Shocking Life

E-377: E P Dutton & Co Inc. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 1954. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Hardcover. 8vo. Published by E. P. Dutton & Co. , New York. 1954. 254 pgs. Illustrated with Color / Black and White Plates. Signed and inscribed by Elsa Schiaparelli on the half-title page. First Edition/First Printing. DJ has shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities (DJ is chipped and worn at the extremities, scuff present to the front panel). Bound in black cloth boards with pink titles present to the front board and the spine. Boards have shelf-wear present to the extremities (boards are scuffed and worn, corners bumped and rounded). No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. Her name was Elsa Schiaparelli. She was known as the Queen of Fashion; a headline attraction in the international glitter-glamour show of the late twenties and thirties, feted in Rome (where she was born) , Paris, New York, London, Moscow, Hollywood . . . Her style was a social revolution through clothing—luxurious, eccentric, ironic, sexy. Her fashions, inspired, from the whimsical to the most practical—from a Venetian cape of the commedia dell’arte to the Soviet parachute. She collaborated with some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century: on jewelry designs with Jean Schlumberger; on clothes with Salvador Dalí (his lobster dress for her, a lobster garnished with parsley painted on the skirt of an organdy dress, was instantly bought by Wallis Simpson for her honeymoon with the Duke of Windsor) ; with Jean Cocteau, Alberto Giacometti, Christian Bérard, photographers Baron Adolph de Meyer, Horst, Cecil Beaton, and the young Richard Avedon. EB ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 254 pages .