Shocking Life

"Yes. She was Italian but worked in Paris. You can really see a crossover with art in her designs. She worked with some of the great surrealists, including Salvador Dali. Several of her designs, like the lobster hat and the skeleton dress, are particularly artistic. Maybe it’s more fruitful to talk about Schiaparelli as part of the surrealist art movement than fashion. Like Dali, she had a good business sense and understood the power of marketing. I think the notion that you can draw up a clear distinction between art and fashion, where art is somehow entirely pure and commercial fashion is impure, is ridiculous. Is Damien Hirst a purer artist than Alexander McQueen? Speaking of McQueen, perhaps the conflict you see in his work would be less troubling if he had decided to work in another art form. Some of them could certainly be categorised as performance art."