| COMB |

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

January 23rd marked the twentieth anniversary of Salvador Dali’s death, but it seems the artist still has some tricks in what is proving to be a very voluminous sleeve.

The upcoming biopic Little Ashes, slated for March release, will likely provoke posthumous interest and debate in Dali’s lesser known past as a student at Madrid’s prestigious Academia de San Fernando de Bellas Artes in the 1920’s. But perhaps more fantastic, at least to fanatics of the Twilight franchise, is casting of vampire/Hollywood heartthrob du jour Robert Pattinson as lead. So strong is the hysteria surrounding Pattinson at the moment, it’s too ironic not to believe that the ever attention-seeking Dali– who insisted on sitting on a stuffed rhinoceros on the Tonight Show in the 80’s– had his deft hand in such a 21st-century resurrection:

Dali’s name most famously evokes memories of melting clocks and monstrous limbs grasping limbs in desert scenes. There’s also that lobster telephone and the engine-red sofa inspired by Mae West’s pillowy lips. The Catalan in fact wore a veritable hat rack of roles as writer, sculptor, illustrator, film-maker, advertising guru, and stage designer. He’s credited for his work on the dream sequence in Hitchcock’s Spellbound and co-wrote an animated feature with Roy Disney.

But beyond his sharp suits and Velázquez-inspired mustache, Dali’s sartorial contribution remains the kind of trivia brought up at cocktail parties rather than in galleries or classrooms. If little else, Little Ashes will reveal to audiences how even in his youth Salvador Dali was a self-styled dandy, one who wore 19th century-style knee breeches, stockings, and his hair girlishly long. These exhibitionist underpinnings give only an inkling of his subsequent streak as art world provocateur and mascot darling among the fashion elite.

An acquaintance of Coco Chanel (above), Dali never collaborated with her or her house– her elegant yet practical customers had little interest in obvious jokes and charades. Fellow top designer Elsa Schiaparelli, however, was of a very different breed: Chanel herself famously referred to her rival as “that Italian artist who makes clothes.”

The Schiap, as friends called her, really splashed to the forefront with a cheeky sweater featuring a trompe l’oeil scarf “tied” around the neck. As she expanded her line to resort and eveningwear, Schiaparelli’s particularly playful brand of irony, humor, and outlandish taste won critical and mass acclaim. Ever the innovator, she dared to blind admirers in shocking pink, bolster jackets with shoulder pads, tease about the quirky seduction of animal prints, and use visible, dyed-to-match zippers in haute couture. Her 1927 store, Pour le Sport, applied the first experimental fumblings of ready-to-wear garments. She broke from dry and dusty presentations and put on real shows with theatricality, props, and themes. In 1934 Time magazine declared, “Madder and more original than most of her contemporaries, Mme Schiaparelli is the one to whom the word “genius” is applied most often.”

Highlights of Dali’s work as a jewelry designer and his collaboration with Schiapperelli: