Cristobal Balenciaga – Fashion Designer Encyclopedia – clothing, century, women, suits, dress, shoes, style, new

Spanish designer

Born:

Guetaria, San Sebastian, 21 January 1895.

Education:

Studied needlework and dressmaking with his mother until 1910.

Career:

Established tailoring business, with sponsorship of the Marquesa de Casa
Torres, San Sebastian, 1915-21; founder/designer, Elsa fashion house,
Barcelona, 1922-31, and Madrid, 1932-37; director, Maison Balenciaga,
Paris, 1937-40, 1945-68; spent war years in Madrid; fragrances include

le Dix,

1948,

Quadreille,

1955, and

Pour Homme,

introduced by House of Balenciaga, 1990; couture house closed, 1968;
retired to Madrid, 1968-72; House of Balenciaga managed by German group
Hoechst, 1972-86; Jacques Bogart S.A. purchased Balenciaga Couture et
Parfums, 1986; couture discontinued and ready-to-wear collection launched
under designer Michel Goma, 1987; reopening of Balenciaga stores launched,
1989; Josephus Melchior Thimister takes over as head designer, 1992-97;
Balenciaga name rejuvenated with Nicolas Ghesquiére as head designer,
from 1997.

Exhibitions:


Balenciaga,

Bellerive Museum, Zurich, 1970;

Fashion: An Anthology,

Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 1971;

The World of Balenciaga,

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,

Articles

“Cristobal Balenciaga,” [obituary] in the

New York Times,

25 March 1972.

“Cristobal Balenciaga: A Most Distinguished Couturier of His
Time,” in

The Times

(London), 25 March 1972.

Berenson, Ruth, “Balenciaga at the Met,” in

National Review

(New York), 31 August 1973.

Mulvagh, Jane, “The Balenciaga Show,” in

Vogue

(London), March 1985.

“Homage to Balenciaga,” in

Art and Design,

October 1985.

Savage, Percy, “Balenciaga the Great,” in the

Observer

(London), 13October 1985.

Braux, Diane de, “L’Exposition en hommage á
Balenciaga,” in

Vogue

(Paris), December/January 1985/86.

“Nostra Lione: Grande esposizione consacrata a
Balenciaga,” in

Vogue

(Milan), February 1986.

Martin, Richard, “Balenciaga,” in

American Fabrics and Fashions

(New York), September/October 1986.

Koda, Harold, “Balenciaga and the Art of Couture,” in

Threads

(Newtown, Connecticut), June/July 1987.

Paquin, Paquita, “Le Ceremonial de Cristobal Balenciaga,”
in

Vogue

(Paris), November 1988.

Baudet, Francois, “Leur maître á tous,” in

Elle

(Paris), 19 December 1988.

McDowell, Colin, “Balenciaga: The Quiet Revolutionary,” in

Vogue

(London), June 1989.

Howell, Georgina, “Balenciagas Are Forever,” in the

Sunday Times Magazine

(London), 23 July 1989.

Auchincloss, Eve, “Balenciaga: Homage to the Greatest,” in

Con noisseur

(New York), September 1989.

Morera, Daniela, “Balenciaga lo charme del silenzio: Il grande
couturier spagnolo,” in

Vogue

(Milan), September 1990.

Drake, Laurie, “Courreges and Balenciaga: Some of the Best Spring
Fashion Bears the Signature—or the Spirit—of Two Great
Designers,” in

Vogue,

March 1991.

White, Edmund, “Cristobal Balenciaga: The Spanish Master at
LaReynerie,” in

Architectural Digest,

October 1994.

Horyn, Cathy, “Filling Balenciaga’s Shoes a Hard Row to
Clothe,” in

Chicago Tribune,

2 December 1999.

***

Cristobal Balenciaga’s primary fashion achievement was in
tailoring, the Spanish-born couturier was a virtuoso in knowing,
comforting, and flattering the body. He could demonstrate tailoring
proficiency in a tour de force one-seam coat, its shaping created from
the innumerable darts and tucks shaping the single piece of fabric. His
consummate tailoring was accompanied by a pictorial imagination that
encouraged him to appropriate ideas of kimono and sari, return to the
Spanish vernacular dress of billowing and adaptable volume, and create
dresses with arcs that could swell with air as the figure moved. There
was a traditional Picasso-Matisse question of postwar French fashion:
who was greater, Dior or Balenciaga? Personal sensibility might support
one or the other, but it is hard to imagine any equal to
Balenciaga’s elegance, then or since.

