Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations
Elsa Shiaperelli and Miuccia Prada
- Date
- Thursday 10th May - Sunday 19th August 2012
- Place
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue (at 82nd Street), New York, NY 10028
Two iconic Italian designers, Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, are under the spotlight in a pioneering, comparative exhibition in New York.
The exhibition at The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art looks into the artistic partnerships, mutual influences and cultural innovations of the two designers from different eras. Eighty pieces by Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973), from the late 20s to the 50s, will be displayed alongside with the fashion designs of Miuccia Prada from the 80s to the present.
Curator of the Costume Institute, Harold Koda, hopes to express the synergy between these two iconic figures of Italian fahsion design. Intriguingly, this is to be explored through creatively constructed 'conversations' between Schiaparelli and Prada as well as vintage garments. Both are regarded as challenging contemporary ideas of taste and reshaped the particular images of 'beauty' and 'glamour' for their respectives times. Yet whereas Schiaparelli was inspired by Surrealism, chanelling its eroticism and humour for the all-important shock factor, for Prada the currents of post-modernism and minimalism made for a far more sober, stripped-back aesthetic.
The exhibit seeks to illustrate how they executed these ideas through unique textiles, colours, patterns and fantastical design. As such their approach to conventional taste was playful, but ultimately progressive. Visitors can appreciate the fashion legacies of Schiaparelli and Prada through a great variety of well-known pieces.
