The Surrealist Roots of Schiaparelli’s New Braided-Hair Tie
The hairy accessory has roots in works by Meret Oppenheim, Mimi Parent, and Pippa Garnern.
The use of hair calls as far back to Surrealist artist Méret Oppenheim, specifically a bracelet that the house created based on her design nearly 90 years ago. In 1936, she successfully proposed a metal bracelet with an exterior covered in hair. According to Schiaparelli, Pablo Picasso then met the artist at the Café de Flore while she was wearing the bracelet and mentioned that one could make anything from the same material. Thus was born the idea for the work that Oppenheim is perhaps best known for: her fur-lined teacup, Object (1936).
Two decades later, Mimi Parent, another artist working in a surrealist mode, would create a work using hair in an uncanny way. Her 1959 Masculin-Féminin shows a cropped shot of a model in a suit wearing a tie made from hair. The image was used on the announcement for the 1959–60 International Exhibition of Surrealism at Paris’s Galerie Daniel Cordier. (Fittingly, the new looks by the house, which has had ties with the likes of Magritte and Dalí, arrive on the the centennial of the art movement known for whimsy and absurdity.)