Schiaparelli invented shocking pink — the New Look bankrupted her house

Elsa Schiaparelli opened her Paris atelier in 1927 and became the most original fashion voice of the 1930s. Her collaborations with Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, and other Surrealists produced designs that had never been seen before — the lobster dress, the shoe hat, the tear-dress, and her signature colour 'shocking pink'. At her peak in the early 1940s she employed more than 400 people and dressed Hollywood royalty: Mae West, Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo.

Schiaparelli also built a successful perfume line. In 1937 she launched 'Shocking', a perfume in a bottle shaped like a dressmaker's dummy, which became one of the best-known fragrances of the era. The perfume business was a significant revenue stream for the house.

After World War II, fashion shifted. Christian Dior launched the 'New Look' in 1947 — soft shoulders, tiny waists, full skirts — a romantic femininity that was the opposite of Schiaparelli's sharp, witty surrealism. Schiaparelli refused to change her aesthetic. She dismissed the New Look as 'dowdy' and continued designing in her established style, but the market had moved on.

By 1951 the house was in serious financial trouble. Schiaparelli showed her last couture collection at the end of 1954 and declared bankruptcy. She closed the house and retired to Tunisia. The Shocking perfume continued through a separate company (Elsa Schiaparelli SAS), but the fashion house that had defined an era was gone — unable to adapt when the world changed, and unwilling to change with it.