Cristóbal Balenciaga
Cristóbal Balenciaga ( born January 21, 1895 in Getaria, Spain, † March 23, 1972 in Javea, Spain) in 1937, the fashion company Balenciaga and was an influential fashion designer of French haute couture. Even after his death, he is considered a " perfectionist of his craft and master of all couturiers ".
Life
Balenciaga was born in 1895 as the son of a Basque fisherman and a seamstress. Funded by the Spanish Marquesa de Casa Torres Margravine, worked for Balenciaga's mother, he graduated from in 1907 in San Sebastián training as a tailor. 1911 Balenciaga found in the same place at a fashion house as a designer for upscale women's fashion a job that regularly took him as a center of international fashion world after Paris. With the financial support of the Margravine Balenciaga opened in 1919 in San Sebastian a tailor salon for high-priced women's fashion, which was joined by haute couture salons in Madrid and Barcelona. His own company, Balenciaga y Compañia, he had founded in 1918 and named it in 1924 in Cristóbal Balenciaga to. Among his clients were the members of the Spanish royal family. In 1927 he opened a shop called Eisa Costura (after the birth name of his mother, Eizaguirre ) with clothing fashion for ladies in San Sebastián. After the fall of the monarchy in Spain in 1931 and the resulting emigration of many wealthy Spaniards in times of social upheaval had to file for bankruptcy Balenciaga. In 1932 he started with his new fashion salon Eisa and re-opened offices in Madrid and Barcelona.
1936 emigrated Balenciaga at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, after an unsuccessful detour via London to Paris, where he first presented in 1937 haute couture fashion and the Balenciaga SARL founded. His Spanish shops had closed. In 1938 he opened a haute couture salon in Paris Avenue George V. Its elegant and modern, sometimes strict creations for confident women were well received in the Paris fashion scene. By no later than the 1950s was Balenciaga as the "king of haute couture ". To protect his designs from being copied, found his fashion shows for the press always a month after all the other couture events to which Balenciaga his creations exclusively presented his private clients and fashion buyers. His protégé, Hubert de Givenchy, the Balenciaga established a lifelong friendship, this procedure for Givenchy took over shortly thereafter.
1958 were recognized at the Paris fashion world with a membership in the French Legion of Honour Balenciaga's merits. Coco Chanel honored him as the only true couturier. 1968 Balenciaga adopted to the dismay of his supporters from the fashion world and joined his company with the exception of the perfume division. Only for the wedding of the granddaughter of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1972, he designed a wedding dress still with an imposing Hutkreation.
Balenciaga died in 1972 on holiday in Javea to a heart attack. He is buried in his birthplace Getaria. All his life he had avoided the public and, if no interviews.
Fundación Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation in 1999 to preserve the memory of the designer has been launched in Spain, since Hubert de Givenchy is president. The Spanish Queen Sofia, opened on June 7, 2011 in Getaria that bears his name in honor of Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum Museoa Museum.