Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art is running at The Sainsbury Gallery in the V&A South Kensington until 15 November, having opened on 28 March. It's the first British show for Elsa Schiaparelli, the Roman-born couturier who coined 'shocking pink'. She was the niece of the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who charted the Martian 'canali', and she eventually fled an arranged marriage to settle in Paris, where she opened her own house in 1927. Alongside Coco Chanel, she's remembered as one of fashion's two defining figures between the wars, and she built her name on Surrealism: bodies, insects and trompe-l'œil turned into cloth.

The exhibition is built around her collaborations with Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau. You'll see the 1937 evening coat with faces and roses she made with Cocteau, and the 1938 Lobster Telephone and 1938 Skeleton Dress she did with Dalí, as well as the Tears dress. There's also Man Ray's 1933 portrait of the designer. It draws on research into Schiaparelli London Ltd, the branch she opened in 1933 to bring Parisian style to British high society. She left the house in the 1950s and it lay dormant for decades before its revival under current creative director Daniel Roseberry. The title comes from her own verdict: for her, dress designing was an art.

Tickets are £28 on weekdays and £30 at weekends, with concessions available and free admission for V&A members. The gallery is at the V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL.