Balenciaga – Master of Couture (Touring) – Exhibiting Fashion

The Spanish – born fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga designed exclusive tailor – made clothes of the highest quality for the world’s fashion elite between the 1930s and 1960s. The exhibition Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum focuses on the heyday during the 1950s – 1960s when Balenciaga led the fashion development and introduced innovations such as the sack dress, baby doll cut, balloon skirt, tunic etc.

The exhibition tells about the work in the studio, the construction of the garments and about the fashionable customers who dressed in his design. In addition to a large number of original garments from both V & A’s collections and international deposits, there are also couture garments by later designers that continue in the spirit of Balenciaga, such as Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein, Yohij Yamamoto, Hussein Chalayan, Rei Kawakubo, Iris Van Herpen and more.

Balenciaga – Master of Couture is widely known and has been praised in both the international and Swedish press. In London, the exhibition has been seen by 272,500 visitors and went on an international tour around the world in March 2018, the Textile Museum is the only one in Europe where Balenciaga can be seen.