Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations

Product details

• Although separated by time, Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli share striking affinities in terms of their design strategies and fashion manifestos
• The book presents over 200 archival and newly photographed images of the designers’ work, and includes a smaller “book within a book” that features the “impossible conversations” between the two women. Schiaparelli and Prada both share a love of Surrealism and surprise, and the book itself has been conceived as an unusual object that constructs a playful dialogue of images and commentary between two designers who never actually met
• Striking photographs and insightful texts illustrate the parallels between the two
• As a physical object the catalogue also has a Surrealist quality and is highly interactive. The book is presented in a unique size that is accessible and convenient - smaller than a typical museum catalogue, with a literary scale, like a novel - but large enough to feature lush, exquisite images. At the same time, the book is tactile and easy to handle, almost like a clutch
• The cloth cover pictures a Prada pattern of surrealistic lips, with a smaller inset image that acts as the “cover” of the book-within-book
• A cloth spine wrapped over the book’s true spine suggests the construction techniques of the fashion designers

• Dimensions

  • 27 x 19.8 x 2.7cm

• Detailed description

  • Striking photographs and insightful texts will illustrate the parallels between the two, including their preferences for interesting textiles and prints, eccentric colour palettes, and a bold and playful approach to styling and accessories. Schiaparelli, in the 1920s through the 50s, and Prada, from the late 1980s to today, exploited the narrative possibilities of prints, sought out unconventional textiles, played with ideas of good and bad taste, and manipulated scale for surrealistic outcomes. Contemporary art plays a major role in the work of these inventive women - Schiaparelli in her famous collaborations with Dali and Cocteau, and Prada via her Fondazione Prada. Blending the historic with the contemporary, new technologies and unconventional modes of presentation will bring the masterworks of both designers together into a grand conversation between the most important women fashion designers to ever emerge from Italy.

• Format

  • Hardback
    192 pages
    175 colour illustrations