Creators (32 page)

Balenciaga may have felt that Dior did not take the craft seriously enough. By his reckoning, Dior, who could not actually make a dress, was not a couturier, merely a designer. (That was true of virtually all the others, then and since. Chanel claimed that she could sew beautifully. But then she had no respect for truth.) Balenciaga possibly thought that Dior got too much sheer pleasure out of high fashion, which in his own view was an art on a par with painting, sculpture, and architecture, to be taken with the utmost seriousness. It was not something in which you could
faire le ponchinelle
, “do a Picasso” (in those days Picasso often called himself the “clown of art”). But Balenciaga certainly did not regret the success of the new look. He was a businessman, and a very astute one, and he recognized that it had done wonders for the Parisian fashion industry and that everyone involved in it, himself perhaps most of all, had benefited from the publicity. He certainly did not see Dior as a rival, and he had no fear that his own claims to excellence would be overlooked. Dior dressed the rich, Balenciaga the very rich. During the 1950s, a woman “graduated” from Dior to Balenciaga. And equally, Dior was never jealous of Balenciaga’s superior skills. He recognized them and revered the man who possessed them. He always called Balenciaga
maître.
In December 1948, Balenciaga’s partner, Vladzio, died at age forty-nine. The master
was so upset that he seriously considered retiring and returning to Spain. The word got around, and Dior went to see him on Avenue George V and begged him to stay: “We need your example in all that is best in our trade.” Dior suggested, instead, that Balenciaga should buy Mainbocher’s old premises next door, which were up for sale, and expand. Balenciaga, touched, did exactly as Dior recommended.

Balenciaga’s best days were in the 1950s, before the “cultural revolution” of the 1960s. He regarded making dresses as a vocation, like the priesthood, and an act of worship. He felt that he served God by suitably adorning the female form, which God had made beautiful. His approach was reverential, indeed sacerdotal. His premises reflected his own vocational tone. In those days, haute couture shops varied in atmosphere greatly. Molyneux tried to make his like an aristocratic London town house. You rang a bell and an English butler answered the door and ushered you in. Dior’s premises were grand but busy, with much
va-et-vient
, like a big salon on one of the hostess’s “days.” Dior himself, affable and gregarious, could be seen roaming about, wearing a white overall over his well-cut Savile Row suit.
Bonjour, patron!
sang out his women workers, always pleased to see him. By contrast, Maison Balenciaga was like a church, indeed a monastery. Marie-Louise Bousquet said, “It was like entering a convent of nuns drawn from the aristocracy.” Courrèges, who worked there, described the atmosphere as “monastic in both an architectural and a spiritual sense.” Emanuel Ungaro remembered: “Nobody spoke.” If it was absolutely necessary to speak, the voice had to be hushed or reduced to a whisper. Security was intense. It was difficult not just to get in at all but to move from one room to another, for all entrances were guarded by fierce females. There was a porter in blue, but the real keeper of the gate was a dragon called Véra. Indeed, it was a place of women—like a convent vowed to silence (as is usual in Spain)—but any women who were not models or seamstresses were dragons. Madame Renée was the head dragon, who ensured that patrons came only by appointment. Her saying was:
Les dames curieuses ne sont pas bienvenue ici.
Unwelcome—that was putting it mildly. The only
dame curieuse
who ever got past Véra and Renée was Greta Garbo. (She was dressed by the despised Hollywood
couturier Adrien.) The impression should not be given that the place was drab. In fact the decorations in the window done by Janine Janet were the best in Paris, though they had nothing to do with women’s fashions, featuring birch sculptures of fauns, unicorns, and similar figures. Inside were tiled floors, Spanish-style; oriental rugs; damascene curtains; ironwork fittings; and a great deal of red Cordoba leather, varied with brown, black, and white leather in the showrooms. The elevator was lined with leather, too, and contained a sedan chair. Balenciaga did a limited trade in scarves, gloves, and stockings; but he sold only two (very expensive) perfumes: Le Dix and La Fuite des Heures. He gave the impression that he thought such things vulgar and irrelevant to his main work, and permitted them reluctantly, since they were highly profitable. He never did anything to court popularity. He never gave interviews (except once, to the London
Times
, when he had decided to retire). He never went out in society. There are virtually no photographs of him and none at work, though we know he wore black trousers and sweater and used a curious curved table on which to sew or cut material, with rulers and a square as aids. All the rooms in his atelier, as noted above, were closely guarded, and his own room was totally inaccessible except to the most senior staff. At one time it was widely believed he did not actually exist and that Balenciaga was a pseudonym.

