The UK has never before seen an exhibition of the legendary Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and now more than 400 objects are going on view at the V&A, including 100 ensembles and 50 artworks, along with accessories, jewelry, paintings, photographs, furniture, perfumes, and items from the archive. “Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” encompasses looks from the house spanning from her first designs, from the 1920s, to the present day, under creative director Daniel Roseberry.
“‘Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art’ will celebrate one of the most ingenious and daring designers in fashion history,” said Tristram Hunt, director of the V&A, in a statement. “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. 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.” Curating the show are Sonnet Stanfill, Lydia Caston, and Rosalind McKever.
“Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” at V&A South Kensington.
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The show pays special attention to Schiaparelli’s collaborations with artists, particularly Salvador Dalí; the show includes the only known surviving example of the Skeleton dress the two collaborated on and the Tears dress from the same year, as well as a hat resembling an upside-down shoe.
“For me, dress designing is not a profession but an art,” Schiaparelli once said, and, funny enough, Coco Chanel once dismissed her as “that Italian artist who’s making clothes.” In fact, Schiaparelli collaborated with other Surrealist painters, sculptors, and writers, including Alberto Giacometti, Meret Oppenheim, and Jean Schlumberger, with whom she shared a sensibility that favored the subversive and absurd.
And fittingly enough, artists turned their attention to the master designer herself. The show features portraits of Schiaparelli by Pablo Picasso and Man Ray as well as artworks created for her by Eileen Agar and Jean Cocteau.
Taking the show up to the present day are Roseberry’s unique look for top performance artists like Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa.
“Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” will be at the V&A, Sainsbury Gallery, March 28–November 8, 2026.
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Man Ray Does Schiaparelli
Image Credit: © 2025 Man Ray 2015 Trust. DACS, London. Photo: Collection SFMOMA. Surrealist master Man Ray created a number of portraits of the Italian designer, some quite experimental, some in which she wears her own designs. Here, her head appears atop a torso that at once recalls a dressmaker’s mannequin and fragmented classical artworks.
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Dalí’s Plastic Fantastic Lobster Telephone
Image Credit: Tate / Tate Images One of Salvador Dalí’s most famous creations is the Lobster Telephone (1936), which he also called the “Aphrodisiac Telephone” and was created for British poet and arts patron Edward James, one of Dalí’s key patrons in the late 1930s. Plaster lobster receivers were made to fit the telephones at James’s homes. The next year, Schiaparelli would design a dress decorated with a lobster motif, inspired by this artwork, which would be featured in an eight-page spread in Vogue shot by Cecil Beaton.
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A Skeleton in the Closet
Image Credit: V&A © 2025 Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS. Photograph © Emil Larsson The 1938 Skeleton dress bore padded representations of the human bones that lay underneath the wearer’s skin, testing notions of good taste. It was presented as part of Schiaparelli’s famed Circus Collection of 1938, in which models wore clown hats and balloon-shaped handbags.
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Shocking Pink and Sex Symbol Curves
Image Credit: © 2025 ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London. Photo_ Patrimoine Schiaparelli, Paris. Photograph © Emil Larsson Schiaparelli launched her perfume Shocking in 1937, with a bottle and packaging designed by Argentinian-born artist Leonor Fini; Schiaparelli also dubbed the intense shade of pink with the same name. The bottle takes the shape of a dressmaker’s mannequin with a measuring tape around the neckline, sealed with a monogrammed S patch and flowers at the neck. For inspiration for the curves, credit the physique of Hollywood star and sex symbol Mae West. The bottle appears in a glass dome, reminiscent of those that brides used to preserve their flower crowns.
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Rips and Tears Fool the Eye
Image Credit: Photograph © Emil Larsson Designed by Salvador Dalí, the slender Tears evening gown and accompanying veil have seemingly been torn with numerous trompe-l’oeil rips, cut out and lined in pink and magenta. The look was part of her famed Circus Collection of 1938, presented in a high-energy show and featuring clothes decorated with acrobats and performing animals. The Tears gown echoed some of the Catalan artist’s paintings featuring people in ripped skin-tight clothing that, for some, too closely resembled flayed flesh. Schiaparelli counted one such painting among her collection.
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Picasso Paints an Icon, Wearing Iconic Looks
Image Credit: © GrandPalais RMN (Musée National Picasso, Paris) Adrien Didierjean Surrealist muse and artist Nusch Éluard (also wife of poet Paul Éluard) was known for sporting styles by Schiaparelli. In this portrait by Pablo Picasso, she wears jewelry and a hat from the Haute Couture Winter 1937–38 collection; the cherub-shaped lapel pins are a design for Schiaparelli by Jean Schlumberger.
