In 1937, Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) asked Leonor Fini (1907-1996) to design a flacon for her new perfume. Fini’s presentation – a dressmaker’s dummy based on Mae West – was made up of no less than 20 separate parts – including tiny glass flowers made in Murano – and apparently it took 30 women to assemble it. The bottle was then housed in an elegant glass domed case with a pink velvet cushion and a delicate printed white lace pattern. The whole creation was packaged in a ‘shocking’ pink presentation box lined in ‘shocking’ pink satin. In her autobiography ‘Shocking Life’, Schiaparelli wrote: ‘The colour flashed in front of my eyes. Bright, impossible, impudent, becoming, life-giving, like all the light and the birds and the fish in the world put together, a color of China and Peru but not of the West-a shocking color, pure and undiluted’. Jean Paul Gauthier once said that his ‘Classique’ perfume torso bottle was inspired by his grandmother’s perfume – we can only assume what scent she used.
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