At Schiaparelli, art is fashion and fashion is art

Schiaparelli is synonymous with art. Elsa Schiaparelli founded the French fashion house in 1927, embracing the burgeoning surrealist movement while working directly with some of art history's most important names, from Salvador Dalí to Jean Cocteau. This spring, London's Victoria and Albert Museum is celebrating a century of art-inspired style, from Schiaparelli's early designs through to Daniel Roseberry's reawakening of the brand for a 21st-century industry.

Using humour and radical creativity, Elsa Schiaparelli sent shock waves through the fashion world when she launched her initial designs. Cristóbal Balenciaga would go on to name her the 'only real artist in couture', thanks to her in-depth knowledge of art and early inclusion in some of the defining creative movements of the 20th century. She embraced free thinkers and created era-defining fashion moments, designing a pair of culottes for tennis star Lili Álvarez at Wimbledon – a sight unseen at the deeply traditional tournament in the 1930s and dressing Wallis Simpson, the wife of abdicated King Edward VIII, in a lobster dress designed with Dalí.

Her artistic collaborations sometimes veered into darkness a slinky black 1938 'skeleton' dress, made with Dalí, features exposed boning – while also embracing flamboyance, such as an ornate gold bracelet with the face of chimera, made in collaboration with Alberto Giacometti in 1935. The exhibition includes a playful coat from 1937 designed with Cocteau, featuring the outline of two figures moving together to kiss on the back, the shoulders entirely covered by pink folded roses.

A series of original artworks that trace links between Schiaparelli's designs and those in her creative circle are also included, from Dalí's renowned 1938 'Lobster Telephone' sculpture, to a 1937 Pablo Picasso portrait of Nusch Éluard, which has clear parallels with the fashion house's angular and asymmetric definition of the body. Archive images of the young designer highlight how authentically she was enveloped within the surrealist world, as seen in a 1933 Man Ray portrait, in which her head peers over a naked, armless stone bust.

There are plenty of treats for visitors who have discovered the brand through its most recent designs too. The Autumn/Winter 21-22 couture 'lungs dress' worn by Bella Hadid in Cannes is on show, with a simple black silhouette cut-off under the breasts and a hefty gold necklace bearing the pattern of a windpipe and fine network of bronchi. An armour-like Autumn/Winter 2024 design also appears, its intricate features creating sweeping featherlike plates across the chest and arms. A rich celebration of a fashion house that has stayed uniquely ahead of the curve, still able to surprise a century after the movements that first gave shape to it made their mark on the world.

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, 28 March until 8 November 2026, V&A South Kensington