Day 7: Alexander Fury

The final day of a couture-dedicated tumblr has to be devoted entirely to Cristóbal Balenciaga. The greatest couturier of the twentieth century.

“One never knew what one was going to see at a Balenciaga opening. One fainted. It was possible to blow up and die.”

Pauline de Rothschild

Pauline de Rothschild

“Balenciaga is fashion’s Picasso. For like that painter, underneath all his experiments with the modern, Balenciaga has a deep respect for tradition and a pure classic line.”

“They sat there, hating them [Balenciaga’s unfitted suits of 1950]. Instead of the screams that had greeted Dior there was only an uneasy silence. I stood up and began to clap. Nobody joined me. When I turned over the Paris issue of Harper’s Bazaar to Balenciaga’s collection, the fashion world began to pay attention.”

“Balenciaga alone is a couturier in the truest sense of the word. The others are simply fashion designers.”

Madeleine Vionnet

“The atelier was pure white, unornamented and intensely silent. People whispered and walked on tiptoe, and even the clients talked in hushed voices.”

Father Robert Pieplu, Balenciaga’s Priest

“To wear a Balenciaga dress gives you a sense of security.”

“At 10 Avenue George V, the audience sat blinking in the white glare while, in total silence, a parade of the ugliest models in Paris passed disdainfully from left to right carrying numbered cards, and under the strictest instructions not to smile. Every collection included a black dress made entirely by his own hands.”

“The greatest influence upon my career.”

“A woman walking would displace the air so that her skirt would billow out just so much, front, back and sides would round out each in turn, imperceptibly, like a sea-swell… Nothing held them out, neither whalebone cages nor petticoats gave them any support. Legs moved easily, the front of the long skirt running a little faster ahead than one’s walk.”

“Haute couture is like an orchestra, whose conductor is Balenciaga. We other couturiers are the musicians and we follow the directions he gives.”

“Haute couture is like an orchestra, whose conductor is Balenciaga. We other couturiers are the musicians and we follow the directions he gives.”

“He knows how a wrist moves in a cuff.”

“Where Dior collections had a Mozartian lightness and grace, Balenciaga’s were paraded with sombre solemnity.”

“Balenciaga stands apart… perhaps the last of the great couturiers.”

“The precision of a surgeon… He was the architect of the haute couture. You could have fantasy, ideas, but what counted was the construction… he was the man of the straight line.”

“An absolute master of the cut.”

“He could square the shoulders, straighten the back, wasp the waist, bustle the bottom until a stout dowager turned into an hour-glass, if that was his intention. But he was more likely to turn her into a pillar of jet, a walking bow or two balloons of taffeta.”

“The stand-away collars allowed women, and their pearls, to breathe.”

“Curious women are not welcome here.”

“His clothes were made for triumph and spectacle and drama, not for ordinary life or ordinary women. A woman had to be able to carry the thing off.”

“Why has this great dressmaker come into his own? It’s because he builds clothes for the WOMAN not for HEADLINES. He knows a woman’s body better than any living dressmaker.”

“Balenciaga was so very like a twentieth century artist because in temperament, vocabulary, and attainment, he was one.”