Balenciaga was a master of illusion. The waist could be strategically
low, it could be brought up to the ribs, or it could be concealed in a
tunic or the subtle opposition of a boxy top over a straight skirt.
Balenciaga envisioned the garment as a three-dimensional form encircling
the body, occasionally touching it and even grasping it, but also
spiraling away so the contrast in construction was always between the
apparent freedom of the garment and its body-defining moments. Moreover,
he regularly contrasted razor-sharp cut, including instances of the
garment’s radical geometry, with soft fragile features.

A perfectionist who closed down his business in 1968 rather than see it
be compromised in a fashion era he did not respect, Balenciaga projected
ideal garments, but allowed for human imperfection. He was, in fact, an
inexorable flatterer, a sycophant to the imperfect body. To throw back a
rolled collar gives a flattering softness to the line of the neck into
the body; his popular seven-eighths sleeve flattered women of a certain
age, while the tent-like drape of coats and jackets were elegant on
clients without perfect bodies. His fabrics had to stand up to his
almost Cubist vocabulary of shapes, and he loved robust wools with
texture, silk gazar for evening, corduroy (surprising in its inclusion
in the couture), and textured silks.

Balenciaga’s garments lack pretension; they were characterized by
self-assured couture of simple appearance, austerity of details, and
reserve in style. For the most part, the garments seemed simple.
American manufacturers, for example, adored Balenciaga for his
adaptability into simpler forms for the American mass market in suits
and coats. The slight rise in the waistline at center front or the
proportions of chemise tunic to skirt make Balenciaga clothing as
harmonious as a musical composition, but the effect was always one of
utmost insouciance and ease of style. Balenciaga delved deeply into
traditional clothing, seeming to care more for regional dress than for
any prior couture house.

As Marie-Andrée Jouve demonstrated in

Balenciaga,

(New York, 1989), his garments allude to Spanish vernacular costume and
to Spanish art: his embroidery and jet-beaded evening coats, capelettes,
and boleros are redolent of the

torero,

while his love of capes emanates from the romance of rustic apparel.
Chemise, cape, and baby doll shapes might seem antithetical to the
propensities of a master of tailoring, but Balenciaga’s 1957 baby
doll dress exemplifies the correlation he made between the two. The lace
cage of the baby doll floats free from the body, suspended from the
shoulders, but it is matched by the tailored dress beneath, providing a
layered and analytical examination of the body within and the Cubist
cone on the exterior, a tantalizing artistry of body form and perceived
shape.

The principal forms for Balenciaga were the chemise, tunic, suit—
with more or less boxy top—narrow skirt, and coats, often with
astonishing sleeve treatments, suggesting an arm transfigured by the
sculptor Brancusi into a puff or into almost total disappearance.
Balenciaga perceived a silhouette that could be with or without arms,
but never with the arms interfering. A famous Henry Clark photograph of
a 1951 Balenciaga black silk suit focuses on silhouette: narrow and high
waist with a pronounced flare of the peplum below and sleeves that
billow from elbow to seven-eighths length; an Irving Penn photograph
concentrates on the aptly named melon sleeve of a coat. Like a
20th-century artist, Balenciaga directed himself to a part of the body,
giving us a selective, concentrated vision. His was not an all-over,
all-equal vision, but a discriminating, problem-solving exploration of
tailoring and picture-making details of dress. Balenciaga was so very
like a 20th-century artist because in temperament, vocabulary, and
attainment, he was one.

When Cristobal Balenciaga retired (though he briefly came out of
retirement to design a wedding dress for Franco’s granddaughter),
his fashion empire was run by the German chemical group Hoechst.
Balenciaga died in March 1972 and Hoechst managed the business until
1986 when Jacques Bogart S.A. acquired the company. Couture was
discontinued in favor of ready-to-wear and the first Balenciaga
collection, designed by Michel Goma, debuted in 1987. Over the next
several years, the company began opening Balenciaga boutiques and
brought in a new head designer, Josephus Thimister, in 1992. Dutch
designer Thimister created predominately eveningwear and some
Basque-flavored loungewear, but he left in 1997 and was replaced by a
young designer named Nicolas Ghesquiére.

Ghesquiére had worked in Balenciaga’s licensed clothing
lines and while his ascension to head designer wasn’t met with
the enthusiasm of Givenchy’s Alexander McQueen, or John Galliano
taking over at Christian Dior, Ghesquiére soon brought Balenciaga a
welcome renaissance. His first collection, spring/summer 1998 attracted
little attention, but his second showing garnered accolades from critics
and fellow designers alike. Balenciaga in the 21st century is
tremendously popular, featuring shades of original Cristobal Balenciaga
designs with a Ghesquiére twist. Sales under
Ghesquiére’s reign have doubled in the last few years; the
venerable Maison Balenciaga is alive and well, and its future is bright.