filiz'ish: Balenciaga and Spain

Last week the biggest buzz in the city was the “Balenciaga and Spain” exhibit which opened its doors to the public on Saturday. This amazing exhibit features 120 pieces collected from different museums, couture collectors and Balenciaga archives and it is a must see if you are in San Francisco. It also attracted the fashion elite of the city as well as many celebrities to SF including Gwyneth Paltrow, Miranda Kerr, Orlando Bloom and Vogue editor Anna Wintour to the opening night gala and to see the exhibit.

For me the most exciting event was the symposium examining the themes of the special exhibition “Balenciaga and Spain”. One of the guest speakers were the very stylish Hamish Bowles, who is the curator of the exhibit as well as the European editor at large for the American Vogue and the author of Balenciaga and Spain catalogue (19 of his Balenciaga pieces are in the exhibit) and he is an authority on fashion and design (I guess it is inevitable not to become an authority when you work for Vogue). And the other speakers were fashion history experts from all over the world and I was so glad to have a ticket to this sold out event. It was a looong 3.5 hour symposium without any breaks but it was so captivating that I didn’t even notice I only had a banana all day.

Cristóbal Balenciaga was born in a small fishing village in the Basque region of Spain in 1895. When he lost his father at the age of 11, he started to help his mom who was a seamstress and learnt sewing from her. He opened his first boutique in San Sebastian when he was 19, and probably his biggest step was opening the House of Balenciaga at 10 Avenue Georges V in Paris in 1937 (it was the most expensive couture house in Paris and no discounts at all -the speaker wanted us to underline the ‘most expensive’ part 5 times) . From there he was a very popular and successful designer among Parisian bourgeoisie, Spain’s royal family and celebrities of his time.

Besides him being very talented and a perfectionist, Balenciaga was a very innovative courtier and had a huge impact on fashion. He is the creator of the baby doll dress and he transformed a new silhouette for women by dropping waistlines to the hip level. But during all the years of evolving and experimenting the Balenciaga woman was always elegant and classy with a sense of style.

Pamela Golbin who was one of the speakers and she is the chief curator of the Musee de la Mode at the Louvre, shared very interesting notes about Balenciaga such as he didn’t like wearing accessories even a watch and he never carried cash with him which caused him many problems. He was very strict about copying and trade mark issues at the couture house but his staff always remembered him as a very good person with a bit of seriousness.

Balenciaga was inspired by many things throughout his career and probably his main inspiration was his native Spain and the Spanish culture. Spanish dance culture and the flamenco dancers in their ruffled dresses, bullfights and the matadors with their embellished boleros and headpieces (it is so ironic that he hated the bullfights but the color & embellishments were big inspirations), the regional dresses from his fishing village with big skirts and religious figures, the Spanish royalty and the lavish costumes they wore in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, Spanish art and painters like Goya, Picasso and Miro, and couturiers of his time such as Madeliene Vionnet and Coco Chanel.

Christian Dior called him “master of all” and Coco Chanel “the only couturier”, Balenciaga has been a mentor and inspiration to many designers. (Ungaro and Givenchy learnt from him). He constantly searched and accomplished the technical mastery and once he told Givenchy “a ruffle must me intelligent”. Even this sentence says a lot about him.

He died in 1972 after a heart attack.

After the symposium and learning all these valuable information I was very moved and inspired, and I was full of admiration for this master and couldn’t wait to see the exhibit. But one little detail was, I had to go and get ready for the opening night Gala at de Young museum and I was getting late.

The ArtPoint Balenciaga opening night gala was a real celebration. I could feel the energy and excitement of this big event in the air and everyone looked fabulous, especially the ones in their vintage Balenciagas, and it was a proof that SF can be and is a fashion forward city and we all get excited about fashion. I have to say it felt especially special to see the marvelous exhibit in our chic outfits during the party, I bet Cristóbal Balenciaga would be so proud of everyone celebrating this event if he was there. At the end of the night my heels were killing me but I was so inspired and grateful to spend a wonderful Saturday.

"A fashion designer must be an architect for perspectives, a sculptor for shapes, a painter for color, a musician for harmony and a philosopher for a sense of proportion".. Cristóbal Balenciaga

First three pictures from the exhibit and are from Hamish Bowles' parties blog on Vogue