Hotels for Elsa Schiaparelli

Elsa Schiaparelli was fashion's great surrealist — the designer who put a lobster on a dress, a shoe on a head and shocking pink on the map, trading ideas with Dalí and Cocteau in 1930s Paris. This V&A exhibition gathers her most daring couture alongside the art that inspired it, tracing a wit and invention that still ripples through the runways of the revived house today.

Garments, jewellery, perfume and drawings show how Schiaparelli blurred the line between clothing and art long before anyone else dared. It runs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington from 28 March to 8 November 2026, in the heart of London's museum quarter — the V&A, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum are all within a few minutes' walk. Book a room in South Kensington or nearby Kensington and you can be first through the doors with the whole afternoon still ahead.

Elsa Schiaparelli was born in Rome in 1890 and, largely self-taught, rose to become the most daring couturier of 1930s Paris, the great rival to Coco Chanel and the designer who insisted that fashion could be art. Moving in surrealist circles, she traded ideas with Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau and turned their visions into clothes you could actually wear: the 1937 Lobster dress painted with Dali and worn by Wallis Simpson, the trompe-l'oeil skeleton dress, the shoe-shaped hat and the desk suit with drawer-pocket buttons.

She gave the world 'shocking pink', wrapped her scents in playful bottles and pioneered the fashion show as spectacle, only for her house to close in 1954. Revived in the 21st century and now dressing red carpets under creative director Daniel Roseberry, her spirit of wit and invention endures. The V&A's 'Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art', the UK's first show devoted to her, gathers more than 200 objects to trace it.

The Victoria and Albert Museum is the world's greatest museum of art, design and performance — a South Kensington treasure-house of fashion, sculpture, ceramics and jewellery, free to enter and impossible to exhaust in a day. It anchors London's museum quarter alongside the Natural History and Science Museums, with Harrods, Hyde Park and the Royal Albert Hall all within walking distance.

South Kensington station links the West End and the airports directly. Staying nearby puts three world-class museums, elegant streets and Kensington's restaurants on your doorstep — ideal for a culture-packed few days.