While Christian Dior looked to the elegance of Belle Époque women, and Gabrielle Chanel to modernity, to inspire their eponymous maisons’ collections, Elsa Schiaparelli wasn’t even looking at people. She was far more fascinated by objects, artworks and the everyday detritus of life to inspire her paradigm-shifting, groundbreaking garments. A couturière that changed couture forever, so strong was her vision and design identity, that her eponymous house remains at the forefront of fashion more than 50 years after her death. Now the subject of Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, a new V&A retrospective dedicated to the designer and her work, director Tristram Hunt says: “As Yves Saint Laurent reflected, Madame Schiaparelli trampled down everything that was commonplace.” 

Opening tomorrow (28 March 2026), the exhibition will be the first in the UK dedicated to the pioneering designer and charts the maison’s beginnings in 1927 to its current incarnation under creative director Daniel Roseberry. More than 400 objects will be on display, including 100 ensembles and 50 artworks, waving a journey through Schiaparelli’s evolution, from her 1938 Skeleton dress, the only known surviving example of a Schiaparelli signature, and a hat resembling an upside-down shoe, both conceived in collaboration with artist Salvador Dalí, to Roseberry’s striking silhouettes worn by Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa. 

This deep dive into a fashion house that continues to dominate haute couture has been years in the making for the V&A. Hunt explains: “Schiaparelli’s inter-disciplinary ambitions are especially exciting. Mirroring the breadth of our collections, she embraced photography, theatre, film, design, sculpture, prints and paintings. Above all in this exhibition, we encounter Schiaparelli as a companion of futurism and protagonist of surrealism, collaborating with Dali, Cocteau, Man Ray and others.

Elsa Schiaparelli in Vogue (1940). Image: Fredrich Baker/Conde Nast/Getty Images

“As the wondrous designer put it: no one knows how to say it but everyone knows what it means. This was the designer, and the artist, who was raised among books, astronomy, philosophy and myth, who read Spinoza and Saint Augustine, and absorbed Rome, Paris and London as intellectual as well as visual worlds.”

Born in 1890 in Rome, Elsa Schiaparelli [skya-puh-rell-ee] grew up among a circle of aristocrats and intellectuals – and while her early life was comfortable, she found it cloistered and trapping. Rebellious by nature and, therefore, rebellious in fashion, she fled their conservative expectations and, following the breakdown of her marriage, moved to Paris in the early 1920s with her young daughter Gogo. “It was here that she founded her fashion house and forged her most enduring alliances, not with traditional dressmakers but with the avant-garde,” says V&A’s senior curator of textiles and fashion, Sonnet Stanfill. 

“From her first fashion collection in 1927 – a collection of bowknot sweaters – her star ascended spectacularly. From 1935, she was headquartered in Paris at 21 Place Vendôme and had over 400 hundred employees who were producing more than 7,000 couture garments a year.” 

Portrait of Elsa Schiaparelli by Man Ray (1933). Image: Man Ray 2015 Trust

Skeleton Dress, designed by Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí (1938).

While Schiaparelli is now synonymous with fashion-forward glamour and attention grabbing eveningwear, her house was originally conceived as a collection of sportswear. Her first Paris boutique opened under the sign ‘Schiaparelli Pour Le Sport’ but soon expanded into practical daywear, Pour la Ville, including trouser suits (unusual for women at the time) along with sharply tailored skirt suits. Her striking eveningwear collections, Pour le Soir, include some of the designer’s most inventive creations, from a shimmering gold lamé gown to a dinner suit with appliquéd circus horses. 

Two things which defined Schiaparelli’s early collections were her choice of materials and colour. Stanfill adds: “Schiaparelli’s genius lay both in spectacle but also in innovation. She pioneered the use of unconventional materials: plastics, zips as visible design features, insects and newspaper prints, elevating the everyday to the extraordinary. Her signature colour, Shocking Pink, was a declaration – bold, irreverent and impossible to ignore.” 

A juxtaposition to Chanel’s pastel hues – Schiaparelli’s biggest rival at the time – this Shocking Pink was a statement in more ways than one. Firstly, it proved Schiaparelli’s penchant for pushing boundaries, but also signalled her interest in Surrealism. The vivid magenta hue was a hit among It girls such as Diana Vreeland and Daisy Fellowes but also Hollywood stars, sported by Zsa Zsa Gabor in the 1952 film Moulin Rouge and Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes a year later. 

Schiaparelli in Vogue (1937). Image: Horst P/Conde Nast/Getty Images

Schiaparelli Haute Couture AW24. Image Giovanni Giannoni/Patrimoine Schiaparelli

It was not only Schiaparelli’s ability to shock – something she clearly enjoyed, titling her 1954 autobiography Shocking Life – but her ability to transcend the worlds of fashion and art that made her so interesting. Art historian Rosalind McKever explains: “Elsa Schiaparelli’s uniquely modern and metamorphic designs capture the imagination of the artists in her circle. Together with Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Leonor Fini, Man Ray and many others, she brought the irreverence and creativity of modern art into her designs, her publicity and even her couture salons. 

