THE SPIRIT OF CREATION
Balenciaga exhibit at McCord goes beyond fashion
You don’t expect X-rays in a fashion exhibition — but the current Balenciaga retrospective at the McCord Museum is no ordinary exhibition. A rare opportunity to observe the influential work and the inspiration of the legendary Spanish fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972), it draws on everything from sketches, photographs and fabric swatches to prototype garments and X-rays that reveal the inside of some of his dresses and the tailoring skill that went into making them.
The show, which opened in midJune and runs to Oct. 14, will appeal to those interested in fashion and also to a broader audience: anyone curious about the creative spirit and how things are made.
Balenciaga, Master of Couture, is a travelling exhibition organized by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
The 80 garments featured, along with hats and accessories, come mainly from the V & A’s fashion holdings. The McCord, which has hosted shows from the museum before, is the only North American venue.
There’s a Montreal connection to the show, mounted in a 6,000-square-foot space and presented by Holt Renfrew and Ogilvy.
The McCord’s own Dress, Fashion and Textiles collection has 15 Balenciaga pieces — and four are included in the exhibition.
Balenciaga was known as “a designer’s designer, acknowledged as the master,” Cynthia Cooper, the McCord’s head of collections and research and curator of its Dress, Fashion and Textiles collections, said in an interview.
Some observations about Balenciaga from Cooper and the excellent exhibition guide:
1. He designed for real women’s bodies.
Some of his garments were semi-fitted in the front and flowing in the back; others had a barrel line, straight through the waist.
He liked stand-away collars — the neck is generally a slender part of the body, Cooper explained — and three-quarter length sleeves, which highlight the wrist, another slim feature of most women.
2 He was a designer who let the fabric tell him what to do.
“His garments have really interesting shapes and volumes,” Cooper said.
Balenciaga believed that the quality of the fabric dictated the design.
He was interested in fabrics that seemed to have lives of their own — like silk gazar, which is lightweight but holds its shape.
He used high-end fabrics, and his clothes were always impeccably made.
Emanuel Ungaro, who trained with Balenciaga from 1958 to 1964, recalled his teacher explaining that “everything starts with the neck and shoulders. When it fits well, you can do anything.”
Balenciaga was a pioneer in liberating the body and giving clothes a more loosely fitted waistline, Cooper said. Women who wore his clothes observed they were easy to wear. Many of his garments were cut in one piece for ease of movement.
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Balenciaga wanted to bring an unconventional silhouette.
And that was something different from what other couturiers were doing, Cooper said. He explored both form and fabric. “He was an architect of fabric.” His innovative silhouettes included the sack dress, the semi-fit dress and the envelope dress. “His designs seemed to grow more abstract and simplified as his career evolved.” 4
He was influenced by his native Spain.
Balenciaga came from a small fishing village. His father died when he was 11, and his mother became a seamstress. As a youngster, he was exposed to her work and to the luxurious fabrics she used.
Spanish flamenco inspired some of his designs, evident in the show. The exhibition includes a dress that riffed on traditional Valencian dress and another that referenced the mantilla, a traditional Spanish lace veil or shawl worn over the head and shoulders.
Balenciaga was also influenced by non-Western fashion, with a few garments in the show referencing the Indian sari, for instance, and the Japanese kimono, in which shoulder and sleeve were in one piece.
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Balenciaga was a devout Catholic, and there are references to religion in some of his designs.
A cape on one garment, for instance, resembles a mozzetta — an elbow-length cape worn by clerics and monks.
The embroidery on one dress in the exhibition seems to depict thorns and was perhaps inspired by the crown of thorns some gospels said was placed on the head of Jesus during events leading to the crucifixion, suggested our guide, Joanna Abrahamowicz, who did a stellar job showing us through the exhibit and pointing out highlights.
The show also illustrates the debt owed Balenciaga by much of contemporary fashion. One section devoted to the work of designers who were inspired by him shows how they “incorporated his values or aspired to use some of what he did that made him such a great designer,” Cooper said. The esthetic of minimalism in his work, for instance, was emulated by designers including Ungaro and André Courrèges — like Ungaro, he also trained with Balenciaga — as well as Hubert de Givenchy, Oscar de La Renta, Yohji Yamamoto, Azzedine Alaïa, Dries Van Noten, Spanish designer Sybilla and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons.
The original V & A show, mounted in 2017 through early 2018, was aptly titled Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion.