Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, currently at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, explores the similarities between Italian fashion designers Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada. Though the height of Schiaparelli’s career was between the two world wars, and Prada’s is still thriving today, their aesthetic and intellectual convictions run parallel. Both women are regarded as being incredibly influential fashion designers, known for challenging the social norms of their times.
Schipaparelli studied philosophy at the University of Rome, collaborated with many artists in the Surrealist and Dada movements, and struck out starting her own clothing line in the 1920s. She was a single mother, at a time when not many women, let alone single mothers were making entrepreneurial ventures of any kind. Prada has a PhD in Political Science and is a dedicated champion of women’s rights.
Besides both being incredibly badass ladies, their designs happen to be strikingly similar. In fact they’re so similar, that their work in the exhibit is grouped by different themes found between their clothing and accessories, such as, ‘The Classical Body’, ‘The Surreal Body’, and ‘The Exotic Body.’
The exhibit consists of one hundred designs and forty accessories by Schiaparelli and Prada, and also includes videos of imagined conversations between the two designers, directed by Baz Luhrmann (the director of Moulin Rogue, Romeo + Juliet, and this December’s The Great Gatsby) The exhibit is on display until August 1.
Photo Via The Metropolitan Museum of Art
