By Azzurra Rinaldi. Cover Schiaparelli Fashion Becomes Art exhibition display V&A South Kensington, Victoria and Albert Museum courtesy
London is celebrating Elsa Schiaparelli, while Milan is preparing to explore Salvador Dalì’s extraordinary relationship with fashion at Palazzo Reale. Together, the two exhibitions reveal how Surrealism transformed the language of art and style.
When Surrealism Becomes Fashion
At the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, until 8 November 2026, visitors can explore the first major exhibition dedicated to the Surrealist designer Elsa Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art.
Portrait of Elsa Schiaparelli by Man Ray, 1933 © 2025 Man Ray 2015 Trust. DACS, London. Photo_ Collection SFMOMA. The Helen Crocker Russell and William H. and Ethel W. Crocker Family Funds purchase
What happens when Surrealism is no longer confined to paintings but becomes something that can be worn? Something that enters everyday life? Imagine calling a friend with a lobster telephone or wearing a shoe-shaped hat on a cold winter day.
Surrealism transforms ordinary objects by placing them in unexpected contexts and giving them new meanings. This is exactly what Elsa Schiaparelli achieved through fashion. The exhibition reveals how Schiaparelli transformed dreams into garments and fashion into a form of artistic experimentation.
Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí: A Creative Partnership
Elsa Schiaparelli is well known for her collaboration with the eccentric artist Salvador Dalí. Some of her most iconic creations emerged from this artistic dialogue, including the famous Lobster Dress and the Skeleton Dress.
The Skeleton Dress is particularly striking. By bringing the hidden structure of the body to the surface, it challenges traditional ideas of beauty, transforming anatomy into a fashion statement that is both unsettling and fascinating.
Another remarkable piece on display is the Bureau Desk Suit, whose pockets resemble the drawers of a writing desk. Once again, an everyday object is transformed, becoming something unexpected and imaginative.
Daniel Roseberry and the New Era of Schiaparelli
The exhibition is not limited to Schiaparelli’s original Surrealist creations. More recent works demonstrate how the Maison continues to reinterpret the symbolic imagination that made Elsa Schiaparelli unique, keeping alive a vision in which fashion becomes art, dream, and transformation.
Among the contemporary pieces, visitors can admire creations by Creative Director Daniel Roseberry, including a sculptural corset decorated with white flowers on a golden crescent-moon structure. Equally impressive is the spectacular red dress worn by Ariana Grande at the 2025 Academy Awards, which recalls, although not directly, the dreamlike imagery found in the paintings of Max Ernst.
Why Schiaparelli’s Surrealist Fashion Still Inspires Today
Clothes can be dreams to wear. They emerge from the same imaginative space as paintings and dreams, where logic is suspended and nobody asks why something exists.
In Schiaparelli’s creations, we encounter a freedom that belongs only to dreams. Here, fashion becomes transformation, provocation, and wonder. A shoe can become a hat, a skeleton can emerge from the body, and everything appears perfectly normal.
The exhibition goes beyond fashion history, exploring the creative freedom that continues to make Schiaparelli’s work so powerful today. As Elsa Schiaparelli once said: “The perfect dress that never goes out of fashion, there is only one. The dress of freedom.”
Walking through the exhibition feels a little like stepping through the looking glass and leaving logic waiting outside.
It reminds us that Surrealism, for Schiaparelli, was never a closed historical chapter but an enduring creative language capable of transforming reality into wonder. Looking at Schiaparelli’s creations, one realizes that not everything has to follow logic. Some ideas are powerful precisely because they escape explanation. Like dreams, they invite us to wonder rather than to understand.
If you are passionate about fashion, art, and perfume, the exhibition offers almost 400 objects that will make you feel as if you have stepped into a dream.
Dalí and Fashion: The New Exhibition at Palazzo Reale Milan
The connection between Elsa Schiaparelli, Salvador Dalí, and fashion will continue this autumn in Milan. From 24 September 2026 to 31 January 2027, Palazzo Reale will host a major exhibition exploring Dalì’s lifelong relationship with fashion, revealing one of the least explored yet most influential aspects of his career.
The exhibition will examine how Dalí extended Surrealism beyond painting and into fashion, collaborating not only with Schiaparelli but also with Coco Chanel and Christian Dior. Iconic creations such as the Lobster Dress, the Shoe Hat, the Skeleton Dress, and the Desk Suit reveal how he transformed clothing into a vehicle for dreams, symbolism, and psychological exploration.
Bringing together exceptional loans from leading international museums, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to understand how Dalí blurred the boundaries between haute couture, art, theatre, jewelry, and design, confirming fashion as one of the most imaginative expressions of his creative universe.
