Fashion and surrealism. If, as André Breton invited us to do, we indulge in automatic writing, allowing our hand to move on its own by photographing the thought that is in our heads, here they are, right in front of us: fashion and surrealism, indeed. The two magic words, the two alchemical keys, from which to access the secrets of the famous shoe-shaped hat created in 1937 by Madame Elsa Schiaparelli. A vision of fashion, hers, that becomes dreamlike, provocative, daring, at times even absurd. Like the day Salvador Dali inspires her to overturn the canons and an unexpected upside-down vision: a shoe that becomes a hat, as when a few years earlier his wife Gala portrayed him with one shoe on his head and one on his shoulder, charming, seductive, gallant, unpredictable matador. So: why not? Why not create a shoe that is a hat or, better yet, a "hat shoe"? In the hands of Gala's daughter from Paul Eluard, Cécile, that somewhat magical object is reinterpreted in two versions: one with a colored heel, the other with a black heel. Eighty years later Gallia e Peter is invited to create a faithful copy of the first one for the collection of the new House of European History, recently opened in Brussels. A work made by carefully studying the hat kept at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, including drawings, studies, measurements, memory reconstructions. To provoke again, to make people dream again, under the banner of Elsa, under the banner of Dali, under the banner of surrealism, craftsmanship and art.
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