Miuccia Prada in 1998 and Else Schiaparelli in 1934, via FashionEtc.com

Can New York’s Metropolitan Museum Costume Exhibit possibly top the success of their recently-closed Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibit in 2012? The McQueen show was seen by 661,509 visitors.

It will be ladies night at next year’s Met gala, with the Costume Exhibit’s Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton turning their attention to two highly-influential women in the fashion world: Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli.

Elsa Schiaparelli

Elsa Schiaparelli’s house closed in 1954 over her inability to adapt to post WWII fashion, unlike her great rival Coco Chanel. Schiaparelli’s surrealism-influenced designs included collaborations with Salvador Dali and other surrealist artists, including Jean Cocteau.

The idiosyncratic Schiaparelli was born into an Italian family of wealth and nobility. Believing that privilege stifled her creativity, Schiaparelli moved first to New York City and then Paris to pursue her love of art and career as a surrealist couturier.

As a young woman Elsa Schiaparelli studied philosophy at the University of Rome, where she published a book of sensual poems that shocked her family. The unconventional young woman then went on a hunger strike to protest being sent to a nunnery.

Miuccia Prada