The V&A's 1927 Schiaparelli bow-knot sweater was made in 1971, and the museum's own label says so
Schiaparelli's bow-knot sweater, the black wool jumper with a white trompe l'oeil bow that the museum's 1985 label said started her career, is on display at the V&A in Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, in the Sainsbury Gallery until 15 November 2026. The gallery label reads: Designed 1927; made 1971. Given by Elsa Schiaparelli. The V&A's online catalogue entry still dates the object 1927, made, and the 1985 label it prints in full gave the plain date 1927, noted that it belonged to the Cecil Beaton Collection, and ended with a line of its own: the skirt shown with it was a replica. The credit line is 'Given by the designer'. Beaton's Fashion: An Anthology opened at the museum in October 1971 with garments gathered from his friends and from designers, and Schiaparelli, retired from couture in 1954, donated pieces to it. She died in Paris in 1973. The 1927 sweaters on the same label are loans, from the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland and from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a gift there of Vera White. The label also credits the knitter Schiaparelli commissioned for the original, Aroosiag Mikaëlian, an Armenian maker, and the press of the day described the two-tone technique as tweed-like. In Schiaparelli's own account, the back was reinforced with fine stitching in the contrast colour, which showed through the black ground. Schiaparelli wore it to a lunch, an American store buyer ordered 40, and the copies followed. The V&A's record measures its version at 68 cm around the bust and 0.3 kg on the scale. A museum can hold the design and not the object. This one prints both dates on the label.