ELSA SCHIAPARELLI.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 27, 1 February 1934, Page 13

ELSA SCHIAPARELLI.

FAMOUS DESIGNER. Six years ago a young Italian started a small shop in Paris to sell handknitted jumpers of her own design (states the "Daily Mail"). To-day the name of Elsa Scliiaparclli is known in four continents—wherever, in fact, women interest themselves in fashion. And now she has arrived ill London to open salons there. Mine. Seliiaparelli said: "I started selling my jumpers because I had to earn my living, but 1 wanted to stop there. I vowed I would never make clothes. I broke my vow, of course. And when I made my sports things people begged me to design evening clothes, and so I went on —almost against my will. "It is curious, because I was brought up in what was practically a scientific atmosphere—most of my family are wet I known in some branch or other. Perhaps I am lucky in that I was born in Kome and lived so much of my life among lovely things." Elsa Scliiaparclli is totally unlike the popular conception of a famous dress designer. She neither trails around the room in clinging gowns nor talks soulfully about her "creations." ' She is small, slender, vivid, and alive A pair of large, intelligent brown eyes dominate her face, and her small hands are those of a practical artist. She stated that she intended to use many British woollens and Irish linens in London as she does in Paris. Over SO British hands will find employment in the new workrooms. At a house-warming party which she gave in the tine old mansion which she has taken in Upper Grosvenor, Street, Mayfair, many prominent people were present to admire the original scheme of decoration, consisting of panelled walls distempered to a pale ice-blue shade. Cleverly-placed spotlights, reflected back from the walls, supply the illumination, and the sole decoration consists of huge tanks of white madonna lilies placed at intervals. In the large company which attended the opening was the Countess of Oxford and Asquith, who nowadays writes a weekly causerie for a Sunday newspaper; Mddle. Suzanne Lenglen, who is shortly to open a tenuis school ill London; Miss Heather Thatcher, the famous actress (complete with monocle); Lady Mount Temple, and countless other celebrities. A young English designer, Ronald Morrel (who is one of the group of exOxford and Cambridge men now distinguishing themselves in the world of dress design), sees in this invasion by Paris houses a great compliment to London. In showing his new season's collection, he declared that London has unquestionably become the fashion centre of the world.