Part Two: Focus on Balenciaga
By Gary Alston
Who could forget the drama evoked by Barbie's stunning Midnight Blue ensemble, the refined, tailored femininity of Career Girl or the fluid swing of Red Flare's trapexe coat with its exaggerated puff ball sleeves? Add to these milestones of fashion doll couture Miss Seventeen's Date at the Plaza, the Tina Cassini doll's Tina's Church Set and Surf Sensation, not to mention the full length opera coat modelled so beautifully by Alexander's Elise, and one designer's influence springs heavily to mind - that of the great Spanish born couturier, Cristobel Balenciaga.
Cristobel Balenciaga, who became one of the most important designers of the late 1940s and 50s, was a genius whose style over the years has proved to be utterly timeless. He was one of the most creative designers of his era, living for his work and devoting his
Although Balenciaga was never as well known to the general public as Dior, his designs were a major influence for nearly 20 years. Indeed when Balenciaga moved away from the very fitted silhouette and developed his more fluid semi-fitted line in 1951/2 it was the first really original fashion concept after the second world war.
Balenciaga was born in 1895 in Guetaria, part of the Spanish Basque country. His mother was a dressmaker, and from an early age taught the young Cristobal how to make clothes. With the encouragement of his patron, the Marquessa de Casa-Torres, he trained as a tailor in San Sebastian and Madrid. In 1919 he opened his first fashion house in San Sebastian, followed by a further two in Madrid and Barcelona. When the Spanish civil war broke out in 1936, all three salons closed, and in 1937, Balenciaga moved to Paris where friends helped him to open a fashion house on the Avenue George V. His first collection was an immediate hit with the buyers.
In February 1939 the Daily Express ran a story about the "Young Spaniard" who was revolutionising fashionm describing how buyers and press literally fought to get into his collection, for all the world as if it were a football match. Some things in fashion never change! My favourite quote from Balenciaga's debut period was delivered by Courrier de la Mode which reported: "Beneath its apparent simplicity, each of these little dresses is a master piece of Haute Couture. Examine them closely, and you will discover the subtlety and originality of the cut, and you will conclude that there is not a dress to be had at Balenciaga for under 6,000 Francs."
Balenciaga's reputation soared during the war years, and his business was a runaway success, but in keeping with High Heels' brief and the birth of the fashion doll proper, I would like to look at his work in the 1950s/60s. At the start of the 1950s Balenciaga had been at the forefront of the trend for very fitted clothes; his designs, however, were not as romantically pretty as Dior's. They had a more sculptured, architectural quality, which he began to develop more noticeably in the early 1950s when he introduced his semi fitted look. Although today we take this line for granted, at the time it was a radical departure from the norm. Balenciaga's first attempts with his new silhouette were reserved for suits and coats. They were still very constructed, interlined and often mounted on canvas, but the shape was sculptured to shadow the curves of the breasts and waist, rather than fit them; some designs had semi-fitted fronts and loose backs cut to fold under like a cape, a particularly elegant line for top coats. To complete his styles, Balenciaga set collars away from the base of the neck and soon became known for his standaway necklines. Several of these details apply to Barbie's Red Flare outfit of 1962. Despite its later date, this ensemble owes much to a similar style featured in Balenciaga's winter collection of 1950. Indeed, the famous puffball sleeves on Barbie's Red Flare are more or less an exact copy of what Balenciaga in 1950 called his 'melon sleeve'.
Balenciaga's model girls were striking rather than beautiful. They wore their hair pinned back in French pleats, and completed their outfits with small, very simple pill box or saucer shaped hats worn straight across the forehead. Barbie's Red Flare (1962), Sheath Sensation (1961) and Theatre Date (1963) all utilised these styles along with many other fashion dolls of the era worth their salt. Balenciaga's very individual line featuring round rather than sloped shoulders, subtly-shaped, perfectly balanced, hip length jackets and pencil slim, mid calf length skirts - Sweater Girl (1959), Career Girl (19630, Sheath Sensation (1961) - was a very elegant, almost austere, understated style where the exact placing of a button or the subtle proportioning of a collar was the all important focal point of the design. Used to the feminitiy of earlier fashions, some women initially found Balenciaga's style too severe. The fashion industry, however, admired his new approach, and it became the high fashion ideal of the late 1950s. As Barbie made her debut at this time, it is hardly surprising that she, too, would come under Balenciaga's spell, and her 1959 Gay Parisienne outfit, although often credited to the
