BLOOM

A dazzling first-person account of the life of fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli by gifted team Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad in a picture book biography. Backmatter included.

Here is the life of iconic fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who as a little girl in Rome, was told by her own mamma that she was brutta. Ugly. So she decided to seek out beauty around her, and found it everywhere. What is beauty? Elsa wondered. She looked everywhere for beauty until something inside of Elsa blossomed, and she became an artist with an incredible imagination. Defining beauty on her own creative terms, Schiaparelli worked hard to develop her designs, and eventually bloomed into an extraordinary talent who dreamed up the most wonderful dresses, hats, shoes, and jewelry. Why not a shoe for a hat? Why not a dress with drawers? And she invented a color: shocking pink! Her adventurous mind was the key to her happiness and success — and is still seen today in her legacy of wild imagination. Daring and different, Elsa Schiaparelli used art to make fashion, and it was quite marvelous.


As a little girl Kyo Maclear wanted very badly to be a fashion designer. She spent countless hours in her London home drawing crazy dresses, including a very special giant cloud dress. Although not a fashion designer, Maclear is the critically acclaimed author of many children's books including, Julia, Child; The Wish Tree; Virginia Wolf and Mr. Flux. Kyo holds an Honors B.A. in Fine Art and Art History an M.A. in Cultural Studies from the University of Toronto, and is a doctoral candidate at York University where she holds a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. When she is not writing, Kyo Maclear plants her garden with flowers in all shades of blue.
Julie Morstad is an award-winning illustrator and artist. She has many children's books including, Today, How To, and The Wayside. Her beautiful illustrations can be found in When Green Becomes Tomatoes; When I Was Small; This is Sadie; Julia, Child; and critically acclaimed Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova. Living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Julie enjoys her garden filled with dahlias, peonies, Cotton Candy grass, hydrangeas, cosmos and wildflowers.