In case Belgium’s Antwerp Six or Paris’ Alaia x Dior exhibitions aren’t doing it for you, London will. It just made Schiap pieces (Elsa’s originals included) travel to the UK for the first time ever, landing in the Victoria & Albert museum until November 8. Meet ‘Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art’. Looks like this year’s Met Gala theme rubbed off on everyone.
Fashion does become art, but art also becomes fashion. Artists, painters, sculptors, anyone whose hands are too restless to sit still really, have long been feeding the designers we worship. Take it from this exact exhibition, spanning over 400 pieces, some of them almost bearing Salvador Dalí’s name too. Elsa Schiaparelli had quite the story with both Dali and London. Years before the landmark 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition opened to the Depression-hit country, a little shop in Mayfair did. It didn’t host extreme surrealism, but trompe l’oeil bow sweaters paved the way for lobster-headed dresses.
The very sweaters one sees entering the exhibition, the ones that first put Elsa on the map. They of course, do have some company. The 1938 ‘Skeleton Dress,’ with a Dali note next to it, reading Dear Elsa, I like this idea of ‘bones on the outside’ enormously.” The 1938 ‘Tears Dress”. Hats that look like upside-down shoes, body parts as jewellery (a classic), alongside archives of designs, accessories, furniture, perfume bottles, even Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, and Eileen Agar artworks.
Elsa would love this. Not the success, Daniel Roseberry’s gutsy way of channeling her while staying true to himself. One minute you’re with her, next you’re with him. Side by side, past and present complementing each other. That man is a godsend for Schiap… for me too.
