Balenciaga (company)

Balenciaga SA
legal form	Société Anonyme (France)
founding	1937
Seat	Paris , France
management	Cédric Charbit, CEO
Branch	Textiles , leather goods , perfumes
Website	www.balenciaga.fr

Balenciaga or Balenciaga SA is a fashion company founded in 1937 in Paris by the Spanish fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga .

Balenciaga fashion was considered the epitome of high-priced French haute couture internationally, especially between the 1940s and 1960s, and set groundbreaking trends for the fashion world. Cristóbal Balenciaga is known to this day as a master of upscale women's fashion. After his death in 1972 the company changed hands several times and until the beginning of the 1990s concentrated mainly on its own perfume sector. It was not until 1997 that Balenciaga rose again to the ranks of the leading Parisian fashion groups with a new designer and from 2001 with a new owner through popular prêt-à-porter fashion collections for women and, since 2002, for men as well as accessories in the upper price segment. Balenciaga SA has been part of today's Kering SA since 2004

Company history

Historic Balenciaga models in the museum

Cristóbal Balenciaga

Cristóbal Balenciaga, who emigrated from Spain to France in 1936, was a trained tailor . He had already made a name for himself in Spain from 1915 with his own boutiques in San Sebastián , Madrid and Barcelona with upscale women's fashion when he presented his first haute couture collection in Paris in the summer of 1937. He founded the company named after him as SARL and in August 1938 opened a fashion salon for high-end haute couture on Avenue George V in the Parisian fashion district . Located on the street Avenue George V Nos. 10 to today, the Balenciaga flagship store . In 1948 a Balenciaga boutique was opened on the ground floor. Thanks to constant fashion innovations, Balenciaga quickly became a cult fashion house. His high-priced creations set the trend for the entire fashion industry. As early as 1938, British and American department stores such as Harrods , Bloomingdale’s and Saks Fifth Avenue were selling Balenciaga fashion. The prominent Balenciaga customers of this time included Carole Lombard , Greta Garbo , Ava Gardner , Marlene Dietrich and Ginger Rogers . After the Spanish Civil War , Cristóbal Balenciaga reopened shops in Madrid. He had previously closed his Spanish boutiques.

In 1947 the first Balenciaga women's perfume Le Dix (named after number 10) was launched, which was followed by other fragrances. In 1955 the SARL was converted into an SA. From this time on, Balenciaga offered jewelry for the first time . From 1956, the company presented its creations to invited private customers and buyers a month before the defilees for the press to make it more difficult for imitators to work. Due to a personal friendship with the fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy , there were repeated collaborations between the Balenciaga and Givenchy houses . Among other things, the two companies showed their creations in New York City. The so-called “shirt” or sack dress (French: robe chemise ) from 1956 goes back to the two designers. Other well-known designers such as Emanuel Ungaro , André Courrèges and Oscar de la Renta have worked as assistants at Balenciaga over the years.

Balenciaga joined in his sometimes architecturally detailed designs Parisian chic with Spanish pride and presented among other models with Flamenco - frills were decorated or grinding, elegant bolero jackets (1946) and by Velázquez -Painting The Infanta Margarita in Blue from the The year 1659 influenced Infanta evening gown in the pompous style (1939). Modern concepts included knee length boots to short straight cut dresses (the so-called "I" line), from kimono -inspired sleeves (1946), Page caps ( has pillbox , 1951), the tunic -dress (1955), oversized proportions (1957 ), the babydoll silhouette (1958), balloon-like dresses and coats (1960) and ensembles with different front and rear views.

In the late 1950s, the house was estimated to have sales of $ 1.5 million. The Balenciaga brand was so well established with customers like Grace Kelly and Queen Fabiola of Belgium by the 1950s at the latest, and Cristóbal Balenciaga's position as a star designer, that Balenciaga never joined the influential Parisian fashion association Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne . Since only the association decides on the use of the term “Haute Couture”, which is protected in France, and only its members are entitled to call their creations haute couture, Balenciaga fashion was, at least officially, not haute couture. Today's Balenciaga is a member of the prêt-à-porter division of the fashion association. In 1958, Parfums Balenciaga SA was founded as a subsidiary of Balenciaga SA for the company's growing perfume division. In 1961, hosiery was added to the Balenciaga portfolio, which was later printed with special patterns. In 1962, Eau de Balenciaga was the first men's fragrance to be launched. In 1968 Air France's aircrew was given Balenciaga uniforms.

In 1968 Cristóbal Balenciaga quit his business at the age of 73 and closed his boutiques. He struggled with the rapidly emerging prêt-à-porter fashion and the incipient decline in haute couture. Only the Balenciaga perfume business was continued.

Succession with perfume business

After Cristóbal Balenciaga's death, Parfums Balenciaga SA was integrated into Balenciaga SA . Cristóbal Balenciaga bequeathed his company to his nieces and nephews , who sold it to the German pharmaceutical company Hoechst in 1978 . In the years that followed, Hoechst expanded Balenciaga's perfume business.

In 1986 the French fashion and cosmetics company Jacques Bogart SA took over Balenciaga from Hoechst. In 1987, under the direction of designer Michel Goma, the fashion division of Balenciaga was restarted with prêt-à-porter . During this time there was the Le Dix luxury collection and the Diffusion second line for women. In the same year, a separate department, Uniformes Balenciaga , was set up in the company for major customers such as airlines , banks , hotels or the French post office , all of whom are equipped with Balenciaga uniforms . Licenses for the brand name Balenciaga were granted in the USA and Japan. A Balenciaga boutique opened in Tokyo . From 1992 the Belgian designer Josephus Melchior Thimister (1962–2019) designed the Balenciaga collections. Thimister ended his activity in 1997 with the accusation against Jacques Bogart SA of "not marketing Balenciaga professionally".

