Best known as the wife, muse, and business manager of Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, Gala Dalí was a fascinating character in her own right.
Committed to a sanitarium, where she met her first husband Paul Éluard, in 1912, Gala served as Dalí's muse through the most productive years of his artistic career. She frequently posed for her husband’s paintings and sculptures, including The Old Age of William Tell, Memory of the Child-Woman, The Angelus of Gala, William Tell and Gradiva, and more. He often signed both his name and hers at the bottom of his paintings, and the duo sometimes participated in exhibitions together during the 1930s. The pair also had a notably open marriage, as Gala had frequent extramarital affairs with partners, including her former husband Éluard.
It was Gala Dalí that Alessandro Dell’Acqua tapped for Rochas’ Spring-Summer 2016 collection in Paris this week. The pair’s whimsy and wit seemed a good fit for the designer, who has fashioned the label into one known for its kooky colors, hyper-feminine accents, and outsized embellishments.
A case in point was an ochre silk faille ensemble with a giant bow at the chest, whose color, composition, and protusion from the body evoked the painter's The Anthropomorphic Cabinet(1936); another was a short series of looks depicting embroidered giraffes under a giant sun, which were surely a riff on The Burning Giraffe(1937).
Elsewhere, Dell’Acqua layered colorful surf-motif T-shirts under sheer chiffon gowns, as well as a plain white tee under an oversized black-and-white-striped pinafore, for his own takes on the high-low couture trend.
The show closed with two aptly elaborate ensembles — one, a 30s midi-length dress, and the other, an opera coat — both gilded in gold embroidery and sequins that appropriated the motifs seen at the heads of the couple’s beads in the Salvador Dalí House in Portlligat, Spain.