His remoteness was not a pose but part of his dedication to his art. He worked fanatically hard when he was actually in Paris. Each collection had between 200 and 250 designs, all of which he completed himself, since he had few trusted assistants and often turned down promising juniors, such as the seventeen-year-old Hubert de Givenchy. He had the manners of an old-fashioned cardinal under Pius XII. He was sometimes angry, but his anger expressed itself in irritable foot movements, never in violence of any kind. He never raised his voice. Indeed silence was his norm. Ungaro said: “There was something noble about him.” When he was satisfied with his designs, and the clothes were made up, each outfit had four fittings: one for materials, and three for shape, using models. In just one day he could get through fitting sessions for 180 outfits by dint of intense concentration and by working with a team who knew exactly what his gestures signi
fied, for few words were spoken. It was said that he disliked women, but there was no evidence that he disliked them more than men. He saw them as racehorses: “We must dress only thoroughbreds.” He used to quote Salvador Dalí: “A truly distinguished woman often has a disagreeable air.”

Yet he was a woman’s designer, through and through. His fundamental principle as a dressmaker was to make women happy. “He liked to make a duchess of sixty look forty, and the wife of a millionaire tradesman look like a duchess.” His clothes were, above all, comfortable to wear, an amazing fact—and it was a fact—considering their grandeur, their complexity, and the magnificence of their materials. His designs accommodated a well-rounded stomach, a short neck, and overly plump arms and shoulders, and left space for ropes of pearls and for bracelets. Comfort was achieved by great ingenuity of design and attention to what the duke of Windsor called the “underpinnings.” (But of course Balenciaga never used pins or extraneous stiffening of any kind.) Balenciaga argued that if a woman was comfortable in her clothes, she was confident; and if she was confident, she was at her best and wore her clothes with style. He said that some designers put a strain on the client so that she was glad to get the dress off at the end of an evening. He wanted his clients to be reluctant to part with their clothes, which had become an integral part of the body, a second skin.

His second principle was permanence. While Dior made changes twice a year, Balenciaga was always fundamentally the same, especially in his splendid evening dresses, which were his specialty. A woman could buy one of them as an investment because properly looked after, it would last forever. In 2003, I saw a young woman of eighteen wearing a superb dress. “Is that not a Balenciaga?” “Yes. It belonged to my grandmother.” He wanted his dresses to be bequeathed, as they were in imperial Spain. In a sense he was antifashion. He was impressed by the way dresses, hats, and even accessories in certain old masters remained elegant after hundreds of years, and he constantly got ideas from them. From Velázquez’s
Queen Marianna of Austria
(in the Louvre) he stole the idea of a stiff bodice sliding out of the skirt. Another Louvre picture,
La Solana
, gave him the inspiration for an entire
outfit: black dress, white lace mantilla, masses of dark hair with a huge pink satin rose planted in or on it. His favorite source was Zurbarán’s saints. He used the
Santa Ursula
in Strasbourg, the
Santa Casilda
in the Prado, and especially the enchanting
Santa Maria
(there are versions in Seville and in the National Gallery in London), seen by the painter as a rich bourgeoise, wearing her hat and dress with flair and carrying an enchanting straw shopping bag. That bag became, and remains, a classic. He borrowed the full-length pinkish satin twice from Manet’s
Femme au Perroquet
at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and he was not above raiding paintings by more vulgar artists, such as Monet’s
Les femmes au Jardin
at the Musée d’Orsay. But he was never a plagiarist: he transformed touches of the old masters into contemporary clothes, and women often did not “get” the reference until it was pointed out to them. One leading customer, who not only bought a dress but faithfully followed Balenciaga’s strict advice on how to wear it (or “present it,” as he said), was surprised to be told by a society magazine that she looked like Goya’s
Narcissa Baranana
at the Metropolitan Museum. I recall some critics in the 1950s who argued that Balenciaga, a “great artist,” was “above” his clients. They included Hollywood figures like Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard, Marlene Dietrich, Mrs. Ray Milland, and Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock, as well as the superrich like Doris Duke, Margaret Biddle, Marella Agnelli, Mrs. Paul Mellon, Barbara Hutton, and Mrs. Harvey Firestone, as well as (of course) the duchess of Windsor and paragons of
le gratin
. But it was Balenciaga’s view that his clothes, properly put on (and it was rare for a customer not to follow his rules), raised the wearer into a classless, ageless empyrean, a superculture where a woman’s body, even if old and defective in places, entered into what he called a “mystic marriage” with his clothes. For this reason he did not, like some designers, expect a client to suppress her personality; he expected her to emphasize it—he rejoiced when a woman “added to” his work. Strict and implacable in many ways, he had a certain creative modesty which allowed him to see that his dresses only became alive when worn, and that the wearer was needed to complete the creative act.

