House of Balenciaga | Dress | French | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design House House of Balenciaga French

Designer Cristobal Balenciaga Spanish

Not on view

This chic, blacker than black tunic, with its dramatic cape-like back panel, perfectly articulates Balenciaga’s revolutionary modern design principles of the 1960s. The Spanish-born couturier often set himself a special tailor’s test: he loved to have the garment stand away from body, thus taking form to and from the body, but seemingly separated from it, like a cantilevered balcony. Balenciaga was considered the supreme architect of twentieth-century fashion, and is remembered primarily for his virtuosity as a tailor and for his use of fabrics with a stiffer or more structured “hand.”