Balenciaga’s Spanish-influenced designs

Assorted Balenciaga designs from the exhibition in New York

Fashion is a global business. British designers (John Galliano, Phoebe Philo) work at French brands (Dior, Céline), as do Americans and Israelis (Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton; Alber Elbaz at Lanvin). Brazilians work for US brands (Francisco Costa at Calvin Klein), and Germans at Italian brands (Tomas Maier at Bottega Veneta). Nationality is not important, says conventional industry wisdom: it doesn’t matter where a designer is from, since the brand is his home.

A recently opened exhibition, however, would beg to differ. The premise of Balenciaga: Spanish Master, at New York’s Queen Sofía Spanish Institute, is that origins do matter when it comes to fashion design; indeed, they are the ground on which an aesthetic is built. As curated by Hamish Bowles, US Vogue’s European editor-at-large, the show cogently argues that much of the highly stylised shapes and sumptuous fabrics that were Cristóbal Balenciaga’s hallmarks were products of his love for the traditional costumes of his native Spain, where he lived until fleeing to Paris during the Spanish civil war.

“The show looks at the influences in Balenciaga’s world, which were very, very Spanish,” says Oscar de la Renta, chairman of the Queen Sofía Institute, who began his career as Balenciaga’s apprentice. “Even after his success in Paris, he remained very deeply influenced by the culture and folklore from Spain, from the religious to the gypsies, flamencos and bullfighters.”

The exhibition begins in 1937 when Balenciaga opened his salon in Paris, with collections reflecting his transformation of images from both art and life – influences clearly illustrated throughout the show. For example, Goya’s portrait of the Duchess of Alba in a swirl of black lace mantilla is echoed in a striking cloud-like evening headdress of black silk gazar. Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” is recalled in Balenciaga’s ivory silk satin “Infanta” evening dress with scrolls of black velvet along the neckline and waist, and accentuated fullness over the hips.

Memory is an underlying theme of the show. Balenciaga wished to re-establish the reassuring landscape of his youth, specifically his days as an altar boy at the Church of San Salvador in the Basque fishing village of Guetaria where his uncle, Julian Balenciaga, was a priest. This is apparent in his reimagining of a cardinal’s chasuble as a glamorous scarlet silk evening coat with a capelet stand-out collar, and in the way a simple flowing black and white silk gazar evening dress recalls the contrast between a nun’s habit and its starched white bib. And it is visible in a wedding dress of ivory silk shantung organza with metallic silver embroidery, which recalls nothing so much as the gilt-embroidered robes of the Madonna figures paraded through streets during Holy Week.

Both touching and revealing are Balenciaga’s references to clothes of daily life, including the costumes of Spain’s regional peasant culture. Though he strips these styles of their original, identifiable roles – as aprons, tucked skirts or long black wool capes – their shapes linger even in luxurious fabrics. The son of a seamstress and a fisherman, Balenciaga lost his father as a boy, and no tribute can match the plain white linen summer tunic that summons up a fisherman’s shirt. Likewise, the array of perfect black dresses – he made one each year – were derived from extravagant Basque widows’ weeds.

More lavish are outfits that mirror flamenco dancers with tiers of ruffles, or the bullfight ring with toreador boleros in red velvet, spangled jet beads and silk cord passementerie. When Balenciaga designed an ivory faille evening gown with a tassel-trimmed bolero jacket, Pauline de Rothschild ordered only the jacket in the pink of toreador stockings over a black romper suit suggesting a bullfighter’s knee breeches.

According to Bowles, the export of fashion began in the Renaissance, when princesses marrying in distant lands brought along their retinue and style to foreign courts. Balenciaga too exiled himself abroad, delivering the exuberance of Spanish culture to the world court of fashion. Pointedly, however, de la Renta traces the origins of Spanish culture to China, “when that oldest of civilisations at its height travelled across the Silk Road and evolved into different forms as it passed from village to village, arriving finally in Spain”. In other words, perhaps it is possible to act global and think local at the same time.

‘Balenciaga: Spanish Master’, until February 19 2011, at Queen Sofía Spanish Institute, 684 Park Avenue, New York, www.queensofiaspanishinstitute.org