War is hell for fashion - Elsa Schiaparelli tells Vogue magazine how she and other designers dealt with WWII in Paris

I just thought this was kind of funny. The ridiculousness of the high fashion world, even back in the 1940s. Germans were marching across Europe, France was being invaded, people were dying, and she had no one to make her fashions and no one to sell them to. Poor Elsa.

I guess it was meant to be an uplifting story, to tell that they tried to continue to work during terrible times. But it just comes off as kind of shallow, since it's only clothing that they were making. And it was clothing that wasn't being made for the people who had to stay and really deal with the war. It was clothing for rich people who probably were able to leave the country.


The story tells in her own words, how Elsa Schiaparelli  and other Paris designers tried to cope during WWII and how she eventually left for America with her Phoenix pin.

From September 1st Vogue, 1940. Click images for larger readable views