{"id":111150,"date":"2026-04-10T13:02:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T13:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=111150"},"modified":"2026-04-08T13:48:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T13:48:19","slug":"schiaparelli-exhibit-grazia-usa-spring-summer-2026","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/schiaparelli-exhibit-grazia-usa-spring-summer-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"How Elsa Schiaparelli Pioneered the Artist Collab"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Schiaparelli collaborations including the Summer 1937 Lobster Dress designed with Salvador Dal\u00ed
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Is fashion art? The question has lingered for as long as the modern fashion industry has existed, exposing a perceived divide between the intellectual world of fine art and the commercial business of fashion. Today, artist collaborations are ubiquitous, with designers splashing famous motifs across garments to lend them cultural credibility. Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art<\/a><\/em> at London\u2019s Victoria and Albert Museum explores the legacy of a 20th-century legend who dissolved that distinction long before it became a marketing strategy. If Gabrielle Chanel dismissed the Rome-born designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who launched her eponymous Paris maison celebrating Surrealism and eccentricity in 1927, as \u201cthat Italian artist who\u2019s making clothes,\u201d Crist\u00f3bal Balenciaga countered that she was \u201cthe only real artist in couture.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Elsa Schiaparelli in her boutique at 21 Place Vend\u00f4me, 1935.
Photo Credit: \u00a9 GrandPalaisRmn\/Fran\u00e7ois Kollar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Schiaparelli did not merely borrow motifs from the Surrealists; she was embedded in the movement\u2019s inner circle, working closely with Salvador Dal\u00ed, Jean Cocteau, and Man Ray throughout the 1930s to shape its visual language. Today, that dialogue continues under Daniel Roseberry, the American designer who in 2019 was given the keys to her house, which had largey lain dormant for more than half a century since she retired in 1954. \u201cWhat I am drawn to is the connectivity of Elsa\u2019s work,\u201d says Roseberry. \u201cThere was a distance between culture and most French couture houses back then. Elsa\u2019s focus wasn\u2019t just on good taste or lifestyle or even beauty, it was more cerebral than that. It was about how the expression of the surreal can create a more intimate connection between art, pop culture and fashion and between the designer and client.\u201d<\/p>\n

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“Elsa\u2019s focus wasn\u2019t just on good taste or lifestyle or even beauty, it was more cerebral than that.”
\n\u2014Daniel Roseberry<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sonnet Stanfill, the V&A\u2019s senior fashion curator, organized the exhibition with Lydia Caston and Rosalind McKever, colleagues from the museum\u2019s departments of photography and paintings and drawings. She has designed the show as what she calls an \u201coscillating conversation between two designers\u201d rather than a conventional chronological survey. \u201cIn her autobiography, Shocking Life,<\/em> Elsa uses the word \u2018exhilarating\u2019 to describe working with the leading artists of her day, and that sense of excitement continues in Daniel\u2019s current practice,\u201d says Stanfill. Comprising more than 200 objects\u2014including garments, accessories, jewelry, paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture, and fragrance\u2014the exhibition reads like an exquisite corpse, with artist collaborations forming its conceptual nerve center.<\/p>\n

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Schiaparelli designs by Elsa Schiaparelli and Daniel Roseberry
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The central room features some of Schiaparelli\u2019s most iconic pieces created with Dal\u00ed, from the Summer 1937 Lobster dress with suggestively positioned crustaceans that appeared in Wallis Simpson\u2019s trousseau to the Summer 1938 Tears dress featuring a trompe l\u2019oeil ripped pattern and coordinating veil lined with real tears in pink and magenta. A perfect example of their creative exchange is the juxtaposition of another piece from this collection, a Skeleton dress with padded ridges that seem to transpose the wearer\u2019s skeleton to her exterior and a Dal\u00ed sketch inscribed, \u201cDear Elsa, I like this idea of \u2018bones on the outside\u2019 enormously,\u201d which depicts a female skeleton from multiple angles. \u201cThe poses are reminiscent of a fashion model\u2019s,\u201d notes Stanfill, underscoring the playful back-and-forth that turned a concept into couture.<\/p>\n