“Dalí considered her premises in Paris to be the beating heart of surrealist Paris and here in the heart of our exhibition, we’re displaying the Lobster Dress – designed by Schiaparelli and Dalí together in 1937 and was famously worn by Wallis Simpson – alongside Dalí’s iconic Lobster Telephone created the following year.” 

Schiaparelli also commissioned artists to create works and designs for her advertisements and boutiques, and her friendships inspired many portraits reflecting her eclectic taste, including works by Man Ray and Cecil Beaton. McKever adds: “We also have a painting by Pablo Picasso of Nusch Éluard. Nusch is wearing Schiaparelli accessories and some angel clips, and when she arrived at Picasso’s studio, he was fascinated by these accessories and was inspired to create a portrait which really embodies our exhibition title: Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art.” 

Schiaparelli’s collaborations with the likes of Alberto Giacometti – who created rare buttons for the designer, two of which sold for £61,000 last year – and Swiss-German artist Meret Oppenheim, who conceived the house’s 1936 fur bracelet, continue to define not only her legacy, but the world of haute couture. While Chanel dismissed her as ‘that Italian artist who’s making clothes’, Hunt says: “Schiaparelli would go on to build a French fashion house that treated dress as an arena for ideas; in her own words, ‘dress designing is to me not a profession but an art’. In 1939, The New Yorker declared that a frock from Schiaparelli ranks like a modern canvas.”

Portrait of Nusch Eluard by Pablo Picasso (1937). Image: Grand Palais

Lobster Dress by Elsa Schiaparelli, designed in collaboration with Salvador Dalí (1937). Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art

In 1931, Schiaparelli was granted French citizenship and, two years later, expanded her influence to London with the opening of a bricks and mortar boutique on Mayfair’s Upper Grosvenor Street. “‘Were not the Romans the great conquerors of England?’, she asked in her autobiography,” quips Hunt. “She loved this country; its freedom of expression, its craft, traditions, country houses, monarchy, hubs and literature of heinous murder mysteries. ‘Above all, I dearly love the English,’ she wrote, ‘because they’re mad, mad, mad.’”

Items on display bearing the Schiaparelli London label include a dress and coat worn to the 1937 coronation of King George VI, and a portrait by Gluck of Lady Mount Temple wearing a Schiaparelli creation. Also included is the only known surviving example of an Elsa Schiaparelli wedding dress: an oyster coloured crinkled rayon with metal thread worn by Rosalinde Gilbert, an art collector and wholesale fashion house owner, for her ceremony at London’s Golders Green Synagogue.

Lady Mount Temple wearing a Schiaparelli creation by Hannah Gluckstein. Image: Mark Fiennes

Rosalind McKever at Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art. Image: David Parry/PA

The outbreak of the Second World War led Schiaparelli to close her Mayfair store, and ushered in a tumultuous period which saw her flee France for New York, her Paris salon seized by the German administration, and even resulted in her being monitored by the American FBI on suspicion of espionage. She released her first post-war collection in 1945, but the irrevocable aftermath of the conflict saw her designs fall out of favour, with women eschewing her surrealist fashion for Dior’s 1947 New Look, which epitomised understated glamour. 

Less than a decade later, Schiaparelli would cease to operate. Stanfill says: “She retired in 1954 and her house lay dormant for many years until its purchase in 2006 paved the way for its vibrant revival. Under Daniel Roseberry, creative director since 2019, Maison Schiaparelli has remerged as a vital force in contemporary couture. Roseberry has shown a keen sensitivity to the founder’s disobedient spirit while translating it for a 21^st century audience. His designs with their striking silhouettes and gilded anatomical motifs echo Schiaparelli’s original audacity.”

Custom crimson Schiaparelli ruby-red ball gown designed by Daniel Roseberry for Ariana Grande.

The exhibition culminates in a grand finale of Roseberry’s grandeur. Having been at the helm for seven years, he has thoroughly reinvented Schiaparelli’s legacy with a focus on the artistry and skill of Parisian haute couture techniques, ultimately ensuring the Schiaparelli name is, once again, a mainstay within the modern wardrobes of performers, artists, and today’s leading creatives. Recognisable fashion moments under his tenure on display at the V&A include the white vest and cargo trousers paired with a bedazzled robot baby worn by model Maggie Maurer at the Spring 2024 Haute Couture show, the glittering crimson gown worn by Ariana Grande for her performance at the 2025 Oscars, as well as a modern black and gold version of the Skeleton dress designed for Dua Lipa for the 2024 Golden Globes. 

Talking of highlights, Hunt adds: “The Skeleton Dress, the Tears Dress, the Upside Down Shoe Hat and the Lobster Dress – Schiaparelli revealed how fashion became a theatre for the unconscious, the irrational, the marvellous. Crucially, the exhibition carries Schiaparelli’s energy into the present with Daniel Roseberry’s creations and we see that Roseberry understands something essential about Elsa Schiaparelli: that those memorable fashion moments are not just about silhouette but about proposition.” 

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art opens on 28 March 2026, visit vam.ac.uk 

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