Cecil Beaton made a drawing depicting Elsa Schiaparelli on the staircase of the Hôtel de Fontpertuis where she had just set up her fashion house in 1935. Since that day, Schiaparelli has remained the only French fashion house on Place Vendôme.

Elsa Schiaparelli had asked her friend Jean-Michel Frank to decorate the magnificently proportioned rooms of her new address. He painted the living room white, including the delicate moldings, and flooded the rooms with soft light, thanks to lighting concealed within abstract plaster columns designed with Alberto Giacometti.