Givenchy, was very reminiscent of Balenciaga's work at the beginning of the 1950s.
Balenciaga's day wear and evening wear often contrasted to the extreme. For day, one of his classic pieces of deceptive simplicity could pass unnoticed, recogniseable only to an initiate. His evening wear was a different story. A Balenciaga gown would stand out by virtue of its boldness and originality, and the lustre of its colour and materials. Barbie's Midnight Blue (1965) is a perfect example of Balenciaga's evening wear style, where the design, fabric and colour all blend beautifully to dramatic effect. By the late 1950s, Balenciaga's semi-fitted suits and slender chemise dresses shortened to just below the knee, became the basic silhouette of the period and his influence would reign supreme for several years. Who could forget his fabulous suits? In 1959 with his talent and technique at their peak, Balenciaga produced suits with short boxy jackets and higher waistlines. Barbie's Career Girl (1963) represents his tailoring influence perfectly. In fact, the grey flecked fabric used for Mattel's version mirrors the green and beige 'pebbly' tweed employed for Balenciaga's suits in his Spring 1963 collection. Even the hat is remarkably similar to Balenciaga's version.
Balenciaga was also renowned for his beautiful and very grand negligees which surely influenced such fashion doll ensembles as Barbie's Nighty Negligee (1959) and Miss Seventeen's Lovely Night (1961).
The mood of luxury and beauty promoted by the early Barbie doll wardrobe was surely inspired by Balenciaga, except in his case, the sense of luxury was overwhelming. He had a discerning eye for fabrics, winning the respect of his suppliers, and his closest colleagues recall a tireless man who could supervise as many as 120 fittings in a single day, unpicking and restitching finished designs until they were perfect. He kept his eye on the smallest details of his collection, and could make a dress or hat with his own hands.
Famous Balenciaga clients included Gloria Guiness, the Duchess of Windsor and the legendary Countess of Bismark. Though he was basically a loner, Balenciaga had many friends, among them Madeleine Vionnet, Coco Chanel and M.L Bousquet. He once told the renowned painter Miro: "You are lucky. If you want to produce a masterpiece, you can do it on your own. I need five hundred people to do it". Inspite of this, he remained passionately devoted to his craft. Commentators have remarked that Balenciaga could have built a commercial empire as big as Dior's, but perfection was his God and so mass production was not for him or his clothes. Instead, he insisted on maintaining his reputation as a couturier of the utmost luxury and elegance. A private man who abhored publicity, journalists, photographers and society chit chat, he preferred his life to remain a mystery to others, which indeed was the best publicity of all. Balenciaga's last collection, brimming with colour and youth, was presented in 1968, at which point he retired to his house at Igueldo in Spain. He died in 1972 at Javea in Spain, just after designing his last bridal gown for the Duchess de Cadiz.
When Charlotte Johnson and her staff were planning the Barbie doll wardrobes in the late 1950s and first half of the 1960s, Balenciaga would undoubtedly have been an important influence. Barbie's long leggy look was entirely in keeping with his design ethic of the time, even and including her blank, non smiling face. Balenciaga's models were forbidden to smile, maintaining a dignified silence as they paraded, heads held high, gazing into the distance, waist and hips thrust forward as their master had taught them. Several references have been made to Barbie's fashions in this article in relation to Balenciaga. This is largely due to the available documentation being more readily available in her case, but more importantly because I feel that during this period, Barbie was the ultimate role model for her competition, and a true representative of her era. She depicted the fashions of the time and brought them to a mass public more than any couturier could, and best of all with a quality that other toy corporations failed to match. Where she led, other dolls and their envious manufacturers followed, but as with Balenciaga, it is her influence and fashions that have endured the test of time. It is entirely appropriate, then, that she and Balenciaga should be so readily and favourably compared. I would like to leave the final words of this feature to another enduring legend, Cecil Beaton. Balenciaga had, he said: "...created the future for fashion".
In The Glamour Years, Part Three: Charles James, the influence behind Solo in the Spotlight. |
