THERE'S ALWAYS ANOTHER WAY...

An Italian fashion designer and founder of the haute couture house of Schiaparelli shares the best advice she ever received that has stood the test of time

- Elsa Schiaparelli

MY FATHER AND I were standing at the top of a church tower in a small Italian town not far from our home in Rome. I was wondering why he had brought me there.

"Look down, Elsa," he said. I summoned the courage to peer down at the village below, with its central square and the complicated surrounding pattern of twisting, turning streets. "See, carissima," Father said gently. "There is more than one way to the square. Life is like that. If you can't reach your destination by one road, try another."

Now I understood why I was there. Earlier that day I had begged my mother to do something about the dreadful lunches my sister and I were served at school, but she had refused to take my complaint seriously. When I appealed to Father for help, he declined to intervene. Instead, he brought me to this high tower to give me a vivid lesson in the value of an open, questioning mind. By the time we reached home, I had hatched a plan.

At school the next day, I secretly poured my luncheon soup into a bottle, brought it home and cajoled the cook into serving it to Mother at dinner. The plan worked perfectly. She swallowed one spoonful, sputtered, "The cook must have gone mad!" My sister and I quickly confessed, and Mother announced firmly that tomorrow she would plead our case at school.

In the years that followed I have often seen how resigned acceptance of an apparent impasse can lead to failure or defeat, while an imaginative and venturesome search for an alternate route can lead to success. It was such an alternate route that led around a seeming roadblock in the path toward my first small success as a designer.