Why the Schiaparelli exhibition at the V&A is fashion’s most important show of the year

This is the year of Schiaparelli. Ninety-nine years after the French fashion house was founded by Elsa Schiaparelli, who was behind some of the most famous dresses of the Thirties, it is the name on everyone’s lips. Post-war financial difficulties forced its closure in 1954, but after being shut for nearly 60 years, Schiaparelli re-emerged in 2012. It is now in the thick of a renaissance, with celebrities flocking to wear its fashion-meets-fine art creations.

In January, at the Los Angeles premiere of Wuthering Heights, Margot Robbie was resplendent in a custom-made Schiaparelli gown, featuring a Chantilly lace corset and a voluminous skirt. In February, the singer Bad Bunny collected his Grammy Award for album of the year in a Schiaparelli smoking suit. The label was also worn by the prize’s 2024 and 2025 winners, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, while Bella Hadid’s sculptural “lung dress” at the Cannes Film Festival remains one of the house’s most arresting recent moments.

This month, on March 28, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London opens the doors to Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art.

“I can’t wait to share the exhibition with people,” says Sonnet Stanfill, who co-curated the retrospective with Lydia Caston and Rosalind McKever. The team has been working on the project for the past two years. “Elsa’s [fashion] house lay dormant for many years until it was recently revived very successfully,” Sonnet tells us. “What’s exciting for me as a curator is to introduce her to a public who may not know her well.”

Elsa was born to an aristocratic family in Rome in 1890 – she died in 1973, aged 83 – and became known both as a designer and as an artist pushing the boundaries of fashion. 

She famously created the colour “shocking pink” after seeing the vibrant hue of the 17.27-carat Cartier Tête de Belier diamond, and used it for the box of her perfume Shocking, launched in 1937. The bottle itself was shaped like a dressmaker’s mannequin, with a measuring tape around the neck and topped with tiny flowers. The mannequin’s shape was inspired by one of her clients, the Hollywood actress Mae West.

The designer was famed for her work with artists such as Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Man Ray – who feature in the exhibition – but her most frequent collaborator was the surrealist Spanish painter Salvador Dalí in the late Thirties. One of their most famous creations was the skeleton dress.

“It’s one of the first things people will see [in the exhibition],” Sonnet says. The dress, which is quilted to display rib bones, was created by Elsa and Dalí for her 1938 Le Cirque collection, which sprang from her response to the artist’s suggestion that he liked the idea of “bones on the outside”. The V&A owns the only known surviving example, donated by the American actress Ruth Ford. “For me, that’s one of the treasures of the show.”

Another joint creation, the 1937 lobster dress, will be on display beside Dalí’s 1936 lobster telephone sculpture, which inspired its design. The Duchess of Windsor, who was one of Elsa’s most high-profile clients, wore the lobster dress for a Vogue photoshoot with the photographer Cecil Beaton in 1937, and the garment was part of her wedding trousseau.

“When Elsa was at the zenith of her power in 1930s Paris, she was the most-discussed designer of the era,” Sonnet says. “She was an extraordinarily creative, driven woman who didn’t have fashion training. She was self-taught and made her way as an Italian into the centre of haute couture in Paris, operating as a divorced single mother at a time when French women didn’t have the vote.”

Schiaparelli designs weren’t only shocking – they were practical, too. Elsa’s pioneering creations for women in the Thirties included wrap dresses, visible zips and the first evening dress with a matching jacket.

The exhibition features more than 200 objects, including garments, sculptures, photography and jewellery. Items come from North American and European museums, private collectors and the V&A’s own collection, and include a “remade version of Elsa’s 1927 bowknot jumper, which was her first fashion hit”, Sonnet says. 

It also contains haute couture by Daniel Roseberry, the American designer who became creative director of the brand in 2019. His lung dress, worn by Bella Hadid, is on display next to the skeleton dress.

“His opinion has been important,” Sonnet says. “The thing that we’ve relied on most is the house providing access to their archive, as well as their generosity and Daniel’s steer on how to display garments of his that we’ve chosen.”

With the House of Schiaparelli looking ahead to 2027, it’s fitting that the label’s Parisian atelier is once again located at 21 Place Vendôme, the address of her first boutique, which she opened in 1935.

“There’s something very symbolic about the house being located in that incredible centre of luxury in Place Vendôme, and then having the label’s centenary next year,” Sonnet says. “It’ll be fascinating to see how it’s marked, but also what the clothes say and how they respond to that anniversary.”

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London on 28 March. Visit vam.ac.uk

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