Marisa Berenson is in her front row seat early.

"That's clear on this day," she says and laughs.

"Or?" The Schiaparelli brand invited to the opening of the haute couture show at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD), and hundreds came - from influencer Chiara Ferragni to actress Rossy de Palma.

Because the Schiaparelli designs promise sensations in a short week of high tailoring – which, thanks to Dior, Chanel, Armani, Gaultier and Balenciaga, is not short on fashion shows, but has gained another brand with great creativity in recent years.

First the show, then the exhibition

Alphonse Kaiser

Responsible editor for the department "Germany and the World" and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin.

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It's a day of celebration for Marisa Berenson.

Because today not only the tailor-made designs for autumn and winter are shown here.

In the evening, right here, in the museum wing of the Louvre on Rue de Rivoli, the “Shocking” exhibition on Elsa Schiaparelli will open (until January 22, 2023).

The fashion designer, who died in Paris in 1973, was Berenson's grandmother.

So much of the offbeat, surrealistic glamor that surrounded Schiaparelli still stands out in our time – via her granddaughter, who was a world-famous model in the sixties, was photographed by David Bailey for British “Vogue” at the age of 15, with friends like Diane von Furstenberg belonged to the jet set and became famous as an actress in films such as "Death in Venice" (1971), "Cabaret" (1972) and "Barry Lyndon" (1975).

“What is happening here today is moving for me,” says Marisa Berenson, who had to be photographed for a long time by the many photographers at the entrance under the golden Schiaparelli lettering.

“She really deserves this exhibition in the middle of Paris.

My grandmother wasn't conceited.

But it was important to her that her legacy was preserved.

So it's so great that the brand of her name is being revived as well.”

Elsa Schiaparelli came like a comet from the 19th to the 20th century.

Her mother came from Neapolitan nobility.

Her father Celestino was a professor of Arabic studies in Rome.

Her uncle Giovanni Schiaparelli, director of Milan's Brera Observatory and reputedly the most keen-eyed astronomer of the 19th century, discovered the line structures on Mars that became known as Martian canals.

The love for celestial bodies remained in the family: Elsa Schiaparelli was also known for her embroidery of planets and signs of the zodiac, and her great-granddaughter, the daughter of Marisa Berenson, is really called Starlite.

Elsa was born in Rome in 1890

Elsa Schiaparelli was born on September 10, 1890 in Trastevere, the most Roman of all Roman districts.

Her parents were disappointed that it wasn't a boy, they hadn't thought of a name for a girl.

The priest in St. Peter's Basilica asked in vain for it at the baptism.

The wet nurse, who was enthusiastic about German music, simply called a Wagnerian name into the basilica: "Elsa!" Later, the rumor went that little Elsa had been raised more with wine than with milk by the alcoholic wet nurse.

That would at least explain the girl's increased activity in the imagination, which probably drew nourishment from her father's books on the history of religion and art.

In any case, she studied philosophy in Rome, published objectionable poems at a young age, ended deportation to a monastery with a hunger strike, worked as a nanny in London and went to New York with her husband William de Wendt de Kerlor in 1921.

Their daughter Maria Luisa ("Gogo") gave birth to two children, Marisa and Berinthia ("Berry") - who rose to fame as a photographer, married actor Anthony Perkins, and was killed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as a passenger of American Airlines Flight 11, which flew first into the World Trade Center.

Elsa Schiaparelli soon separated from her husband, who was having an affair with Isadora Duncan, and moved to Paris - partly because of her contacts with the Surrealists.

This is how she came up with completely new ideas.

The black knit top with an embroidered white bow tie from her first collection (1927), which is on display in the exhibition, betrays the proximity to trompe-l'oeils from art.

The desire for illusionistic processes can be seen in the skeleton dress with integrated vortex structure.

With the hat in the form of an inverted heeled shoe, women stood out from the crowd.

And the lobster for the lobster dress was painted by Salvador Dalí.