Balenciaga’s third principle was the central importance of
material in his designs. Textile and lace manufacturers, embroiderers, and specialists in gauze and dyes lined up for appointments to see him and often collaborated with him to produce completely new, complex materials. He could dye himself, and often did. His skill at embroidery enabled him to pick out the occasional genius. He dealt with large firms and tiny Lyon or Como workshops alike, and to him a first-class textile creator was an equal. Gustave Zumsteg created for him in 1958 “Gazar” and in 1964 “Zagar,” a refinement, which miraculously combined fine texture, thickness, and stiffening so that Balenciaga could sculpture dresses made of it without artificial support. Lida and Zika Ascher from Prague made for him special materials, notably a mohair and chenille, ravishing and of incomparable luxury. But Balenciaga never allowed his sensuality to ignore practicalities. When Zika Ascher showed him a new blend of mohair and nylon thread, thick and spongy, Balenciaga admired it but asked, “Will it take a buttonhole?” “Oh, yes!” “We shall see.” He took the sample away into his sanctum and returned a few moments later, with a superbly sewn buttonhole—one of the most difficult tasks a seamstress faces, especially with intractable material. Gérard Pipart, inspecting it, exclaimed, “A buttonhole by Balenciaga! It should be framed.” The master gave his wan Spanish smile. He often sewed to keep his hand in, and for every collection he designed, cut out, sewed, and finished, entirely himself, a “little black dress,” usually of silk, sold like the others but never identified as his.

Balenciaga used a variety of lace: chantilly, guipine, the heavy chenilles, and the so-called blond. Occasionally he reinforced the thread with horsehair. He patronized the best embroiderers in the world. In 1966 Lizbeth, head of her profession, made for him a pair of bolero pants with flowers of pearl and mother-of-pearl. The garment to which it belonged might last a millennium, if worn “with discretion” (a key couturier’s phrase). He discovered and often used an artist called Judith Barbier to create with him a fishnet cloak of knotted white velvet, using parachute silk to make pink-and-white flowers for the entire outfit. The finest of his creations were essentially cooperative efforts using textile creators and specialists like Barbier to bring to life his conceptions.
Happily, many of these marvelous dresses are preserved (some were shown at a retrospective mounted in Lyon in 1985), so we can still see what marvels Balenciaga could create, with thick faille ribbed with velvet, lacquered satin sewn with tiny gemstones, organza sewn with Barbier flowers, Ottoman silk with gold embroidery, ostrich feathers on figured tulle, or a gold lamé sari he made for Elizabeth Taylor. Using such sensational materials Balenciaga also did many daring things, such as bunching a skirt or yoking sleeves so as to dominate both the front and the back of the garment.

The essence of his creations was the work of human hands, bringing into existence the images projected on paper from his powerful and inventive brain. The archives of his firm survive intact, and they reveal the extent to which everything was done by hand: the exact sums paid by his celebrated clients; dates for fittings and deliveries, all entered in fine pen-and-ink; materials supplied in detail, and prices paid; and countless pieces of paper showing the process whereby each garment was created, in ink and pencil and crayon, with pieces of the material used pinned on by the master sketcher—a lost world of agile, tireless fingers, before the computer or even the typewriter took over.