Exhibitions: Salvador Dalí – art, fashion and the body
Salvador Dalí’s encounter with the world of fashion was never a mere commercial flirtation, but a genuine conceptual fusion that redefined the relationship between visual art and clothing. The Dalí e la Moda exhibition (at Palazzo Reale in Milan until 31 January 2027), devoted to the link between the master of Surrealism and costume, explores precisely this visionary cross-pollination, showing how Dalí turned the human body into a dynamic canvas and the garment into a dreamlike enigma.
The exhibition brings together more than 200 works and documents – paintings, drawings, photographs, garments, jewellery, accessories, objects and films, many of them never before shown in Italy – drawn from the three largest collections of Dalí’s work in the world: the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, the Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, Florida, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, joined by the historic archives of the fashion houses Schiaparelli, Chanel, Dior and Rabanne.
The beating heart of the exhibition lies in the historic and prolific collaboration with the designer Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1930s. This one-of-a-kind partnership gave rise to iconic pieces that entered the history of costume, such as the famous Lobster Dress worn by Wallis Simpson, the Skeleton Dress, which revealed anatomical forms in relief, and the surreal Shoe Hat, an accessory that turns our perception of everyday life on its head with Dalí’s trademark irony.
Also on show are some of the clothes and accessories that belonged to Dalí, most notably the “Aphrodisiac Dinner Jacket” with 55 liqueur glasses filled with resin, and to his wife Gala, who owned creations by Elsa Schiaparelli, Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, Pierre Cardin, Hubert de Givenchy, Gucci and Emilio Pucci. And, naturally, garments from recent haute couture and prêt-à-porter collections inspired by the artist, as well as his paintings and drawings, some of them relating to footwear.
Beyond the historic garments and original sketches, the exhibition explores the far-reaching influence that Dalí’s aesthetic has had on publishing and contemporary design. From the evocative covers he designed for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar to sculptural perfume bottles, the Catalan artist showed how the unconscious, anatomical forms and the iconic elements of his painting could blend seamlessly into haute couture, influencing generations of designers from Coco Chanel to Christian Dior, right up to today’s catwalks. The exhibition portrays a total artist, able to cross disciplines and boundaries and to turn every medium into an instrument of his own imagination.
