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Evening dress

Designer Elsa Schiaparelli Italian
Manufacturer House of Lesage French
fall 1939
Not on view
Music was the theme of Schiaparelli's fall,1939 collection. Correspondingly, she designed this white organza dress and gloves embroidered in metallic threads with musical-score notes and accessorized with a belt containing a working music box in the buckle. Cutout scrollwork shapes on the buckle top relate to those on a violin, forms immortalized in Man Ray's 1924 photograph "Le Violin d'Ingres." An elaboration of the Surrealist notion of woman's body as musical instrument, the wholly integrated creation captures the visual, audible, and transcendent essence of music in the person of the wearer.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Evening dress
  • Designer: Elsa Schiaparelli (Italian, 1890–1973)
  • Manufacturer: House of Lesage (French, founded 1924)
  • Date: fall 1939
  • Culture: French
  • Medium: silk, leather, plastic, metal
  • Credit Line: Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Millicent Huttleston Rogers, 1951
  • Object Number: 2009.300.1165a, b
  • Curatorial Department: The Costume Institute

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Evening belt, Schiaparelli French, leather, metal, French
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Evening gloves, Schiaparelli French, silk, metal, French
Evening gloves
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fall 1939
Pullover sweater, Elsa Schiaparelli Italian, wool, silk, French
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Elsa Schiaparelli
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Evening ensemble, Elsa Schiaparelli Italian, silk, metal, French
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Elsa Schiaparelli
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1938

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