SCHIAPARELLI
Aperture Online
June 2026
REVIEW
How Schiaparelli Reimagined the Fashion Photograph
Elsa Schiaparelli was perhaps the first twentieth-century couturier to fully grasp the power of the camera, argues Alistair O’Neill in his review of an exhibition on Schiaparelli at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. “She understood print media as a living organism—in the same way that she brought the inner working of the body to its surface as the means to decorate a dress—that needed to be drip-fed fashion constantly; the promotion of biannual collections was merely one of its slower biological rhythms.”
How Schiaparelli Reimagined the Fashion Photograph
Elsa Schiaparelli was perhaps the first twentieth-century couturier to fully grasp the power of the camera, argues Alistair O’Neill in his review of an exhibition on Schiaparelli at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. “She understood print media as a living organism—in the same way that she brought the inner working of the body to its surface as the means to decorate a dress—that needed to be drip-fed fashion constantly; the promotion of biannual collections was merely one of its slower biological rhythms.”