{"id":6023,"date":"2025-07-13T06:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T06:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/6023\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T06:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T06:13:09","slug":"fashion-becomes-art-exhibition-to-open-in-2026-at-va","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/6023\/","title":{"rendered":"Fashion Becomes Art\u2019 Exhibition to Open in 2026 at V&A"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tUpdated at 3:56 p.m. ET on July 9 <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Victoria & Albert Museum\u2019s next fashion exhibition<\/a> will take a surreal turn.<\/p>\n

\u201cSchiaparelli<\/a>: Fashion Becomes Art<\/a>\u201d will be staged at the Sainsbury Gallery from March 21 to Nov. 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

The exhibition<\/a> will chart the success of its founder, Elsa Schiaparelli<\/a>, from the 1920s to the present day under the current ownership of Diego Della Valle and the creative direction of Daniel Roseberry.<\/p>\n

There will be more than 200 objects in the show that span across Paris, London<\/a> and New York, as well as World Wars I and II, including garments, accessories, jewelry, paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture, perfumes and archive material.<\/p>\n

Delphine Bellini, chief executive officer of Schiaparelli, was joined by Daniel Slater, director of exhibitions at the V&A, and the museum\u2019s senior curator Sonnet Stanfill, at a press conference on Wednesday at the house\u2019s historic salon on Place Vend\u00f4me in Paris.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe V&A is one of the unique museums, which has always tried to blend tradition and innovation, and this is so linked to what Schiaparelli used to do herself,\u201d Bellini said.<\/p>\n

Five years in the making, the show will not just build on the success of previous exhibitions, including a major retrospective at the Mus\u00e9e des Arts D\u00e9coratifs in Paris\u00a0in 2022, but explore new areas including Schiaparelli\u2019s relationship with the U.K. and her clients, such as Wallis Simpson and Elsie de Wolfe, known as Lady Mendl.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Duchess<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Duchess of Windsor wearing a Schiaparelli dress.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tConde Nast via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re adding on to the existing scholarship, but telling the story in a very new way, in a very unique way,\u201d Stanfill said. \u201cWe like to describe ourselves as the world\u2019s leading museum of art<\/a>, design and performance, and in fact, all of those elements, plus a chapter on photography, will be within the exhibition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slater noted that the show will also include works by some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, on loan from major institutions. Schiaparelli walked in artistic circles with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Man Ray.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was so exciting for us is that with a project on Schiaparelli, you almost reverse what is the normal narrative of fashion in art museums, where you have designers being inspired by art. What we have with Elsa, which continues in the house today, is one of the greatest designers who is actually inspiring some of the greatest art of the 20th century,\u201d Slater said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not to redo something that\u2019s formulaic. This is to entirely change the way in which fashion can be experienced in a fine art museum,\u201d he added. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to constantly build the next generation of creatives. And this is just yet another opportunity for us to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Special pieces on display include the Skeleton dress from 1938, which covers the entire body in a black silk cr\u00eape. In a 1939 interview, Schiaparelli said that she believes \u201cin a strict neatness about both day and evening clothes, their simple lines accentuated by an original touch. A neck line can make or spoil a dress; amusing pockets can add distinction to the simplest jacket.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another standout piece that will feature is the Tears dress from 1938 made in collaboration with the Surrealist artist Salvador Dal\u00ed. Printed with a trompe-l\u2019oeil motif, it creates the illusion of strips of flesh, prefiguring the punk movement by several decades.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Ensemble\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Tears dress by Elsa Schiaparelli.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Victoria and Albert Museum, Lo<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn into an aristocratic family and raised in the luxurious confines of Palazzo Corsini in Rome, Schiaparelli was separated from her husband by the time she arrived in Paris from the U.S. in 1922.<\/p>\n

Bellini noted that the designer, who was self-financed at the time, opened a London<\/a> salon in Mayfair in 1933, barely six years after founding her house. \u201cIt\u2019s also important to see her, not only as an artist, but as a woman entrepreneur, and this is very inspiring also for today\u2019s women,\u201d she said.
\u00a0
Stanfill added that Schiaparelli was a founding member of the Fashion Group of Great Britain, the precursor of today\u2019s British Fashion Council.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer clothes had a hard chic about them, which were in contrast to the quiet luxury of a lot of her contemporaries. So as a disruptor and as a breaker of fashion rules, she encouraged her clients to embrace a different way of dressing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was the most inventive in terms of use of materials of any of her contemporaries, in the sense that she urged her textile producers to bring her their newest and their best \u2014 so that could take the guise of woven glass, cellophane, new crinkled textures. She really loved unusual fabrics, and that will come across in the garments that we can display,\u201d Stanfill added.<\/p>\n

Schiaparelli also designed costumes for the silver screen and stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She costumed Mae West in the 1937 film \u201cEvery Day\u2019s a Holiday\u201d and borrowed the actor\u2019s curvy silhouette for one of her perfume bottle designs. In 1952, she dressed Zsa Zsa Gabor in a pink gown in the film \u201cMoulin Rouge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Hungarian-born<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tZsa Zsa Gabor wearing a dress designed by Elsa Schiaparelli in \u201cMoulin Rogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tThe designer is a recurring character in fashion history books. She famously feuded with Gabrielle \u201cCoco\u201d Chanel, but had to shut her business in 1954 after accruing large debts.<\/p>\n

Schiaparelli was relaunched by Della Valle in 2012 and the house has spread the word about the history of its founder, starting with a book titled \u201cSchiaparelli and the Artists,\u201d published in 2017 to mark the 90th anniversary of the brand.
\u00a0
The exhibition will also include a selection of designs by Roseberry.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"CANNES,<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBella Hadid wearing a Schiaparelli dress.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe couture collection that we presented on Monday is really the beautiful translation of how we can dive into the archives, but also transport them into the future and see how Schiaparelli\u2019s contribution to fashion, art and culture can continue to survive through the lens of a new creative vision with passion and actually no boundaries,\u201d Bellini said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more respectful we are, and the more inventive we are, the more vibration we create outside. It\u2019s extremely rewarding, and it allows us to take new steps,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Updated at 3:56 p.m. ET on July 9 The Victoria & Albert Museum\u2019s next fashion exhibition will take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1029,228,226,227,229,88,6462,6463,1150,6464],"class_list":["post-6023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-exhibit","tag-exhibition","tag-london","tag-schiaparelli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}