The V&A's Schiaparelli Exhibition Closes on Sunday 8th November, Your Last Chance to See the UK's First Show on the Designer

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art closes at the V&A in South Kensington on Sunday 8th November. The exhibition opened on 28th March as the first in the UK devoted to Elsa Schiaparelli, and it follows her fashion house from its beginnings in the 1920s to its revival under the current creative director, Daniel Roseberry.

A sweater with a knitted bow made her name

Elsa Schiaparelli was born in Rome in 1890 and built her career in Paris. Her first success came in 1927 with a black hand-knitted sweater carrying a white bow worked into the wool, so the bow looked tied at the neck but was part of the knit. Fashion editors loved the trick, and it set the tone for everything that followed: clothes that played games with the eye.

She went on to turn colour into a signature. In 1937 she launched shocking pink, a hot, vivid shade that gave its name to her perfume, Shocking, and has been tied to her name ever since.

Dalí, Cocteau and the surrealist wardrobe

Schiaparelli treated artists as collaborators rather than decoration. With Salvador Dalí she produced some of the strangest and most famous clothes of the 1930s, including a white evening dress printed with a giant lobster and a hat shaped like an upturned shoe. With Jean Cocteau she designed a 1937 evening coat embroidered with a drawing that reads as both a vase of roses and two faces in profile, and that coat is one of the pieces on show at the V&A.

Her house closed in 1954, and for decades her name survived mainly in museum collections and fashion history books. Seeing these pieces together in one place shows you how far ahead of her time she worked, and why designers still borrow from her today.

Daniel Roseberry brought the house back to life

The house reopened in Paris in the 2010s, and the Texas-born designer Daniel Roseberry became creative director in 2019. Roseberry has revived the founder's surrealist streak with sculpted gold, jewellery shaped like eyes, ears and lips, and gowns that look carved rather than sewn. The exhibition carries the story through to his work, so you see how a house that went dark for more than half a century now dresses some of the most photographed people in the world.

Planning your visit before Sunday

Tickets cost £28 on weekdays and £30 at weekends, and final days at major V&A fashion shows sell out, so book online before you travel. The V&A has opened the exhibition late until 10pm on Saturdays, which makes Saturday 7th November the best evening to go, but check the museum's website for final-weekend times. Allow at least 90 minutes.

The V&A's permanent collection is free, and Kensington Palace sits a short walk away across Kensington Gardens, where The Last Princesses of Punjab also closes on Sunday. With an early start, you can see both exhibitions in a single day.

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at a glance

• Where: V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL
• Closes: Sunday 8th November 2026
• Tickets: £28 weekdays, £30 weekends
• Late opening: Saturday until 10pm (check before you travel)