PatternVault

Yesterday was Elsa Schiaparelli’s birthday. Last year, I included a portrait of the designer in my Vogue Patterns 125 slideshow. Here’s a bit more about that photograph, which shows Schiaparelli wearing an ensemble made with a Vogue pattern.

In 1941, Elsa Schiaparelli was in New York City, managing her fragrance business and speaking in support of the war effort. That summer, Vogue ran a news item about the designer and an evening ensemble she’d seen modelled at the Waldorf-Astoria:

Schiaparelli did purchase the ensemble: two issues later, Horst had photographed her wearing it. The caption for the portrait reads:

“Madame Elsa Schiaparelli, now in New York supervising her perfume business, is to speak in the autumn for the Defense Savings campaign. Her black crêpe dinner-dress with a white wool jacket was made from a Vogue Design by Mrs. Oliver Welch of Denver; won a sewing contest which Schiaparelli judged; was bought by Schiaparelli herself”

— Vogue magazine, 1941

Although Vogue didn’t note the pattern number, it is clearly Vogue 355, a Vogue Couturier design that’s now recognizable as one of the early Vintage Vogue reissues. (Note the embellished pockets.)

A belated happy birthday to Madame Schiaparelli!