Salvador Dalí turned excess into an art form and imagination into a true method. Dreamlike images with distorted shapes and brilliant colors, melting clocks, deformed bodies, objects out of scale, and impossible combinations have, over time, built an immediately recognizable aesthetic universe, suspended between dream, desire, and provocation. But his imagination did not stop at the canvas: for Dalí, every surface could become a creative space, from jewelry to furniture, from photography to set design, right down to clothing. It is precisely in this vocation to transform reality that his surprisingly deep relationship with fashion was born.
As early as the 1930s, Dalí viewed clothing as a tool capable of challenging identity and the perception of the body. His collaboration with Elsa Schiaparelli is the most famous chapter in this exploration: together, they transformed the dress into a surrealist object, giving rise to creations that have since gone down in history, such as the Shoe-Hat, the iconic Lobster Dress, and the famous Veston aphrodisiaque. Dalí also collaborated with Coco Chanel and Christian Dior, designing costumes and lending his unique vision to giants of French fashion—demonstrating just how versatile his artistic language was and how naturally aligned it was with fashion experimentation. Shoes, gloves, hats, dresses, jewelry, and even the human body thus became recurring elements in his visual repertoire, imbued with new and often unsettling meanings. Dalí understood before many others that fashion is not merely a way to dress the body or a commercial opportunity, but one of many tools to be used to construct identity, create desire, and—if desired—alter the perception of reality. It is precisely this relationship between art, the body, fashion, and imagination that lies at the heart of the artist’s new exhibition coming to Milan.
From September 24, 2026, to January 31, 2027, the Palazzo Reale will host “Dalí and Fashion,” an exhibition dedicated to this lesser-explored yet extremely fertile aspect of the Catalan artist’s work. The exhibition will bring together over 200 works and documents—including paintings, drawings, photographs, garments, films, jewelry, and objects—to illustrate how Dalí helped redefine the relationship between art and fashion. The exhibition will span painting, sculpture, and design, drawing connections between the mannequin and the body, the artwork and the garment, to illustrate the influence the artist exerted on the world of fashion. The exhibition aims not only to showcase Dalí’s aesthetic vision beyond the purely artistic medium but also to reexamine fashion as an important component of his creative process and as a means of authentically expressing his imagination.
Curated by Montse Aguer, Laura Bartolomé Roviras, and Judith Clark, the exhibition is sponsored by the City of Milan — Culture, Palazzo Reale, Mondo Mostre, and Civita Mostre e Musei, in collaboration with the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, and under the patronage of the Spanish Embassy in Italy and the National Chamber of Italian Fashion.
[📷 IPA]
