Inventor of tunic and shirt dresses, haute couture genius: Who is Cristobal Balenciaga?

The Spanish designer, who spent the first 10 years of his childhood commuting with his mother in Gipuzkoa, started his sewing life at the tailor shop, where he started working as an apprentice in the same region at the age of 12. And of course, like any story that ends with incredible fame, Balenciaga manages to fall under the patronage of the city's most well-known and wealthy woman in his early teens. Marchioness de Casa Torres is quick to invest in this promising boy and sends Cristóbal to Madrid to learn the profession properly.

In 1919, Cristóbal is a respected designer in Spain and a businessman with boutiques in San Sebastian, Madrid, and Barcelona. Balenciaga, who started to dress the Spanish Royal Family, managed to reach the peak of national fame in a short time when he was only in his 20s. Until the Spanish Civil War caused all of his boutiques to close and the designer to flee the country. The part of the story that seems tragic will actually lead to the international fame of the designer in the long run.

Starting his career from scratch in Paris, it would be August 1937 when Cristóbal opened his first boutique on Avenue George V, in the city of lights. However, his coming of age will take place after World War II. The designer, who made his Vogue debut in 1937, will later be described by Diana Vreeland with the words: "No one has made an entrance to Paris as Balenciaga did, and absolutely nothing has influenced the French fashion world more than the Spanish designer's sculptural silhouettes."

The inventor of tunics and shirt dresses, the haute couture genius of the 1950s and 60s, when he turns 74, he decides to retire after 30 years in the industry and closes his boutiques in Paris, Barcelona and Madrid one by one. Returning to Spain for retirement after 30 years in Paris, the designer died in 1972 in Xabia.

Who is Cristobal Balenciaga?

Cristobal Balenciaga was born in a fishing village called Getaria in the Basque region of Spain in 1895. After his father's death, his mother took care of her three children by being a tailor. According to rumors, Cristobal, a child who gave the impression of "growing and shrunken", greatly admired his mother's work and never left her side.

The success of the first store opened in the coastal town of San Sebastian before World War I was followed by branches in Madrid and Barcelona. The name he gave these stores, Eisa, was a shortened version of his mother's maiden name, Eisaguirre. It had a solid reputation and loyal clientele in Spain, a favorite of royalty and Spanish aristocrats; but the civil war forced him to move his studies to Paris.

It didn't take long for the boutique he opened in Paris in August 1937 to find success. Balenciaga's full access to the top of the fashion world, World War II. It would be after WWII. While Christian Dior's New Look reached great popularity at the height of femininity in the 1950s, it was accused of reversing the history of fashion with its references to the past; Balenciaga's designs became famous as the most modern designs in its era, with an understanding that was completely opposite to this. Indeed, his designs redesign the body with a great building ability; It was unlike anything we had seen up to that point in fashion history. Its design can be considered a revolution in fashion design; It was the cuts that were produced in 1952 that fit the body in the front and were loose enough in the back. This cut was the first clue of an innovation that would inspire many designers until the 1960s.

If we had to sum up the Cristobal Balenciaga design in one word, we would call it "perfectionism". From the choice of fabric to the color, the cut, and the finishing touches, everything had to come together perfectly; and that's how it was throughout his career: everything that came out of his workshop had a feeling of utter perfection. If there were times of hesitation, he didn't let anyone know except perhaps those closest to him in his workshop, though he allowed so few people to approach him in person, which is not surprising.

Cristobal with his Contradictory Personality

Unlike most designers who made their mark in the history of fashion, Balenciaga did not take his private life into consideration and was known as a cold and distant personality. However, this attitude; The Duchess of Windsor hadn't prevented him from having famous clients such as writer and designer Pauline de Rothschild and socialite Gloria Guinness; there was such a drama in his designs that he didn't need to showcase the drama of his life to get the attention. He did his best not to have to deal with his clients one-on-one, and he had no affinity with anyone but one or two in fashion circles. As for the press, it was as if he had declared war. With a decision he made in 1957, he decided to realize his designs the day before, instead of introducing them to the public a month before sending them to stores like everyone else. While keeping the press away from his designs; to prevent them from being copied. Although the press, whose publication dates were upside down, was quite disturbed by the situation, Balenciaga and Givenchy, who also adopted the same practice, resisted. Only 10 years after this decision, in 1967, both designers would abandon their stance and returned to the usual fashion show schedule.

Cristobal Balenciaga is said to be the only exception to this media hostility; Carmel Snow, editor of the American magazine Harper's Bazaar. Balenciaga welcomed Snow, who came to Paris twice a year to participate in fashion shows, as a friend. It is even claimed that Snow made the suit, which he declared the most important suit of his period, for him; The suit, which later became a classic, consisted of a slightly fitted jacket with a collar that began away from the neck, and a plain skirt with either straight or two to four panels.

The starting point of the designer has always been the fabric, the work process he carried out without using drawings started with the fabric, and his aim while designing was to show the necessary respect for that fabric. In every fashion show of Cristobal Balenciaga, there would always be a design that he made entirely by himself, but the details of which it was were never disclosed.

Balenciaga's design, who was fond of Spanish art and religion from the first moment he stepped into Paris, showed his difference with designs resembling church frescoes. It was known that Balenciaga preferred working with women of different body types rather than thin models. He was a master at creating illusions with his design; He was playing with the shape of the body with skillfully calculated cuts, raising it to the level of perfection of his aesthetic understanding with the respect he showed to the body. Raglan preferred the sleeve cut; The arms, which started loose above, allowed easy movement, and the cut that ended just above the wrist revealed the elegance of thin wrists. He kept its waistline slightly above its natural place, making it look taller than it was. Silk-lined dresses were worn with great ease. Most of his designs were finished with a tiny yet luxurious detail; tiny, silk-covered buttons. He prefers wool and tweed fabrics in plain or checkered patterns in navy blue, gray, and black colors in his winter collections; in summers, linens in blue, beige, and orange tones were dominant. In evening dresses, either heavy silk fabrics in solid colors; or he preferred designs covered with dazzling embroideries. Most of these embroideries were made by Lesage, the famous embroiderer of Paris. He often preferred white or black lace over plain silks in dresses designed for special occasions.

Balenciaga After Cristobal

Cristobal Balenciaga, who felt that the end of haute couture with the dominance of ready-made clothing, closed the doors of the famous Paris fashion house in 1968 at the age of 73. He also passed away in 1972. The fashion house bore its own name, which goes into a long sleep like fairy tale princesses; He had the second beginning of his life when he was bought by Jacques Bogart AŞ in 1986.

Balenciaga through the years

■ Christobal Balenciaga's childhood was spent with his mother, who was a tailor.

■ He opened his first boutique in San Sebastian in 1914 and designed for the Spanish Royal Family.

■ Balenciaga, who opened his second fashion house in Madrid in 1920, moved to Paris because of the war in Spain.

■ In 1937, he opened his Paris couture house on George V Boulevard and exhibited his first fashion show in his Paris studio.

■ In 1950, he designed broad shoulders, balloon jackets, baby doll dresses, cocoon coats and balloon skirts.

■ In 1968, after 30 years of long work, he decided to retire.

■ Balenciaga, who died in 1972, was actually a great loss for the fashion world.

■ In the 1990s, Balenciaga did not remain indifferent to the $246 billion sneaker market. The "Triple S" model sneaker they released in 2017 made a big splash.

While its rather unusual design caused beautiful/ugly design discussions, the weight of the shoe was also highly criticized. When the price tag starting from $800 was added to this, he created the discussion environment he wanted for the shoes. Balenciaga, the "high fashion" brand.