stilettogirl84
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this thread is amazing!
1895-1972 Cristobal Balenciaga
- Thread starter Ella
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La bordélique
earthbound
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A/W 1964
Photography: Kublin
(scanned by me)
Photography: Kublin
(scanned by me)
travis_nw8
mmmmmm...fashion....
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here's an article that may be of interest ( from iht)
Balenciaga: The past is the future
By Suzy Menkes International Herald Tribune
Published: July 5, 2006
PARIS One mannequin has android eyes sparking from techno tubing and galactic patterns projected on the floor. The other is headless - just the tip of a tailor's dummy rising above a cocoon coat that the American Doris Duke first wore in 1950.
Both are labeled "Balenciaga" and are in an ambitious show at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs that melds the past and the present to project the modernist spirit of Cristóbal Balenciaga into the future.
In doing so, it uproots the Spanish couturier known as the "monk of fashion," from his humble Basque origins and his noble clientele and lets him be judged only by the work he created from the elegant 1930s until he retired in 1968 with a bewildered collection of mohair coats, as the youthquake shook fashion and society. He died in 1972.
"The idea was to place Balenciaga in a contemporary context to show how modern it is - not to recreate the heritage," said Nicolas Ghesquière, the house's current designer who tapped his artist friend, Dominique Gonzalez- Foerster, and the lighting expert Benoit Lalloz to give the museum's two floor space a hard-edged geometry with techno touches.
They include the globular circles that put Ghesquière's 23 recent outfits into a futuristic universe and also mini-videos showing the couturier's historic work sketches and complex constructions.
"Balenciaga Paris" (until Jan. 28, 2007) is the first major exhibition of Balenciaga held in his adopted city, and its curator, Pamela Golbin, has brought a fine intelligence to clothes that could seem so dissonant in the age of the Internet.
The show is a must-see for fashion lovers and it brought in a hip crowd for Tuesday's opening from Mick Jagger and Hugh Grant to Martha Stewart and the actresses Jennifer Connelly, Maggie Cheung, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marianne Faithfull. (Although the intimate dinner with its host, François- Henri Pinault on behalf of PPR, which owns Balenciaga, became more of a soccer fest, as Germany battled Italy in the World Cup).
Ghesquière identifies Balenciaga's style as "the aristocracy of clothing." And the high-profile visitors all had a similar impression.
"It's got such class," said the model Stella Tennant, looking at the vitrine of black dresses that even in the low museum light gleamed as silk or glowed as guipure lace velvet.
"He made women look like queens," said Faithfull, who should know after having played the role of the Austrian empress Maria Theresa in Sofia Coppola's movie, "Marie Antoinette."
Golbin said that the exhibition presented her with a challenge - to bring out the character of a couturier who never, in his 50-year career, gave a single interview; and to offer Ghesquière's respectful perspective on the heritage, without making the show seem like a "confrontation."
The exhibition starts on the second floor with the chronology of pre- and postwar dresses, proving, as Golbin says, that "as early as 1937 his entire stylistic vocabulary was set in stone."
The lower floor starts with a wall of videos contrasting Ghesquière images with Balenciaga at work on fittings; and his salon shows with greyhound models swishing past gilded chairs.
The moment of fusion comes as Balenciaga's increasingly geometric and purified lines of the early 1960s segue into Ghesquière's looks, which have intense embellishment controlled in a sharp silhouette.
"I wanted it to be graphic and rigorous - but still to have a certain warmth," says Golbin. The problem with Balenciaga's glory years is that "we are in a 'spectacle' moment - and he is spectacular in detail."
Colors - mustard, purple and a herb green - are a surprise. Ghesquière is fascinated by the double-dress construction, by the weight of the fabrics - and by the fact that the volumes seemed less dramatic than he had expected.
The impressive accompanying book (published by Thames and Hudson) introduces Balenciaga through the stylized black and white photographs by Irving Penn, when the designer's geometry seems to be drawn around the haute and haughty models with a compass and a square. These iconic photographs might have been projected beside dresses to express their potential grandeur. As it is, tailored pieces that seem noble and graphic in photographs, look in the museum like what they were: outfits for private clients and their formal lives.
Although the labeling is a miracle of clarity compared to many museum shows, Golbin is inconsistent. Some groups are defined as "geometry" or "gazar," referring to the silk and raffia fabric (invented by Abraham for Balenciaga), that holds it shape like whipped egg white. Others are not titled, even though they group embroidery and fantastic embellishment, such as fur plaited over sequins.
