Schiaperelli & Prada: Impossible Conversations

Schiaperelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations is the stunning new exhibition catalogue from The Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. A captivating exploration of the striking similarities between Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, the book features insightful texts and stunning photographs to create a ‘conversation’ between two iconic fashion designers. As advance copies have just arrived in the office, we thought we’d give you a little sneak peak…

 

 

Although separated by time, Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli - both Italian, both feminists - share striking affinities in terms of their design strategies and fashion manifestoes. Presented as an intimate "conversation", Schiaparelli and Prada aims to tease out formal and conceptual similarities between the two designers.

Striking photographs and insightful texts will illustrate the parallels between the two, including their preferences for interesting textiles and prints, eccentric colour palettes, and a bold and playful approach to styling and accessories. Schiaparelli, in the 1920s through the 50s, and Prada, from the late 1980s to today, exploited the narrative possibilities of prints, sought out unconventional textiles, played with ideas of good and bad taste, and manipulated scale for surrealistic outcomes. Contemporary art plays a major role in the work of these inventive women - Schiaparelli in her famous collaborations with Dali and Cocteau, and Prada via her Fondazione Prada. Blending the historic with the contemporary, new technologies and unconventional modes of presentation will bring the masterworks of both designers together into a grand conversation between the most important women fashion designers to ever emerge from Italy.