SCHIAPARELLI HAUTE COUTURE SPRING SUMMER 2026 .LA MODA DIVENTA ARTE. VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

 

La prima mostra britannica su Elsa Schiaparelli copre gli anni '20 fino ad oggi, celebrando l'influenza della designer innovativa. Traccia le origini rivoluzionarie della casa di moda e la sua evoluzione sotto l'attuale direttore creativo Daniel Roseberry.

"Nei tempi difficili la moda è sempre scandalosa." – Elsa Schiaparelli

La stilista Elsa Schiaparelli (1890 – 1973) era una provocatrice che si divertiva a mettere in discussione le nozioni tipiche dell'abbigliamento. Argute, eleganti e spesso sorprendentemente surreali, i suoi design incorporano umorismo e sorpresa, invitando lo spettatore a guardare e guardare di nuovo.

Schiaparelli lavorava all'interno dei confini della sartoria tradizionale, ma giocava con dettagli sovversivi, materiali straordinari e l'immaginario del Surrealismo per creare dichiarazioni di moda uniche.

 La nostra collezione include uno dei suoi primi disegni, un maglione nero lavorato a maglia con un fiocco bianco, insieme alle sue opere più potenti e surrealiste, realizzate in collaborazione con gli artisti Salvador Dalí e Jean Cocteau.

‘THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY’ by @DANIELROSEBERRY

‘The emotional core of this collection was revealed to me while I was on a creative retreat outside of Rome. One afternoon, I arranged a last-minute tour to see the Sistine Chapel.

If you’ve been there, you know that the first thing you see isn’t the ceiling, but the walls, densely painted by an army of artists in the years before Michelangelo began his work in 1508.

But crane your neck skyward, and thought stops. Feeling begins. That’s because forty years later, one man came in and singlehandedly changed art forever. Here is agony and ecstasy comingled, terrible and exquisite. He didn’t tell us what happened, but instead gave his audience permission on how to feel when they looked at art.

It woke up the world. And 500 years later, it woke me up, too. I stopped thinking for the first time in years of how something should look, but instead about how I feel when creating it.

That revelation informed every part of this collection. Sharp strokes and rapid squiggles became scorpion tails. I drew stingers and snake teeth, chimeraed archetypes of couture with venom. I knew these reptilian creatures, these “infantas terribles,” as I called them, would become the heroes of the collection, our ceiling: they’d be birds of flight, defying gravity, bold in color, explosive in silhouette.

So many people ask me what the point is of couture. It’s certainly not to create clothing for daily life. But for me, couture allows me to connect with the hopeful adolescent I once was, the one who decided to not go into medicine or finance or law, but to chase that singular fantasy that fashion can still provide. Let the rest of the year be about reality. But nothing is more powerful—or timeless—or for me, more now, than getting to unchain my imagination…and, I hope, yours.