05/08/2026
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art.
Another exhibition from my recent London visit and what an extraordinary world to step into!
Elsa Schiaparelli fascinates me not only because of what she created but because of the way she saw fashion.
A woman who did not consider herself conventionally beautiful yet went on to challenge conventional ideas of beauty itself. Uninspired by the sameness she saw around her she experimented with knitwear, colour, illusion and unexpected forms and eventually created a visual language entirely her own.
Then came that wonderful meeting of fashion and art.
Her friendships and collaborations with some of the greatest artists of her time including Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau and Man Ray blurred the boundaries between clothing and Surrealism. A dress could become a canvas. An everyday object could become something extraordinary. Fashion could provoke, amuse, surprise and make the mind wander.
And almost a century later that spirit is still very much alive.
Under Daniel Roseberry the Maison feels unmistakably Schiaparelli yet completely relevant to the world we live in today. I find his ability to respect Elsa’s original language without simply reproducing it incredibly inspiring. He takes her fascination with anatomy, Surrealism, humour and the unexpected and pushes it somewhere new - sophisticated, provocative and wonderfully imaginative.
Perhaps that is the greatest way to honour a creative legacy: not to preserve it untouched but to understand it deeply enough to allow it to keep evolving.
As Elsa Schiaparelli herself believed, dress designing was not simply a profession.
It was art.
