Fashion Photography

"Working with artists like Bebe Bérard, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Vertès, Van Dongen; and with photographers like Hoyningen-Huene, Horst, Cecil Beaton, and Man Ray gave one a sense of exhilaration. One felt supported and understood beyond the crude and boring reality of merely making a dress to sell"
Elsa Schiaparelli

These words from Schiaparelli’s autobiography highlight two important ideas. Firstly, she considered certain fashion photographers to be on a par with the leading artists of the period and, secondly, that these photographers were important creative collaborators, capable of sharing her extraordinary vision. This chapter will investigate Schiaparelli’s active role in crafting portraits of herself and imagery of her clothing on models, exploring her close working relationships with three of Vogue’s star photographers in the pre-war years (Hoyningen-Huene, Horst and Beaton). She built a unique rapport with each of them, spending holidays with Hoyningen-Huene and Horst in Hammamet, Tunisia, and travelling with Beaton to Moscow.

Schiaparelli declared ‘I am not easy to photograph’, yet few couturières were photographed for Vogue as frequently as she was. In a variety of portraits, she projects different qualities of the modern woman. For Horst she is enigmatic and distant, positioned within an oval picture frame like a painting. For Hoyningen-Huene she is angelic and aristocratic, dressed in white feathers for ‘Le Bal Blanc’, the sumptuous event for which Countess Anna-Letizia Pecci-Blunt instructed her guests to wear white, so they could function as moving screens for a film projection by Man Ray and Lee Miller. For Beaton, Schiaparelli seems vulnerable with one hand clasped round her exposed neck. She posed with difficulty ‘for hours’ in his English home, until the sitting came to an abrupt halt when a crystal chandelier fell from the ceiling.

The chapter will examine the artistry of each photographer, discussing how they used props, set design, lighting, and pose to amplify the themes of Schiaparelli’s collections and the key elements of specific garments. They were the chief interpreters of Schiaparelli’s designs for the magazine’s readers, and their pictures were disseminated to an international audience in France, Britain, and America.