Golbin's claim that Balenciaga's Spanish culture "is not that important - out of 200 silhouettes you might have had one cape or bolero" is also dubious. Another curator might equally have brought together the tiered cloak from 1935 that opens the show, the embroidered matador boleros, the sweeping velvet "deshabillé" coat in bull ring red - and the finale of an Infanta wedding dress from 1972 - to prove that Balenciaga was Spanish to his core.
But with this beautifully presented show, the museum has created an exemplary study of Balenciaga's craft and class - and the inspiration he has brought to the creative Ghesquière.
Another view, at Palais Royal
"Balenciaga, Architecte des Formes" offers a different perspective on the couturier from Didier Ludot, the vintage vendor with an exceptional eye, whose stores in the Palais Royal are displaying couture outfits. This show has been extended across the gardens to other stores, such as the Joyce gallery, and includes examples of Balenciaga's acolytes Courreges, Ungaro, Josephus Thimister and Ghesquière. All the clothes are for sale for those who want to wear the master's timeless elegance.
Balenciaga: The past is the future
By Suzy Menkes International Herald Tribune
Published: July 5, 2006
PARIS One mannequin has android eyes sparking from techno tubing and galactic patterns projected on the floor. The other is headless - just the tip of a tailor's dummy rising above a cocoon coat that the American Doris Duke first wore in 1950.
Both are labeled "Balenciaga" and are in an ambitious show at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs that melds the past and the present to project the modernist spirit of Cristóbal Balenciaga into the future.
In doing so, it uproots the Spanish couturier known as the "monk of fashion," from his humble Basque origins and his noble clientele and lets him be judged only by the work he created from the elegant 1930s until he retired in 1968 with a bewildered collection of mohair coats, as the youthquake shook fashion and society. He died in 1972.
"The idea was to place Balenciaga in a contemporary context to show how modern it is - not to recreate the heritage," said Nicolas Ghesquière, the house's current designer who tapped his artist friend, Dominique Gonzalez- Foerster, and the lighting expert Benoit Lalloz to give the museum's two floor space a hard-edged geometry with techno touches.
They include the globular circles that put Ghesquière's 23 recent outfits into a futuristic universe and also mini-videos showing the couturier's historic work sketches and complex constructions.
"Balenciaga Paris" (until Jan. 28, 2007) is the first major exhibition of Balenciaga held in his adopted city, and its curator, Pamela Golbin, has brought a fine intelligence to clothes that could seem so dissonant in the age of the Internet.
The show is a must-see for fashion lovers and it brought in a hip crowd for Tuesday's opening from Mick Jagger and Hugh Grant to Martha Stewart and the actresses Jennifer Connelly, Maggie Cheung, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marianne Faithfull. (Although the intimate dinner with its host, François- Henri Pinault on behalf of PPR, which owns Balenciaga, became more of a soccer fest, as Germany battled Italy in the World Cup).
Ghesquière identifies Balenciaga's style as "the aristocracy of clothing." And the high-profile visitors all had a similar impression.
"It's got such class," said the model Stella Tennant, looking at the vitrine of black dresses that even in the low museum light gleamed as silk or glowed as guipure lace velvet.
"He made women look like queens," said Faithfull, who should know after having played the role of the Austrian empress Maria Theresa in Sofia Coppola's movie, "Marie Antoinette."
Golbin said that the exhibition presented her with a challenge - to bring out the character of a couturier who never, in his 50-year career, gave a single interview; and to offer Ghesquière's respectful perspective on the heritage, without making the show seem like a "confrontation."
The exhibition starts on the second floor with the chronology of pre- and postwar dresses, proving, as Golbin says, that "as early as 1937 his entire stylistic vocabulary was set in stone."
The lower floor starts with a wall of videos contrasting Ghesquière images with Balenciaga at work on fittings; and his salon shows with greyhound models swishing past gilded chairs.
The moment of fusion comes as Balenciaga's increasingly geometric and purified lines of the early 1960s segue into Ghesquière's looks, which have intense embellishment controlled in a sharp silhouette.
"I wanted it to be graphic and rigorous - but still to have a certain warmth," says Golbin. The problem with Balenciaga's glory years is that "we are in a 'spectacle' moment - and he is spectacular in detail."
Colors - mustard, purple and a herb green - are a surprise. Ghesquière is fascinated by the double-dress construction, by the weight of the fabrics - and by the fact that the volumes seemed less dramatic than he had expected.
