Surrealist Spotlight: Elsa Schiaparelli’s "Tears Dress"

In 1938, Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí combined efforts to concoct the “Tears Dress”, as the duo often manifested such surrealist artistic masterpieces.

The pale cream silk dress is marked by bubblegum pink and deep red harsh, almost cartoonish, tears. The shadows of the tears invoke a sense of trompe-l’oeil or a 3-D illusionary effect that confuses the perspective of the spectator. The white veil, a staple of Schiaparelli, is long and cohesive to the garment, but adds a sense of mystère and holiness. Is the woman wearing this mourning a lost-loves one? Or is she herself bleeding out, with gaping wounds?

The "Tears Dress" by Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí, Source: Google Images

The piece is based off of Dalí’s 1936 painting, Three Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra, as one of the three painted women stands with rips in her dress/skin. Here, surrealist painting and fashion meet, telling a very strange but enticing story.

Three Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra, Salvador Dalí, 1936

1938 was a year marked by impending war, violence but also of great movement and modernity from the surrealists. The dress, one could speculate, is a product of this anxiety, an artistic effort to portray how fashion is affected by these global realities. Since the “Tears Dress” was a part of Schiaparelli’s conceptual circus collection, one could also imagine a comical aspect in the garment. Torn and incomplete, the wearer of this dress is exposed and clearly injured. Yet, the “point” of surrealism is to shock the public, to create an air of the perverse and to reflect art with uncomfortable and mysterious truths and points of view.

The “Tears Dress” is one of my favorite Schiaparelli and Dalí collaborations as it is equally beautiful and disturbing. To wear a garment made of faux-tears is to manipulate the purpose of clothing; which is to protect the body. The dress thus relinquishes its ability to shield and becomes a casualty in and of itself. And the veil, the garment of ultimate protection, is ripped as well, potentially showing that no one is safe from violence and that the impending war will leave its traces everywhere.