If the surprisingly wide-ranging new Schiaparelli exhibition arrives at the V&A with less fanfare than its predecessors on Dior and Chanel, that’s because Elsa Schiaparelli is less famous. Financial pressures forced the Italian émigrée to close her Parisian house in 1954. She had fewer than three decades – interrupted by a world war – to make a lasting mark on fashion. Yet, as this excellent show demonstrates, that’s what this rebellious, exacting daughter of Roman intellectuals did.
Glimpses of her originality and modernity emerge early. A neat sweater with a trompé l’oeil bow from 1927 was a prototype for the glamorous, smart knitwear we know today – versatile, wildly popular and widely copied.
Not content merely to hang out with artists and bask in their intellectual aura, she collaborated with Salvador Dalí on fashion designs which then appeared in his paintings, some of which hang in the exhibition, as do works by Picasso, Man Ray and Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia.
Schiaparelli’s fashion was versatile, wildly popular and widely copied – Peter Kelleher
Inevitably, she’s remembered for the controversies. A perfume bottle designed for her scent, Shocking, in 1937, is shaped like a torso, supposedly modelled on Mae West, a big Schiaparelli fan. It would inspire Jean Paul Gaultier’s Classique perfume bottle in 1993.
Schiaparelli’s (in)famous 1937 Shoe Hat is here too, as are the 1938 Skeleton Dress and the Lobster Dress she co-designed with Dalí. The latter was first worn by Wallis Simpson for a Cecil Beaton portrait shortly before her engagement to Edward VIII; the lobster print, which covered most of the lower half of her body was, according to Dalí, an erotically charged image. Whether or not Simpson realised what her dress semaphored, she continued to patronise Schiaparelli’s house.
Wallis Simpson was the first person to wear the Lobster Dress that Schiaparelli co-designed with Salvador Dalí, in a portrait by Cecil Beaton – Cecil Beaton
What may surprise casual students of Schiap (as she was also known) is that alongside the visual stunts and catchy titles (Shocking Pink, the colour she “invented” in 1937 was apparently the inspiration for the Think Pink! sequence in the 1957 Audrey Hepburn film Funny Face) is just how substantial a designer she was.
She may not have established her own sartorial language to the extent that Coco Chanel or Yves Saint Laurent did but, as this show proves, she was equally capable of dressing women for their everyday as for their butterfly moments.
Elsa Schiaparelli wears a black silk dress with crocheted collar of her own design and a turban, in a 1940 Vogue shoot – Fredrich Baker
Her waist-sculpting, shoulder-defining tailoring was as sharp as her mind. While she loved ornamentation – a room of her gold-embellished and embroidered 1930s jackets shows how much influence she exerted over 1980s designers such as Christian Lacroix – she could be every bit as pared back as Chanel. There’s a reason why Simpson wore Schiap on repeat: the designer was a master of ruthless style that carried a wink of subversion.
Skeleton Dress by Schiaparelli and Dalí, 1938 – Emil Larsson
If she was designing for chic society, Daniel Roseberry – creative director of Schiaparelli since 2019 – is the man for the Kardashian age. He is a superstar of fashion engineering and a savvy pilot of social media, as exemplified by the black dress with a life-sized lion head attached worn by Kylie Jenner in 2023 and the gown with a huge dove brooch worn by Lady Gaga at president Biden’s inauguration in 2021. His skilfully executed theatrical gowns and surreal-adjacent jewellery look stupendous here. He may be as much of a pull for Gen Z to this exhibition as Schiap herself.
Gen Z love Schiaparelli for Daniel Roseberry’s more recent theatrical gowns, such as this one from the 2024 collection – Giovanni Giannoni
Chanel called her “that Italian artist who makes clothes’’, a comment which the press interpreted as typically Coco barbed. But it might have been admiring. Practical and diligent, she constantly pushed against pointless boundaries. There’s a thoroughly modern 1930s trouser suit here next to a picture of Schiap wearing culottes in London in 1931, a time when most establishments refused admission to women wearing trousers. The chicest of rebels, she proved that fashion has the power to shape our times.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art is at the V&A from March 28