“In difficult times fashion is always outrageous.”
Elsa Schiaparelli
“In difficult times fashion is always outrageous.”
With that declaration, Elsa Schiaparelli set the parameters for a career defined by audacity, wit, and imagination. Now, the Victoria and Albert Museum brings her visionary world to the UK for the first time. Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art opens at the V&A’s Sainsbury Gallery on 28 March 2026, running through 8 November, presenting a retrospective that is as intellectually compelling as it is visually spectacular.
Says Delphine Bellini, CEO of Schiaparelli: “Elsa Schiaparelli’s fearless imagination and radical vision redefined the boundaries between fashion and art.
“This exhibition celebrates her enduring influence through iconic collaborations with 20th-century masters and a pioneering fusion of creativity and commerce.”
The exhibition traces Schiaparelli’s remarkable career from the 1920s to her enduring influence today under creative director Daniel Roseberry, whose work continues to shape and inspire global culture today. Here, fashion is not mere adornment but a force that challenges, provokes, and dialogues with art itself.
Over 200 objects (including garments, accessories, jewellery, perfumes, photography, sculpture, furniture, and archival material) reveal the breadth of Schiaparelli’s imagination. Among them are the iconic ‘Skeleton’ dress and the whimsical ‘Tears’ dress, alongside a hat sculpted in the improbable form of an upside-down shoe, all conceived in collaboration with Salvador Dalí. The selected pieces work together to act as testament to her singular ambition – dissolving the antiquated boundaries between couture and creative expression.
Schiaparelli’s influence extended far beyond the atelier. She engaged with film, theatre, and performance, shaping culture at every turn. Today, Daniel Roseberry continues this legacy from the Paris atelier at 21 Place Vendôme, creating designs that are at once sculptural, surreal, and unmistakably of Schiaparelli’s lineage.
“Elsa Schiaparelli’s fearless imagination and radical vision redefined the boundaries between fashion and art.”
Delphine Bellini, CEO of Schiaparelli
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art will celebrate one of the most ingenious and daring designers in fashion history,” begins Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A. “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.”
With the museum holding one of the most comprehensive fashion collections in the world – and the largest in Britain of Schiaparelli garments – this retrospective promises an encounter with the designer that is as immersive as it is revelatory.
This is an exhibition of couture as intellect, performance, and spectacle.
Fashion not as accessory, but as manifesto.
Schiaparelli’s enduring vision and iconic portfolio of work as presented in Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art serves to remind us that clothing can transcend mere garments and into the world of the outrageous, the daring, and the profoundly artful.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art is on exhibition at the V&A’s Sainsbury Gallery from 28 March 2026 – 28 November 2026.
