By Joann Loviglio
The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA - More than seven decades after her groundbreaking garments first graced the pages of fashion magazines and the bodies of the rich and famous, the shock waves of Elsa Schiaparelli's revolutionary designs continue to reverberate on runways round the world.

Some 200 of her innovative fashions are the subject of a new exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the show's only stop in the United States. Shocking! opened Sunday and runs through Jan. 4, 2004.

At a time when archrival Coco Chanel was designing her classic gold-button suits, the Italian-born Schiaparelli was creating necklaces adorned with plastic insects, gowns inspired by Indian saris or fitted with flask-concealing "speakeasy" bustles, suits featuring made-to-be-seen zippers, and boots made of monkey fur.

Her partnerships and friendships with artists from Dali and Cocteau to Man Ray and Horst inspired the most avant-garde designs that developed with the surrealist and dada art of the early 20th century.

Despite her rebellious streak, Schiaparelli also knew how to market to the mainstream, dressing Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mae West in movies and Marlene Dietrich and Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, in real life. She also is credited with popularizing the use of shoulder pads and the color "shocking pink."

"She saw dressmaking as an art rather than as a profession, and she saw fashion design as a kind of architecture," curator Dilys E. Blum said. "She was in tune with what was going on artistically, socially, politically, and she was inspired by it."

In 1935, Schiaparelli created clothing appropriate for either monarchies ( fabrics in royal blues and purples) or democracies (tailored and practical). At the dawn of World War II, her "air-raid jumpsuits" were designed to allow for fast dressing during an evacuation.

What might be the most shocking about "Shocking!" is Schiaparelli's range.

She is best-known for outlandish designs such as Simpson's lobster dress and Gala Dali's shoe-shaped hat. But she also created many garments that would not look out of place in today's Fifth Avenue boutiques.

"All discussions of Schiaparelli are based on a few images. ... I was trying to draw a broader picture of her work," Blum said of the retrospective, which takes place 30 years after Schiaparelli's death at age 83.

It includes 200 items from her donations to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Musee de la Mode in Paris, where the exhibition travels in spring 2004, the show's only other stop.