“Before me,” Elsa Schiaparelli once insisted, “everything was black or navy blue or gray or brown or beige.” She’s not wrong. An unconventional designer, Schiaparelli would leave her mark on 20th-century couture by injecting it with fantasy, play, and unpredictability. Hers was revolutionary work that swept fashion’s dusty tones away in favor of the electric shade.
Next March, Schiaparelli is getting her first institutional spotlight in the U.K. at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s “Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art.” The exhibition will gather a whopping 200 objects—from garments and accessories to sculpture and paintings—to capture the history and sensibility of the innovative couturier.
“The V&A holds one of the largest and most important fashion collections in the world, and the foremost collection of Schiaparelli garments in Britain,” the museum’s director Tristram Hunt said in a statement. “Schiaparelli’s collaboration with artists and with the world of performance make the Maison and its founder an ideal subject for a spectacular exhibition at the V&A.”
Ankle-length coat of black silk jersey with facial profiles forming a rose-filled vase, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jean Cocteau and Lesage, London, 1937. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Born in Rome, Schiaparelli opened her first atelier in Paris in 1927. There, she dreamed up trompe l’oeil designs, experimental textures, shocking colors, and vivid prints—a groundbreaking vision that thumbed its nose at the staid codes of haute couture. They were provocative designs that stemmed from her commitment to personal freedom and self-expression, as much as her close ties to the Surrealist set.
A chance encounter with Dadaist Francis Picabia and his wife during a 1916 trip to America brought Schiaparelli up close to Paris’s Surrealist scene. She was swift to weave it into her practice. Throughout the 1930s, her atelier produced collaborative pieces including an evening coat embroidered with an optical illusion by Jean Cocteau, a fur bracelet concocted by Meret Oppenheim, spiral glasses designed by Man Ray, and with Salvador Dalí, a host of objects from the iconic Shoe Hat to the Lobster Dress.
Tears Evening dress and head veil, designed by Elsa Schiaparelli, February 1938 for Circus Collection, summer 1938. Fabric designed by Salvador Dalí. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
“Working with artists like Bebe Berard, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Vertes, Van Dongen, and with photographers like Hoyningen Huene, Horst, Cecil Beaton, and Man Ray gave one a sense of exhilaration,” Schiaparelli once reflected. “One felt supported and understood beyond the crude and boring reality of merely making a dress to sell.”
Schiaparelli’s theatrical designs also made her work a great fit for film and stage productions. She famously designed Mae West’s costumes for 1937’s Every Day’s a Holiday, tailoring them on a mannequin sculpted to the star’s proportions. The model would inspire the bottle for Schiaparelli’s Shocking fragrance, designed in collaboration with Leonor Fini.
Advertisement for the perfume Shocking by Schiaparelli. Photo: Apic / Bridgeman via Getty Images.
These creative partnerships sit at the heart of “Fashion Becomes Art.” Heading out on view will be some of the V&A’s holdings such as Schiaparelli’s Skeleton and Tears dresses, and the Shoe Hat, all created alongside Dalí. They’re joined by artworks by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Man Ray, which help illustrate the designer’s creative milieu. The museum also promises to unveil research that sheds new light on these collaborations.
After the designer’s death in 1973 and following decades of fits and starts, the new House of Schiaparelli was established in 2014. Texas-born design Daniel Roseberry took the helm as creative director in 2019, becoming the first American to lead a French couture label. He has sought to craft a new voice for the house, while keeping its Surrealist heritage in view.
“The more I reference her work and use it as a starting point, the better it makes my work,” he’s said about Schiaparelli. “Her legacy feels like an untold story.”
Schiaparelli by Daniel Roseberry. Long sheath gown, Matador Couture collection. Haute couture fall-winter 2021–2022. Patrimoine Schiaparelli, Paris. Photo courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The exhibition will nod to Roseberry’s work, featuring pieces such as his gilded brass lung necklace from Fall 2021, which Bella Hadid donned at the Cannes Film Festival to viral effect. These designs, said the house’s CEO Delphine Bellini, “honor and reinvent [Schiaparelli’s] vision for a new century.”
“Schiaparelli’s fearless imagination and radical vision redefined the boundaries between fashion and art,” she added. “This exhibition celebrates her enduring influence through iconic collaborations with 20th-century masters and a pioneering fusion of creativity and commerce.”
“Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” is on view at the V&A Museum, Cromwell Rd, London, March 21–November 1, 2026.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