The impressive accompanying book (published by Thames and Hudson) introduces Balenciaga through the stylized black and white photographs by Irving Penn, when the designer's geometry seems to be drawn around the haute and haughty models with a compass and a square. These iconic photographs might have been projected beside dresses to express their potential grandeur. As it is, tailored pieces that seem noble and graphic in photographs, look in the museum like what they were: outfits for private clients and their formal lives.
Although the labeling is a miracle of clarity compared to many museum shows, Golbin is inconsistent. Some groups are defined as "geometry" or "gazar," referring to the silk and raffia fabric (invented by Abraham for Balenciaga), that holds it shape like whipped egg white. Others are not titled, even though they group embroidery and fantastic embellishment, such as fur plaited over sequins.
Golbin's claim that Balenciaga's Spanish culture "is not that important - out of 200 silhouettes you might have had one cape or bolero" is also dubious. Another curator might equally have brought together the tiered cloak from 1935 that opens the show, the embroidered matador boleros, the sweeping velvet "deshabillé" coat in bull ring red - and the finale of an Infanta wedding dress from 1972 - to prove that Balenciaga was Spanish to his core.
But with this beautifully presented show, the museum has created an exemplary study of Balenciaga's craft and class - and the inspiration he has brought to the creative Ghesquière.
Another view, at Palais Royal
"Balenciaga, Architecte des Formes" offers a different perspective on the couturier from Didier Ludot, the vintage vendor with an exceptional eye, whose stores in the Palais Royal are displaying couture outfits. This show has been extended across the gardens to other stores, such as the Joyce gallery, and includes examples of Balenciaga's acolytes Courreges, Ungaro, Josephus Thimister and Ghesquière. All the clothes are for sale for those who want to wear the master's timeless elegance.
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stilettogirl84
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stilettogirl84
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fouroclock
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^Amazing. How was that one made/structured?
stilettogirl84
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those websites were about Irving Penn's Photography, so they had no information on the clothing itself, other than it was balenciaga
Hi check out www.balenciaga.com they have the full edition series on the site, go to collection, then edition, that is I think part of the capsule collection
DosViolines
far from home...
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I found this through Google Images:
medias.francetv.fr
Unfortunately there was no background information on the piece.
medias.francetv.fr
Unfortunately there was no background information on the piece.
EdanChrysler
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I read about Cristóbal Balenciaga's works in this book titled "Fashion Memoir: Balenciaga" ... and I must say, I was very amazed. All of his creations, no matter how original and unique in shape, fitted the body perfectly. There were no unsightly crinkles - it was so impeccable that the clothing indeed belonged to no one but whoever was wearing them. He was definitely worth the high esteem that another great couturier, Christian Dior (indeed, THE Christian Dior himself), accorded him. I read in the book (this is an approximation of the exact story; I do not remember the details) that when Cristóbal Balenciaga once announced that he would quit fashion, Christian Dior pleaded for him not to.
taperjeangirl
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Amazing photos.
Oh he was really worshipped. By the fashion world and the best dressed women in the world (who were his clients). I read another similar anecdote: one of his most faithful client, an aristocrat of some sort, literally mourned for several months after he retreated, remaining secluded and miserable at her home and exclusively wearing Black outfits (designed by Balenciaga of course).EdanChrysler said:
DosViolines
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La bordélique
earthbound
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Tea Fashions; By Balenciaga; Evening Coat; Spanish Frills
Balenciaga Coat; Balenciaga's Toulouse-Lautrec Inspired Designs
French model; Fashion model showing polka dotted smock top
Balenciaga & Snow In Showroom, Cristobal Balenciaga; Mrs. Carmel Snow
Balenciaga & Snow Shopping Together
Cristobal Balenciaga
Source: gettyimages.com
Balenciaga Coat; Balenciaga's Toulouse-Lautrec Inspired Designs
French model; Fashion model showing polka dotted smock top
Balenciaga & Snow In Showroom, Cristobal Balenciaga; Mrs. Carmel Snow
Balenciaga & Snow Shopping Together
Cristobal Balenciaga
Source: gettyimages.com
La bordélique
earthbound
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One more of Mr. Balenciaga.
Source: gettyimages.com
Source: gettyimages.com
tricotineacetat
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Does anybody know what is meant by the double-dress construction that is being refered as a Balenciaga trademark?
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