Balenciaga: V&A stages retrospective to Spanish couturier

When Women's Wear Daily ran a headline in 1972 saying 'the king is dead', everyone in the fashion world knew who it referred to.

Cristobal Balenciaga, the Spanish fashion designer whose work and legacy are celebrated in an exhibition that opens at London's V&A next month, was one of the great leaders in fashion.

"Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion" marks the centenary of his first fashion house in Spain and the 80th anniversary of his Paris fashion house.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Renowned for his exquisite craftsmanship and pioneering use of fabrics, Balenciaga, who died in 1972 aged 77, produced a range of outfits in revolutionary shapes in the course of the 1950s and 1960s. His tunic, sack, baby doll and shift dresses all remain style staples today.

"From the moment he opened his Paris house," Susan Irving writes in the Telegraph, "his clothes struck a note of simplicity that at times had a regal presence, at others a graphic grace. He reshaped women's silhouettes in the 1950s, so that clothes we think of as typical of that decade are mostly dilutions of his work. In the 1960s his masterpieces of cultural purity lifted his work into the arena of art."

Mystery surrounded the designer, who shunned publicity and only gave one full interview in his life.

His house models were known as 'monsters' for their haughty appearance.

Diana Vreeland, former editor-in-chief of Vogue, recalled one Balenciaga show in the early 1960s: "One fainted. It was possible to blow up and die [...] Audrey Hepburn turned to me and asked why I wasn't frothing at the mouth at what I was seeing. I told her I was trying to act calm and detached because, after all, I was a member of the press."

The V&A has the UK's largest collection of Balenciaga. Highlights of the show include items made for the actress Ava Gardner, the 1960s fashion icon Gloria Guinness, and Mona von Bismarck, one of the world's wealthiest women.

In a collaboration with the London College of Fashion, the exhibition uses forensic techniques to expose the hidden details of a Balenciaga outfit, revealing the processes that make his work so exceptional.

The Spaniard's influence on fashion has been profound and the second part of the exhibition explores his impact on other celebrated designers including Courreges, Ungaro and Givenchy. As Dior said of him: "Haute couture is like an orchestra whose conductor is Balenciaga. We other couturiers are the musicians and we follow the directions he gives."

Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion runs from 27 May 2017 to 18 February 2018 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL