniforms. The combination of the two was like a celebration of the influx of women into the largely male dominated work force. The inspiration from male uniforms is apparent, even though they are feminized. Prada explains that she wants to make “the male more human and the woman stronger”. She wanted femininity with the power, and these pieces, to her, are the attempt to solve the struggle between the two.
Finally, in the seventh and last exhibit, “The Surreal Body” examines fashion as an art. The display is set up like a fun house in glass boxes with mirrored walls illustrating the fashion’s contemporary concept of blurring lines and creating illusions by playing with scale. In this section Schiaparelli starts to talk about fashion as an art, when Prada retorts, “it was the only real relevant experiment that really was meaningful, it was not a joke it was a serious moment when serious minds were collaborating”. To her fashion is no art it’s an order to fill, a public to sell too, but to Schiaparelli it’s “revolutionary”.
The exhibit ends off with a loop back to the start of the conversation, and the origin of the title for the exhibit, “Impossible Conversations.” Here, Schiaparelli asks Prada if they were to, theoretically, meet in real life would they be friends or foes? Prada answers friend, but Schiaparelli continues to point out how even after their long discussion they still haven’t been able to agree even on the fundamentals of fashion.