SCHIAPARELLI: Fashion Becomes Art

'Fashion Becomes Art'...

....and then it becomes art again… this time it’s mine!

A visual scrapbook inspired by the Schiaparelli exhibition currently showing at the V&A.

I didn’t know a huge amount about Schiaparelli before I went and, honestly, I was blown away. The clothes were beautiful, sure, but the accessories stole the show for me.

Locks. Hands. Anatomy. Lobsters. Jewellery that looked like tiny artworks.

Elsa Schiaparelli was WAY ahead of her time. Some of the ideas she was exploring in the 1930s still feel contemporary today, which is pretty wild when you think about how quickly fashion moves. What’s even more impressive is how those ideas continue to echo through the house’s work nearly a century later.

What interested me most was the way the exhibition blurred the boundaries between fashion and art. From Elsa’s collaborations with artists like Salvador Dalí to the house’s continued engagement with surrealism, fashion became something bigger than clothing.

As someone who works across styling, art direction and design, I love seeing those boundaries merge. I’m not usually a surrealism person, but it’s pretty cool in this context. It reminds me that fashion doesn’t always have to be serious, practical or sensible.

Sometimes it can just be strange.

And fun.

And that’s exactly what fashion should be!

xM💎