Lightening up and moving on

Continuing our obession with Schiaparelli...

From BlouinArtInfo website:

January is shaping up to be a big month for Elsa Schiaparelli, as her historic namesake brand gears up to present its first ready-to-wear and couture collections by newly-installed creative director Marco Zanini, and simultaneously, Christie’s will auction off about 180 objects from her personal collection.

Although Schiaparelli died at 83 in 1973, leaving to her daughter the Countess Maria Luisa Yvonne Radha de Wendt de Kerlor a trove of imaginative collectibles including furniture, paintings, sketches, photographs, decorative objects, and clothes, that collection now comes to the market having passed through the hands of Schiaparelli’s granddaughter, the actress Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson.

On offering the collection for auction, Berenson told the New York Times: “You know, Schiap lives inside of me, so I don’t need a lot of the furniture, objects and clothes to remember her by. I think letting go of life and lightening up and moving on in the present sometimes is important.”

With estimates for individual lots starting at $670, the collection is expected to rake in a total of about $1.1 million, said Christie’s.

Impressively, the lots not only comprise clothes that Schiaparelli designed, but also furniture and decorative art objects that told of how she lived. Many lots underscore her relationships with many artists as their collaborator, friend, and patron — from Salvador Dalí and Man Ray to Christian Bérard, Jean Cocteau, Alberto and Diego Giacometti and Marcel Vertès.

Oh, to just be there with a wallet full of money. I would probably buy this Astrologie blouse...



More about the collection in the Telegraph.

The Personal Collection of Elsa Schiaparelli will be auctioned at Christie’s Paris on 23rd January 2014.