On March 23, 1972, the Sagrada Familia sanatorium in Valencia announced the death of Cristóbal Balenciaga, who was admitted there. The great Gipuzkoan dressmaker, one of the most outstanding in the world, if not the best, had celebrated his 77th birthday two months earlier. The Parador Nacional de Turismo de Jávea (Alicante) had been his last accommodation. There he was spending a few days when he felt ill. The doctors who treated him diagnosed him with a myocardial infarction and advised his transfer to the hospital, where, despite a slight improvement, he finally died.
Two days later, his hometown, Getaria, prepared to receive his remains. Among those attending the funeral were the fashion designers Hubert de Givenchy, Emanuel Ungaro and Pedro Rodríguez, the Marchioness of Llanzol, Sonsoles de Icaza, all of them great friends of the master, and, of course, Ramón Esparza, the closest collaborator in his last years.
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The death of the creator was echoed in newspapers around the world, from The Times a The world. Editors and photographers toured the city of San Sebastian looking for corners and details of his life. The French National Radio (France Inter) said of him that he had been “the creator of all the great currents of contemporary fashion”.
genius apprentice
Fifty years have passed since that farewell to a world-renowned personality, who, in his childhood, entertained himself by disguising his house cat with the rags and scraps that surrounded his mother. Martina Eizaguirre was a seamstress through whose hands arrangements and clothing passed for important families in the region, as well as for many of those aristocrats who took refuge from the summer heat in San Sebastián, following the queens María Cristina and Victoria Eugenia.
Blanca Carrillo de Albornoz y Elío, sixth Marchioness of Casa Torres, had a residence in the nearby town of Getaria. The marquise was faithful to the clothes of Paris, from where the rules of fashion were imposed on the world. Those pieces arrived at Martina Eizaguirre’s workshop for small alterations, and, in this way, Balenciaga had all kinds of French creations in his own home.
Cristobal Balenciaga, in 1927.
Blanca was able to see the artistic qualities of that sensitive child. Amused by her interest in sewing, she gave him the opportunity to make her a dress. The little one solved the commission with an exceptional bill, the aristocrat premiered it immediately, and her friends, immediately, were interested in that piece. It was 1906.
The following year, Cristóbal moved to San Sebastián to work as an apprentice in one of the important firms in the city. Ten years later he decided to open his own company in the capital of Gipuzkoa, which he expanded to open branches in Madrid (1933) and Barcelona (1935), before making the leap to Paris.
paris litmus test
The definitive impulse to start the French adventure was caused by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936. The conflict forced the closure of the establishments in Madrid and Barcelona, although the mother house in San Sebastián maintained its activity. Thus, on July 7, 1937, the Balenciaga house opened its doors on Parisian avenue George V.
The designer’s success was practically immediate; From the first moment, he was able to put out the two annual collections required by the canons of the Chamber of Haute Couture, even during the Second World War.
Eisa Costura, San Sebastián, Ca. 1935. Evening coat in black silk taffeta. It belonged to Mrs. Domínguez de Arbide.
The business in France was possible thanks to the company that Balenciaga set up together with an exile from San Sebastian, Nicolás Bizcarrondo, and a Franco-Polish decorator, Wladzio Jaworowski d’Attainville. This would be his partner in finances and creation and, above all, his life partner. They had met in 1917, and were inseparable for more than thirty years. His unexpected death in 1948 was a blow to the designer.
The Paris in which D’Attainville and Balenciaga started set a very high bar for creators, who had to compete with personalities of the stature of Coco Chanel and Christian Dior. Balenciaga stood out with his own lines, which, in the opinion of Harper’s Bazaar, they were two collections ahead of the others. His house in the French capital became the training workshop for such important couturiers as Hubert de Givenchy, André Courrèges, Emanuel Ungaro and Paco Rabanne.
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Balenciaga also defied the fashion press and critics, a true daring in the fifties. She even delayed her presentations for several weeks compared to the dates on which the haute couture exhibitions were agreed. This behavior was not a marketing strategy, but the fruit of a reserved character that allowed him to keep his private life completely safe and gave him all the time in the world to work.
Thread, needle and many hours
Balenciaga taught its mannequins to adopt a distant attitude towards their clients, so that they would focus all their attention on what they were wearing. Her technical knowledge of fabrics and textures allowed her to build impossible shapes, which, amazingly, gave an appearance of simplicity and naturalness to the woman who wore her creations.
