Schiaparelli Bengale Chiffon Evening Dress Illustrated by Reynaldo Luza

Schiaparelli Bengale Chiffon Evening Dress

Illustrated by Reynaldo Luza

Harpers Bazaar

June 1935

Etsy Listing #66900928

Elsa Schiaparelli, the flamboyant fashion designer of the Art Deco period, is renowned for her fabulous eccentricity and innovation. She changed fashion and people's attitudes to it with her scandalous dresses and colourful personality. Her legacy of spectacular designs and an entirely innovative approach to fashion design has moulded contemporary fashion and inspired countless fashion designers, including Galliano, McQueen, Gaultier and Yves Saint Laurent. In short, Elsa Schiaparelli was the woman who shaped fashion as we know it today - creating the pattern for all dresses to come.

Reynaldo Luza (1893-1978), pre-eminent fashion artist, was born in Lima, Peru. He began training as an architect at the University of Louvain, Belgium, but returned to Peru at the outbreak of World War I, where he changed his studies from architecture to art. In 1918 he came to the United States, where he earned his living by contributing drawings to several fashion publications, principally VOGUE, HARPERS BAZAAR, and VANITY FAIR. In 1921 he joined HARPERS BAZAAR as the principal fashion artist, a position he was to hold for 27 years. He divided his time between New York, Paris and London, working closely with all of the leading fashion designers of the times--Poiret, Patou, Lelong, Paquin, Douillet, Doucet, Cheruit, Worth, Drecoll, Callot Soeurs, Redfern, Martial et Amand, Premet, Reboux, Chanel, Vionnet, Molyneaux, Schiaparelli, Hartnell, Steibel, and Balenciaga, among others. In 1940 Luza made New York his principal base, where, over the next few years, he continued his activities at Harpers as well as creating fabric and furniture designs, and the costumes for the movie "The Bridge of San Luis Rey".