Elsa Schiaparelli's Private Album

Book excerpt: An elaborately illustrated, highly personal look at one of the most prominent fashion figures of the 20th century Elsa Schiaparelli is one of the most important couturiers and taste-makers of the 20th century. She numbered among her collaborators the artists Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, Christian Berard, and Marcel Vernet, resulting in such extraordinary couture collaborations as the lobster and parsley dress, based on a print by Salvador Dalí, and the Circus collection of gold-embroidered jackets, based on drawings by Cocteau. These artists also became personal friends of Schiaparelli's and made wonderful screens and other works of applied art for her house in Paris, photographs of the interiors of which have never been published. Now, the actress Marisa Berenson reveals her private archive of pictures of her much-loved grandmother's house in all its wit and eccentricity and pens an affectionate first-hand memoir of "Schiap."