Although Elsa Schiaparelli is most known for her work created during the 1930s, she got her start in the 1920s with sportswear garments. She created sweaters with two-dimensional collars and bows that were knit into the design (Fig. 4). These garments not only launched her fashion career but illustrated her early adoption of trompe l’oeil design elements. By the mid-1930s Schiaparelli had fully embraced an aesthetic that incorporated Surrealism—the art movement that had been popularized since the 1920s. During this period, she worked with famed Surrealist artists and created some of her most unique and inspired garments (Calahan and Zachary).

Italian by birth, Schiaparelli set up her base of operations in Paris from 1922 and continued to work there until the political unrest of the late 1930s forced her to leave the city. In the midst of such upheaval, Schiaparelli created one of her most famed collections inspired by the circus. The Circus Collection debuted in the summer of 1938 to great success. According to the Victoria & Albert Museum—which holds multiple pieces from the collection—the Parisian fashion audiences thought it to be the “most riotous and swaggering collection [they’d] ever seen” (Fig. 5).

Schiaparelli’s themed collections set forth a new practice in the creation of fashion. Designing a collection around a specific theme has since become the norm for fashion designers, but at the time, creating a collection with a theme—especially one as whimsical as the circus—was unheard of. Schiaparelli’s work set the standard for “conceptual” collections. She took inspiration from different aspects of art and culture and designed clothing that became progressively more and more eccentric.

Although much of the Circus Collection featured novelty effects and motifs, including prancing horses, performing elephants, acrobats, tents and clowns—the Tears dress is one of the best-known pieces from the collection (“The Tears Dress,” V&A). The garment was designed in collaboration with her dear friend and fellow Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí (Fig. 6).

The dress was donated to the Victoria & Albert Museum by Ruth Ford, who was originally given the piece by Edward James, a patron of Dalí. Ruth Ford was not only a model and an actress, but also the sister of Surrealist poet Charles Henri Ford. She often wore Schiaparelli’s designs, but there are no surviving photographs of her wearing the Tears dress. An article in the 1992 issue of the magazine ​Harper’s and Queen​ confirms that it was worn by Ford, as well as others. It was not unusual for famous actresses and socialites of the time to wear even some of Schiaparelli’s more eccentric pieces. For example, such as the famed Lobster dress—another design collaboration with Dalí—was worn by Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor (Fig. 7). Ford’s ownership of the dress represents the way in which Schiaparelli was embedded in the community of Surrealist artists at the time.

Elsa Schiaparelli was an innovator who created many unique garments, and even helped to introduce her signature color, Shocking Pink, into fashion (Calahan and Zachary). She took inspiration from the world around her, taking art and culture into account​ ​when she designed clothes, and the Tears dress was no different. Central to the design of the dress was the influence of Surrealism. The goal of the movement, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was to: “release [the] unbridled imagination” in order to create new and “unexpected” imagery (Voorhies).

Surrealists sought to grapple with the horrors of the First World War, and the turmoil that followed by looking inwards to one’s imagination. One sector of Surrealism that was particularly fantastical was pioneered by artists such as Dalí. The Surrealists had a “disdain for convention” and aimed to create pieces that brought elements from one’s dreams into the visual sphere (Voorhies). Using this movement as a point of inspiration for her designs, Schiaparelli also drew from a wide range of sources such as myth, the constellations, and the circus to create clothing that challenged the norms of couture; her work was truly art in itself (Calahan and Zachary).

In “Fetishizing the Feminine: The Surreal Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli” Sabina Stent discusses the way in which Schiaparelli was herself a Surrealist artist. Schiaparelli worked with other creatives of the movement, such as Jean Cocteau and Dalí, in order to create her most famous pieces towards the end of the decade; her Skeleton dress (Fig. 8) was also created in 1938. Her collaboration with Dalí did not officially begin until 1936, and The Circus Collection—which included the Tear dress—represented their first official design partnership (Stent 80).

The inspiration for the dress’ “tear” print actually came from an earlier painting by Dalí, titled ​Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra (​Fig. 9)​. ​The painting was created between 1934 and 1936, and is the third in a series of paintings—one of which Schiaparelli actually owned. Dalí’s painting exhibits multiple Surrealist elements that were common to the art movement. The painting depicts three women in a barren, deserted landscape with flowers shrouding their faces. Two of them hold instruments, as referenced to the title of the painting; but, it is the third figure in the middle from which the Tear dress takes its inspiration. The middle figure wears what appears to be a white dress (Fig. 10). Upon closer inspection, you can notice that it is the combination of skin and a type of garment that covers the form. The “garment,” which clings to the shape of the figure, appears to be a light color and features rips across the bodice and skirt. In the painting, the tears to the garment resemble flayed skin—an element that Schiaparelli and Dalí turn into something horrifyingly beautiful through the magenta and pink trompe l’oeil print on the Tears dress and the delicately lined tears on the coordinating veil (The Dalí Museum).