num_pages: 283
description: From the acclaimed author of an intimate richly illustrated memoir written with charm and panache that juxtaposes two fascinating livesthe iconoclastic designer Elsa Schiaparelli and the authors own motherto explore how a girl fashions herself into a woman.Audrey Morgen Volk an upper-middle-class New Yorker was a great beauty and the polished hostess at her familys garment district restaurant. Elsa SchiaparelliSchiapthe haute couture designer whose creations shocked the world blurred the line between fashion and art and believed that everything even a button has the potential to delight.Audreys daughter Patricia read Schiaps autobiography Shocking Life at a tender age and was transformed by it. These two womenvolatile opinionated and brilliant each in her own wayoffered Patricia contrasting lessons about womanhood and personal style that allowed her to plot her own course.Moving seamlessly between the Volks Manhattan and Florida milieux and Schiaps life in Rome and Paris (among friends such as Dal Duchamp and Picasso) Shocked weaves Audreys traditional notions of domesticity with Schiaparellis often outrageous ideas into a marvel-filled meditation on beauty and on being a daughter sister and mother while demonstrating how a single book can change a life.
language: English
title: Shocked: My Mother, Schiaparelli, and Me
publisher: Knopf