Cristóbal Balenciaga

Cristóbal Balenciaga Eizaguirre (pronounced [ kɾisˈtoβal βalenˈθjaɣa ejθaˈɣire ]; born January 21, 1895 in Getaria , Spain ; † March 23, 1972 in Xàbia , Spain) founded the fashion company Balenciaga in 1937 and was an influential designer of French haute couture . Even after his death he is regarded as a “perfectionist of his craft and master of all couturiers”, as the “grail keeper of elegance”.

Life

Balenciaga was born in 1895 to a Basque fisherman and seamstress. With the support of the Spanish Margravine Marquesa de Casa Torres, for whom Balenciaga's mother worked, he completed an apprenticeship as a tailor in San Sebastián from 1907 . In 1911 Balenciaga found a job in the same location as a designer for upscale women's fashion at a fashion manufacturer, which regularly took him to Paris as the center of the international fashion world. With financial support from the Margravine, Balenciaga opened a tailoring salon for high-priced women's fashion in San Sebastián in 1919, which was followed by haute couture salons in Madrid and Barcelona . He founded his own company, Balenciaga y Compañia , in 1918 and renamed it Cristóbal Balenciaga in 1924 . His customers included members of the Spanish royal family . In 1927 he opened a shop called Eisa Costura (after his mother's maiden name, Eizaguirre) with ready-to- wear clothing for women in San Sebastián. After the fall of the monarchy in Spain in 1931 and the associated emigration of many wealthy Spaniards in times of social upheaval, Balenciaga had to file for bankruptcy. In 1932 he restarted his Eisa fashion salon and reopened branches in Madrid and Barcelona.

In 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War , Balenciaga emigrated to Paris after an unsuccessful detour via London , where he presented haute couture fashion for the first time in 1937 and founded Balenciaga SARL . He had closed his Spanish shops. In 1938 he opened a haute couture salon on the Parisian avenue George V. His elegant and modern, sometimes austere creations for self-confident women were very well received in the Parisian fashion scene. By the 1950s at the latest, Balenciaga was known as the "King of Haute Couture". In order to protect his designs from copies, his fashion shows for the press always took place one month after all other couture events at which Balenciaga only presented its creations to its private customers and fashion buyers. His protégé Hubert de Givenchy , with whom Balenciaga had a lifelong friendship, took over this approach for Givenchy shortly afterwards.

In 1958, Balenciaga's services to the Parisian fashion world were honored with a membership in the French Legion of Honor . Coco Chanel praised him as the only true couturier. In 1968, to the dismay of its followers, Balenciaga left the fashion world and closed its business with the exception of the perfume division. Only for the wedding of the granddaughter of Spain's dictator Francisco Franco did he design a wedding dress with an imposing hat creation in 1972.

Balenciaga died of a heart attack while on vacation in Xàbia in 1972 . He is buried in his birthplace Getaria . He had avoided the public all his life and gave no interviews.

In 1999, the Fundación Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation was set up in Spain to preserve the memory of the designer, who has been President Hubert de Givenchy since then. The Spanish Queen Sofia opened the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa Museum, named in his honor, in Getaria on June 7, 2011 .

Famous Balenciaga customers included Mona von Bismarck , Grace Kelly , Ava Garner , Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy .

literature

• Marie-Andrée Jouve: Balenciaga (Universe of Fashion) [translation from French], Universe Publishing, ISBN 0-7893-0091-5
• Balenciaga: Haute Couture Paris, retrospective 1937–1968 ; (on the occasion of the exhibition Cristóbal Balenciaga, Haute Couture Paris, retrospective 1937–1968, October 10, 2000 to January 7, 2001, Fashion Museum in the Munich City Museum). Authors: Manfred Wutzlhofer, Christian Ude, Andreas Ley; Edited by Messe München GmbH, catalog design by Brigitte Weibl, Weibl, Munich 2000.
• Myra Walker: Balenciaga and His Legacy. Yale UP, 2006, ISBN 0-300-12153-9
• Lesley Ellis Miller: Cristobal Balenciaga (1895–1972): the couturiers' couturier , A & C Black (paperback), 2007, ISBN 1-85177-522-6
• Cristobal Balenciaga , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 38/1972 of September 11, 1972, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Cristobal Balenciaga  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of the Balenciaga Museum

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Balenciaga , elle.de, accessed: December 22, 2012
2. ↑ Alexander Menden: body art . In: sueddeutsche.de . June 2, 2017, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed June 4, 2017]).
3. ↑ Great fashion designers: Balenciaga. welt.de, November 11, 2012.
4. ↑ Balenciaga 1895–1972 ( Memento of the original of April 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , cristobalbalenciagamuseoa.com, accessed December 21, 2012. 
5. ↑ Cristobal Balenciaga - May 1970 to August 1970 ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2016 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. , museum-bellerive.ch, accessed on December 22, 2012.  
6. ↑ Cristóbal Balenciaga, the only true couturier ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2013 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. , welt.de, November 25, 2012.  
7. ↑ Designer Nicolas Ghesquière: A hero in his world ( memento from February 17, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), ftd.de, March 12, 2010.
8. ^ Fashion as Art: A Museum for Balenciaga. schwaebische.de, June 7, 2011.
9. ↑ La Reina Sofía inaugura en Getaria (Guipúzcoa) el Museo Balenciaga , accessed on July 4, 2011.
10. ↑ Alexander Menden: body art . In: sueddeutsche.de . June 2, 2017, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed June 4, 2017]).