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Schiaparelli Summer 1938 Tears dress and Skeleton dress designed by Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dal\u00ed
Photo Credit: Photograph \u00a9 Emil Larsson; \u00a9 2025 Salvador Dal\u00ed, Fundaci\u00f3 Gala-Salvador Dal\u00ed, DACS. Photograph \u00a9 Emil Larsson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Schiaparelli\u2019s clothes balanced fun and functionality, and a series of rooms highlights her vision for the modern wardrobe, built around sportswear, tailored daywear, and elegant eveningwear. The display opens with a trio of her trompe l\u2019oeil bowknot sweaters, the first garments she designed for her label. Her sparkling evening jackets, heavily embroidered with everything from sequins to glass mosaic and which came to epitomize the soign\u00e9e style of Caf\u00e9 Society, take pride of place. \u201cThey\u2019re showcased a bit like a box of chocolates,\u201d says Stanfill. No modern wardrobe is complete without accessories, so the exhibition presents a profusion of hats, bags, shoes, and gloves. Roseberry\u2019s Face bag, decorated with anatomical jewels in enamel and hammered brass, and his shoes with gold-tone brass toes are shown alongside Schiaparelli\u2019s own buttons and jewelry, including Alberto Giacometti\u2019s sculptural pieces and the writer Elsa Triolet\u2019s Aspirin necklace, composed of porcelain beads shaped like pills.<\/p>\n

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Schiaparelli evening jackets designed by Elsa Schiaparelli
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wherever possible, the exhibition unpacks the stories of the remarkable women who have worn Schiaparelli, from aviator Amelia Earhart and tennis star Suzanne Lenglen to actress Marlene Dietrich and collector Peggy Guggenheim. \u201cSchiaparelli described her clients as \u2018glittering personalities,\u2019 and she was very transparent about the importance of her clients in making the dresses come alive,\u201d says Stanfill. The exhibition also pays tribute to the often unacknowledged contributions of women behind the scenes. The idea for the iconic upside-down Shoe Hat that Dal\u00ed designed for Schiaparelli\u2019s Fall 1937 collection, for instance, can be traced to his wife and muse, Gala, who once playfully placed a slipper on his head. \u201cCredit where credit is due,\u201d says Stanfill.<\/p>\n

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Mae West wearing Schiaparelli in Every Day’s A Holiday<\/em> (1937)
Photo Credit: Moviestore Collection Ltd\/Alamy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another curatorial device is doubling, with certain objects encountered more than once from different vantage points. The Shoe Hat appears first in the accessories gallery among Schiaparelli\u2019s inventive millinery, then resurfaces in the artist collaborations room. The idea also extends across time. A Spring 1937 linen dinner jacket embroidered in golden thread with Cocteau\u2019s double-image drawing of mirrored profiles forming an urn of flowers finds its twin in a sculptural minidress from Roseberry\u2019s Fall\/Winter 2021 haute couture collection, also executed in silk appliqu\u00e9 by Maison Lesage, with the roses multiplied across the bodice and sleeves. \u201cIt\u2019s a kind of riposte, or an answer to the Elsa Schiaparelli design,\u201d says Stanfill, highlighting the house\u2019s suspension of time.<\/p>\n

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Schiaparelli Spring 1937 evening coat designed by Elsa Schiaparelli and Jean Cocteau and Fall\/Winter 2021 haute couture dress designed by Daniel Roseberry
Photo Credit: \u00a9 2025 ADAGP DACS Comite Cocteau, Paris. Photograph \u00a9 Emil Larsson; Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Roseberry, working at Schiaparelli is about a relationship with the house and its codes that cannot be rushed. \u201cBeing a creative director at a maison with a great history is like dating,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s the kind of chemistry that you cannot predict. You can\u2019t fast track it and you can\u2019t force it. When people ask me about my connection with Elsa and the codes, I feel there\u2019s a natural chemistry between us. I think with other heritage houses the weight of the past could feel like a constraint \u2014 whether it\u2019s a specific silhouette, colorway, graphic, or logo. But Elsa\u2019s legacy seems to grant endless permission to explore, express, challenge, and shock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read\u00a0GRAZIA USA<\/em>\u2019s Spring\/Summer Issue<\/a> featuring cover star Lux Pascal<\/a>:<\/strong><\/h4>\n