Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli
by Kyo Maclear (Author) Julie Morstad (Illustrator)
A dazzling picture book biography of one of the world's most influential designers, Elsa Schiaparelli.
Elsa dared to be different, and her story will not only dazzle, it will inspire the artist and fashionista in everyone who reads it.
By the 1930s Elsa Schiaparelli had captivated the fashion world in Paris, but before that, she was a little girl in Rome who didn't feel pretty at all. Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli is the enchanting story for young readers of how a young girl used her imagination and emerged from plain to extraordinary.
As a young girl in Rome, Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) felt "brutta" (ugly) and searched all around her for beauty. Seeing the colors of Rome's flower market one day, young Elsa tried to plant seeds in her ears and nose, hoping to blossom like a flower. All she got was sick, but from that moment, she discovered her own wild imagination.
In the 1920s and '30s, influenced by her friends in the surrealist art movement, Schiaparelli created a vast collection of unique fashion designs--hats shaped like shoes, a dress adorned with lobsters, gloves with fingernails, a dress with drawers and so many more. She mixed her own bold colors and invented her own signature shades, including shocking pink.
Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli is a stunning and sophisticated picture book biography that follows Schiaparelli's life from birth and childhood to height of success.
Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad (creators of Julia, Child) have gorgeously interpreted Schiaparelli's life. Maclear tells a lyrical story with moments both poignant and humorous and Morstad's elegant imagery saturates the pages with Schiaparelli-inspired shapes and colors.
Informative backmatter and suggested further reading included.
Locate at a Library Near You WorldCat is the world's largest library catalog, helping you find library materials online.
Find books about:
Publishers Weekly
The duo behind Julia, Child offers a bold first-person biography of designer Elsa Schiaparelli, beginning with her dreary childhood in Rome, where the bright colors of market flowers brought her joy in a family that dismissed her as ugly. Schiaparelli's passion for color and beauty never waned, and Maclear describes how, as a single mother in Paris, Schiaparelli discovered a community of artists--including Meret Oppenheim and Salvador Dali--who helped foster her artistic identity. Morstad's vivid mixed-media have an imaginativeness to match Schiaparelli's surrealistic designs (playing with a beloved uncle as a child, she soars amid the stars and planets of the cosmos) and feature splashes of Schiaparelli's trademark shade of pink: "Bright, impossible, impudent, becoming, life-giving, like all the light and the birds and the fish in the world put together." It's a dramatic tribute worthy of its audacious subject. Ages 4-8. Author's agent: Jackie Kaiser, Westwood Creative Artists. Illustrator's agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Literary Management. (Feb.)
Copyright 2017 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.School Library Journal
K-Gr 2--This stunningly illustrated picture book biography on fashion pioneer Elsa Schiaparelli opens on a melancholy tone that is carried through much of the story--her parents were disappointed that she was born a girl. The first-person narration adds tenderness and a sense of intimacy to the story, but holes exist in this telling, which focuses to a fault on Schiaparelli's childhood and development. When the adult Schiaparelli quits jobs, divorces, or moves locations quickly, these experiences are quickly passed over in the narrative. Likewise, the significant financial support she received from friends and from her mother is not mentioned. This might have been forgiven if the text had dedicated more space to Schiaparelli's design achievements and creative partnerships, but this information is primarily found in the helpful endnotes and in Morstad's dreamily expressive and colorful painted figures and clothing ensembles, not in the main text. If this biography has strength, it is that it does not eschew the value of beauty, but redefines it in new a context. Ultimately, Maclear's narrative does not keep pace with Morstad's delightful artwork. VERDICT Large picture book biography collections with an interest in fashion may want to consider.--Lauren Younger, New York Public Library
Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.Review quotes
JNF007120 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Biography & Autobiography | Women
JNF006030 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Art | Fashion
Fashion designers
Schiaparelli, Elsa
Women fashion designers
