Elsa Schiaparelli Obituary

Elsa Luisa Maria Schiaparelli was born at the Palazzo Corsini, Rome. Her mother, Giuseppa Maria de Dominicis, was a Neapolitan aristocrat. Her father, Celestino Schiaparelli, a Piedmontese, was an accomplished scholar with multiple areas of interest.

Elsa Schiaparelli Obituary

Elsa Schiaparelli, one of the brilliant figures of high fashion, died Tuesday night at her home in Paris. She was 83 years old and had been in a coma since having suffered a stroke seven weeks ago.

Although her Paris workshops turned out thousands of dress and coat styles over a span of three decades, Schiaparelli was known best not for a style but for a color shocking pink or, more simply, Shocking, the name she gave to her perfume and used to describe the rich, vivid pink that was her trademark.

Pink was hardly her only color. She also introduced ice blue, sun yellow, poppy red, and a rainbow of other brilliant tones to a fashion world that in the nineteen‐twenties seemed Ito equate haute couture with dignified shades of brown, blue and black.

In retirement, Schiaparelli remained as outspoken as ever.