Schiaparelli & Frida
While London is putting on two of the best exhibitions I’ve seen in years there are two women of the same era who refused to be ordinary, and they are best seen together while you can. At the V&A, Elsa Schiaparelli turns fashion into art. Across the river at Tate Modern, Frida Kahlo turns herself into an icon.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, V&A
“For me, dress designing is not a profession but an art,”
Elsa Schiaparelli said, and this exhibition proves her right.
There are more than 400 objects: around 100 ensembles and 50 artworks, along with jewellery, perfume, photographs, furniture and archive pieces. It’s a feast.
The heart of it is her friendship with the Surrealists. The 1937 Lobster dress hangs beside Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. There’s the shoe-shaped hat they dreamed up together, the 1938 Tears dress, and the Skeleton dress, the only surviving example, from the V&A’s own collection. It’s wit and audacity, stitched. I loved the London chapter too. Schiaparelli had a salon here, and a burgundy velvet suit embroidered in gold is a reminder of it. The show ends with Daniel Roseberry, creative director of the house since 2019, whose sculptural pieces for the likes of Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa show that golden thread still running.
Frida: The Making of an Icon, Tate Modern
This is the first major Kahlo show in the UK in over two decades. Rather than simply hanging the paintings, it asks a cleverer question: how did a painter once overshadowed by her husband, Diego Rivera, become one of the most recognised and reproduced women in art history?
The answer begins with her. The self-portraits are here, from Self-Portrait (With Velvet Dress) of 1926 to Self-Portrait with Loose Hair of 1938. So are the Tehuana dresses and jewellery she used to build her image, a sketch made after the tram accident that changed her life, Nickolas Muray’s vivid colour photographs and rare home-movie footage. Identity, disability, gender and heritage are all worn as boldly as the flowers in her hair.
Then the show steps back to watch the legend grow. It follows the Chicana movement claiming her as a symbol of resistance, and artists such as Judy Chicago, Ana Mendieta and Kiki Smith responding to her. Finally there’s a gallery devoted to Fridamania: the dolls, the tote bags and the cushions. It’s a little unsettling, and entirely fascinating.
The thread between them
See them on the same weekend if you can. Schiaparelli and Kahlo knew the same Surrealist circles, and both understood something many of us take half a lifetime to learn: what we choose to wear is a way of telling the world who we are. One made clothes into art. The other made herself into one.
Know before you go
- Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art — V&A South Kensington, until 8 November 2026. Tickets £28 weekdays, £30 weekends.
- Frida: The Making of an Icon — Tate Modern, until 3 January 2027. Tickets £25, free for Tate Members.
Book ahead for both, especially at weekends.