From the United States, professionals came to Balenciaga’s house to see his collections, and they memorized the models presented to make versions at more affordable prices that were successful in New York. That is why, in the mid-fifties, he prevented the press from seeing his models until a month after they had been presented to their buyers. He limited his relationship with fashion editors to two of the most influential, Bettina Ballard of Vogueand Carmel Snow, of Harper’s Bazaar.
Cristóbal Balenciaga in an image from 1952.
His staff admired him, which did not mean that he feared his scrutinizing gaze. Some of his former employees confess that, when they knew he was coming, they kept the maximum number of garments in the closets. The slightest imperfection, visible only to his eyes, was inadmissible and forced him to remake the pieces.
They also remember that, when a woman left his workshops dressed, she appeared to have a perfect physique, because Balenciaga’s skill consisted in constructing a suit or dress adapted to the needs of the body that was going to wear it.
Along with these demands at work coexisted a generosity that led him to pay for the costumes for the representation of Elcano’s landing in 1967, as well as the heating for the church of San Salvador in Getaria, or to design free of charge for the Orfeón Donostiarra the female uniforms from 1945 and 1964.
In addition, he used to make jackets with the tailoring material that remained after each collection, to give them to whoever came to his farmhouse in the Igeldo neighborhood of San Sebastian. For the men in the area, wearing Balenciaga was something very normal.
In step with the times
The Balenciaga that began with a first company in San Sebastián was eager to expand its knowledge, and imported works by the greats of French haute couture, such as Madeleine Vionnet, Jeanne Lanvin, Louise Boulanger and Coco Chanel, to study them thoroughly. Likewise, he was interested in oriental lines, its simple forms, its fabrics and, above all, its sleeves. He claimed to have studied as much to sew a sleeve as an engineer to build a bridge.
During World War II, he focused on highly practical designs, catering to the demands of his female customers. But, once the conflict was over, he decided to present his voluminous skirts, which stood out for their fine sizes, and shortly after he dared with his proposals for “barrel” and “balloon” lines, which were not in keeping with the canons of the moment.
Paris, 1957. Evening dress in blue and black flocked ‘shantung’. He belonged to Mrs. Rachel L. Mellon.
Starting in the fifties, their silhouettes moved away from the waist. Then he launched into the designs midi and semi-carved, which, later, led to tunics, sacks and forms baby doll. The sixties inspired him with geometric volumes that started from the square and the circle, possible only thanks to the choice of semi-rigid fabrics by an architect of clothing like him.
Balenciaga used, at many points in his career, elements of the Spanish tradition, which he reinterpreted in his models. If a dress from 1945 featured velvet polka dots that evoked strawberry trees on a net, in the manner of majas clothes, in her autumn/winter collection of 1961 she showed Flemish ruffles in Chantilly lace bows on a black evening dress.
Wedding of the Kings of Belgium Fabiola and Baudouin (December 15, 1960). The queen wore an exquisite bridal gown created by Balenciaga.
That tribute to his cultural roots, along with a special sensibility for art, led him to be inspired by the work of great painters, as can be seen in Goya’s special hot pink and ash green, the details of the attire of the royalty portrayed by Velázquez or the fabrics and volumes of the clothing by Zurbarán and El Greco. Later, in his last active years, the couturier turned his attention to the abstraction of Joan Miró and the monumental sculptures of Eduardo Chillida.
The retreat
The ready to wearthe commercial requirements of the late sixties, which imposed breakneck speeds in the presentation of new collections, incompatible with the leisurely pace of artistic perfection, and high taxes led Balenciaga to make a decision: close its workshops.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum hosted the “Balenciaga and Spanish Painting” exhibition in 2019.
He announced it in May 1968. The Balenciaga house in Paris closed in July of that year, and in the fall the branches in Barcelona and Madrid also closed. The last to close was the first that he had opened, the mother house of San Sebastián, which ended its activity in 1969.
At the age of 74, he retired from active life and settled permanently in Igeldo. The man who for three decades had been the most respected figure in haute couture, the most innovative, the most timeless, has since led a simple existence on the mountainous coast of Gipuzkoa, interrupted by a few short trips, such as when he moved to Paris, at the end of 1971, to attend Coco Chanel’s funeral.
Wedding of Alfonso de Borbón and Carmen Martínez Bordiú, who wears a Balenciaga design.
His latest creation would be the Carmen Martínez-Bordiú wedding dress. Fifteen days after that wedding, the couturier left in silence, discreet and elegant, just as his existence had been.
This text is part of an article published in number 648 of the magazine History and Life. Do you have something to contribute? Write to [email protected].
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