Probably the best known of all Spanish Fashion Designers is Cristóbal Balenciaga, who has come to be regarded as a master of fashion. His influence continues long after his demise and his name synonymous with style.
Cristóbal Balenciaga Eisaguirre was born on January 21, 1895 in Guetaria, near San Sebastian in the north of Spain, the son of a fisherman. He interest in design and materials grew from studying needlework and dressmaking with his mother. In 1915, at the age of twenty he established his own tailoring business under the sponsorship of Marquesa de Casa Torres.
The Early Years
By the early 1930s his reputation as Spain's leading couturier had been firmly established but the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 saw Balenciaga close his three couture houses and leave the war-stricken Spain.
He settled in Paris and in 1937 opened his first Parisian shop The House of Balenciaga on Avenue George V. He had a wonderful ability to conceal the defects of women by his ingenious designs, and many called him a master of illusion. Balenciaga is recorded as saying, "A woman has no need to be perfect or even beautiful to wear my dresses, the dress will do that for her." Through his designs he was able to alter the silhouette of a woman's body to flatter his clients' who had less than perfect bodies.
The Perfect Garment
Balenciaga on one of his quest to make a body perfect designed developed the standaway collar, for the editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar, who, as she put it, "had no neck." The collar gave the appearance of a long swan-like neck.
Balenciaga was something of a perfectionist and insisted that his garments were perfect before he would release them to his customers. He understood scale and proportion and the importance of balance in an outfit and single-handedly altered the shape of fashion more than any other couturier.
In the 1930s he made nipped in waists and rounded hips on his suits and wide skirts on ball gowns, before the New Look of Dior in the 1940s.
In the 1950s he strode away from the close fitting mode and created soft flowing suit jackets and in 1956 he showed a loose dress he called the sack and created the asymmetric look with raised hemlines at the front and low at the back.
In 1968 Balenciaga shut down his business in an era of fashion that he did not respect, he then retired to Spain where he died in 1972. In 1987 the Balenciaga ready-to-wear collection was re-launched and the shops reopened in 1989. Today the House of Balenciaga is owned by Jacques Bogart S.A. with Nicolas Ghesquière as the chief designer who has modernised the classic Balenciaga.
See more from another famous Spanish Designer Jesus Canovas.
Source ModadeEspana.com
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