New beginning from 1997

From 1997, the French designer Nicolas Ghesquière worked as chief designer at Balenciaga. Ghesquière was assistant to the French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier from 1990 to 1992 and was hired in 1995 by the Japanese licensee of Balenciaga to design “funeral wardrobes and uniforms”. In 1997 the management of Jacques Bogart, who initially wanted the Austrian Helmut Lang as creative director for Balenciaga, appointed him as chief designer in Paris. In the following seasons, Ghesquière sometimes presented futuristic and always expressive Balenciaga fashion for self-confident women, was highly praised for this by the professional world and was chosen by the press as the “messiah of fashion”. Like Cristóbal Balenciaga, Ghesquière also experimented with sometimes unusual fabric materials and was inspired by the designs of the company's founder. Under Ghesquière, Balenciaga fashion shows , to which only a limited number of spectators were allowed, became coveted events. Ghesquière introduced the Balenciaga First and City handbags in 2000 and the Lariat model in 2001 , all of which developed into It-Bags , for which waiting lists had to be set up in part due to the high demand. In 2002, under Ghesquière, men's fashion was first introduced by Balenciaga. Since Ghesquière brought "the dusty fashion house back onto the world stage", Balenciaga has again been a coveted fashion brand in high-priced women's and men's fashion, especially among the younger target group . With bestsellers such as Balenciaga cargo pants , gold-colored leggings (2006) or multicolored Sportiletto - Pumps strengthened (2008) Ghesquiere also its status as a worthy successor to Cristobal Balenciaga.

In 2001, the Italian Gucci group, which has since belonged to the French luxury goods group Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR; since 2013: Kering) under the management of CEO François-Henri Pinault, owned 91% of the Balenciaga brand (the remaining 9 % went to Nicolas Ghesquière). Under the leadership of PPR, Balenciaga's sales and profits grew in the years that followed. In 2000, Balenciaga sales were only $ 17.3 million with a profit of $ 1.07 million. PPR does not publish any individual data for its brands.

In 2003, a Balenciaga boutique opened its doors in New York and the company launched a croisière vacation collection for women with summer fashion for winter time. In 2004 the Balenciaga Edition collection made its debut with newly created models from the Balenciaga archives from 1937 to 1968. In 2005, the Hong Kong location was added to the network of Balenciaga stores; 2007 Milan ; London and Los Angeles 2008; a men's boutique in Paris 2010. At the beginning of 2012 there were 54 Balenciaga boutiques worldwide, 12 of which were opened in 2011 alone. A sunglasses collection has existed since 2007. In 2008, the company opened an online shop on its own website , bought back the Japanese license and granted the perfume license to Coty, Inc. With the reassignment of the perfume license, all Balenciaga that had been marketed by Bogart up to that point were Fragrances set. In 2010, Coty launched the first women's fragrance, Balenciaga Paris , and others followed. Since then, Balenciaga has exclusively offered women's perfumes.

Ghesquière, who had been retained by Pinault as Balenciaga designer in 2001 and who certified Pinault as having “incomparably creative talent”, left Balenciaga in December 2012. The American designer Alexander Wang (* 1983) was appointed by PPR as his successor 2007 runs his fashion brand named after him. Wang headed the company as chief designer until August 2015.

In October 2015, Kering named the German- Georgian Demna Gvasalia, who owns his own fashion brand Vetements , creative director of Balenciaga. At the Paris Fashion Week for men's fashion in June 2016, Balenciaga under Gvasalia presented the men's collection for the first time in a fashion show instead of just a presentation as before.

For summer 2020, the Balenciaga company announced the return to the haute couture division, which Cristóbal Balenciaga had discontinued in 1968. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic , the start has been postponed to 2021.

Web links

Official website of Balenciaga

Individual evidence

↑ In the dog sled to the altar: Is that possible? , faz.net, June 6, 2001

^ The perfect emergency solution , spiegel.de, January 27, 2003

↑ Salut, Superboy - Nicolas Ghesquière leaves the Balenciaga label , sueddeutsche.de, November 7, 2012

↑ Nicolas Ghesquière leaves Balenciaga , zeit, de, November 6, 2012

↑ Timeless Elegance - Cristóbal Balenciaga ( Memento of the original from October 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , arte.tv, February 8, 2012

↑ Stefanie Schütte / DPA / DPA: Fashion trends: Resurrection of the old master. In: stern.de. August 28, 2006, accessed April 11, 2019 .

↑ Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg : Cocktail dress ( Memento of the original from March 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Cristóbal Balenciaga, around 1954) @1@ 2

^ Fashion as Art: A Museum for Balenciaga , schwaebische.de, June 7, 2011

↑ When Haute Couture is not Haute Couture , powerhousemuseum.com, December 11, 2009

↑ Alex Bohn: Nicolas Ghesquière leaves Balenciaga. In: zeit.de. November 6, 2012, accessed April 11, 2019 .

↑ Back to Couture , zeit.de, September 19, 2007

↑ Company Report - ITC Uniformes Balenciaga SA International Textile Creation ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , abc-d.fr, accessed: December 22, 2012@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.abc-d.fr