One of the most eccentric and eclectic artists in the history of art, Salvador Dalì, Spanish painter, sculptor, film maker and designer, who loved to declare: “We must systematically cause confusion”,
that is, start up the creative process, makes the acquaintance, around mid 1930s, of Elsa 
Schiaparelli, an ingenious and ground –breaking Italian fashion designer born at the turn of the 19th century.
She was one of the first fashion designers to adopt newly discovered techniques such as the zipper in the same year it was invented and was also able to foresee the success of prêt a porter.
She was a pioneer in that her collections featured a monographic theme as well as spectacular effects on the catwalk.
Elsa is also remembered as the creator of shocking pink.
Aristocratic and cultured, she would associate with the leading cultural exponents of the time and many artists that were involved in the surrealist movement, of which Salvador Dalí was the greatest representative.
In brief, the objective of surrealism – which would permeate every medium of art, – is its infinite expansion of reality as a substitute for the previously accepted dichotomy between the “real” and the “imaginary”; such approach relies on the unconscious mind for inspiration in art – the unconscious mind being seen as the source of night dreams and automatic thoughts that lied at the heart of the recently discovered psychoanalysis.
Elsa’s close contact with Jean Cocteau, celebrated poet and film director, inspired many surrealistic designs for her clothes, embroidered at the famous embroidery house of Lesage on stunning materials and clothing.
She started collaboration with Dalì that led to the creation of sensational and memorable outfits. Dalì, inspired by his own “Venus de Milo with Drawers”, designed for Elsa a skirt suit with a jacket that had drawer-shaped pockets.
He also designed the skeleton evening dress that featured a padded ribcage, and the famous upside-down shoe hat, which his wife Gala – his lifelong muse and model in most part of his paintings of sacred nature besides several portraits – wore as a testimonial.
