Schiaparelli and Prada: Sneak a Peek at the Met's 'Impossible Conversations'

(All photos courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

“I never thought people would want to wear clothes with monkeys and bananas on them,” said Miuccia Prada of her spring 2011 collection, a retail smash that featured madcap cotton separates printed with baroque scrolls, embroidered monkeys, and thick stripes. And the bananas? A wink at Carmen Miranda and Josephine Baker. More than 70 years earlier, when Miranda was still working the carnaval circuit in her native Brazil, Elsa Schiaparelli was feeling a circus theme.

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