Shocking Elsa Schiaparelli

Adriana Delfino wearing her own homage to Elsa "Schiap" 

Turin fashion designer Adriana Delfino in collaboration with Talen.To closed her fashion presentations about women designers with Elsa Schiaparelli. After stylish Coco Chanel and genius Madeleine Vionnet, Elsa or Schiap's sense of fashion can be described as artistically shocking and highly creative.

Her creativity survives as new to our days as we enjoy her fashion legacy on a daily basis whenever we wear fuchsia, wrap dresses, decorative zips, huge pockets and many other things that are now considered "normal".

All her creations witness her quick wit, education and curious nature, Elsa is born in 1890 to a wealthy Roman family: her father is an intellectual, one of her uncles an astronomer, the other one was Ernesto Schiaparelli, a famous archaeologist who directed the Egyptian museum of Turin. 

She grows up surrounded by culture and books but, as she later writes in her autobiography Shocking Life her mom has always made her feel very self-conscious about her look.

After a short time in a boarding school in Switzerland - where she is sent after the publication of a love poem booklet, she follows a family friend to London.

Paris is the first stop of this trip and also her debut in the fashion world because for an important evening, she makes herself a wrap dress with a sheet. Unfortunately, as she can't sew, over the hours the dress falls apart.