Recommended by Waleska Santiago

"Every story starts somewhere." And this story starts with shocking pink endpapers, one of the colors "Schap" popularized (along with ice blue). Born in Rome to parents and an older sister who seem indifferent and think Elsa is ugly, Elsa develops a love for fashion and beauty (though she never learns to sew). Traveling from Italy to England to Paris to New York and back to Paris, Elsa never gives up on her dream, and eventually opens her first shop at the age of 37.

"To be an artist is to dream big and risk failure."

Back matter includes a note from the author and illustrator, a photo of Elsa, examples of things she made and other artists she was friends with. End notes, source notes, further reading. ( )

Fitting a life as wondrous and complex as that of fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli into a book is difficult enough, without even the added challenge of simplifying the narrative for a youth audience, but author Kyo Maclear and illustrator Julie Morstad do a decent job of it in their colourful book Bloom. Focusing on a floral theme that springs from Schiaparelli’s childhood idea of making herself beautiful by planting flower seeds on herself (madcap, but kind of whimsically adorable) they create a visual contrast between the drab and uninspiring life in which the designer must learn to learn to flourish to find her path. This contrast is only marginally successful, in my opinion though, since it is actually in the earlier pages (where Elsa views flowers in Rome and her imagination blooms) that we see the colourful theme emerge and flourish. Later pages, even those when she is designing with the surrealists and opening her own boutique, seem far more lacklustre in comparison, and it is not until her trademark hot pink makes a splash in the final pages that we are woken up again. The story itself is actually more interesting than the visuals, even for its few and simple words, since its message of inspiration holds true. With just a little bit more fine tuning and embracing the true creative drive of one of fashion’s most influential women, I think that this book could have been wonderful, but it fell just short of hitting the right mark for me. ( )

Really excellent biography for younger kids about Else Schiaparelli -- and that's not an easy subject to turn into an engaging picture book, but this one is lovely and well done. Great on themes of beauty and artistry and following an unconventional life. ( )

Elsa Schiaparelli (pronounced ‘SKYAP-a-relli”) was born in Rome into a prominent family. She reported that her parents thought she was ugly; they called her sister “Bella,” or beautiful, and Elsa “Brutta” or ugly. What a cruel thing to do to a child. Once she even ate flower seeds thinking if she sprouted flowers from her body, she would be prettier. She plunged into the world of make believe, and ended up with dressmaking as a way to express her creativity and to transform the looks of women.

In 1922 she took her sketches to Paris, and finally had a breakthrough with her designs, At the age of 37, she opened her first shop. The author, telling the story in Elsa’s voice, writes:

“The new world is buzzing. Women don’t want to just sit around looking pretty. They want to DREAM and DO bold things. My unique clothes invite women to express their imaginations fully.”

As we learn in the end note, Schiaparelli invented and/or redefined the jumpsuit, the wraparound dress, see-through raincoats, paper clothes, fun fur, folding eyeglasses, and colored tights. She employed exposed zippers, odd buttons, innovative clothing shapes (like a hat in the shape of a lamb chop), and bold colors, with lots of pink and “ice blue,” a color she introduced. Her designs were influenced by art friends she made in Paris, including the Surrealists like Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau. Fittingly, her motto was “Dare to be different.”

The author has Elsa contend:

“I no longer feel brutta, For the first time, I see the beauty of my art reflected in the world.”

Through her success, the author reports, Elsa freed herself “from Mamma’s harsh words and Pappa’s judgment.”

She worked to “plant a new seed of beauty: Beauty itself blooms to reveal the irregular, the imperfect, the smart, tough, goofy, surreal, and wild.”

She concludes:

“The women I inspire, and the women who inspire me, and the girl I was, who once felt so ugly that she planted seeds on her face . . . All of us, together: We BLOOM and BLOOM.”

The book concludes with a note from the author and illustrator together, and a list of sources for further reading.

The illustrator, Julie Morstad, clearly had fun designing the artwork for the book, with mixed media and bright colors popping out against white backdrops.

Evaluation: What a wonderful recovery for a child dismissed as ugly by her parents. Children can take heart from this story, as well as enjoying this snapshot of the history of fashion. ( )

Canadian author/illustrator team Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad, whose other collaborations include Julia, Child and It Began with a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way, turn in this marvelous picture-book biography to the story of Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli. Born in Rome in 1890, into an aristocratic family, Elsa (or 'Schiap,' as she came to be known in later life) always felt like an ugly duckling compared to her elder sister. A lover of beauty with a creative eye, she became enraptured by the possibilities all around her from an early age, trying to grow flowers on her face, jumping out of a third-floor window to emulate da Vinci's flying machine. Eventually, she put her talent and vision to work as a fashion designer, collaborating with some of the great artists of her day, from Picasso to Jean Cocteau, and creating some astonishingly original work...

After enjoying Maclear and Morstad's book about Gyo Fujikawa, I sought out Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and I was not disappointed. The story is engaging, highlighting how its eponymous heroine stuck to her own creative vision and impulse, and accomplished something new in her field. The accompanying artwork was simply gorgeous, capturing the magic and beauty of both Schiaparelli's youthful dreams and imaginings, and her more mature creations. I don't really know very much about high fashion, nor (if I am being honest) is it a subject that usually holds much interest for me, but I nevertheless found Schiaparelli's story quite engrossing, appreciating how she marched to the beat of her own drum, and left behind what could have been a very comfortable life with her affluent family, in order to follow her dreams. I was also quite impressed by the list of artists with whom she collaborated, and by the fact (as mentioned in the afterword) that she always paid her workers well. If I had any criticism to make of the book, it is that no mention is made, either in the main narrative or in the afterword, that Schiaparelli's fashion house only flourished during the interwar period, and folded after the end of WWII, because it couldn't keep up with post-war trends. This is a lost opportunity, I think, as this fact could have been used to emphasize that, while short-lived, her fashion house had a longer influence on the wider fashion world.

I would recommend this one to picture-book readers looking for stories about fashion designers, and about following one's own artistic vision. It could be paired with a picture-book biography of Coco Chanel, who was Schiaparelli's rival, or with something like Fancy Party Gowns: The Story of Fashion Designer Ann Cole Lowe, which details the story of an African-American dressmaker and designer who faced a very different set of challenges, in her work in the fashion world. ( )