It is the largest audiovisual production undertaken by Disney Spain: the Cristóbal Balenciaga series. And they have bet big. Starting with the actor who plays Getaria’s teacher, Alberto San Juan, who, they acknowledge, was “unexpected to find.” And following by performers like Belén Cuesta, who plays Fabiola de Mora y Aragón, whose wedding dress, made with gazar – a regal, semi-transparent fabric that Balenciaga could control at will – is one of the designer’s most iconic. A suit whose fascinating replica can now be seen along with thirty others in the exhibition that, to warm up the atmosphere towards the premiere of the series – on January 19 –, Disney has gathered in the Villanueva pavilion of the Botanical Garden of Madrid.
Suits ahead of their time, which show the sculptural dimension of Balenciaga, but also how the introverted and controlling master of haute couture was able to reflect the spirit of each decade: the suits designed under the German occupation in the 1940s impact the exhibition for its almost military air. They have all been impeccably recreated by a costume star, the Madrid-based German Bina Daigeler, Oscar-nominated for Mulán and responsible for titles such as All About My Mother and Volver or the recent Tár, starring Cate Blanchett.
Together with the costume designer Pepo Ruiz Dorado, they have chosen the costumes that best expressed each moment of the series and have recreated their patterns, searching to the point of exhaustion for some fabrics, such as the white one with pink flowers from a spectacular baby doll dress, which ended up appearing in a Bilbao store a week before filming began and that still had the period sealing wax on it and was probably left over when Balenciaga closed.
The series begins when the designer, of humble origins, with a fisherman father who died at sea and a seamstress mother, presents his first collection in Paris in 1937, leaving behind the Spanish civil war and a successful career in his workshops in Madrid and San Sebastián dressing the aristocracy. And precisely the exhibition, which opens until January 21, begins with costumes from the beginnings of Paris. “When she arrives, she clashes a little with the greats of fashion, she has to find her place and search for her roots with historicist designs such as an infanta dress, inspired by Velázquez, or taking up the tradition of popular Spanish dresses with suits like the one that We call it the Segovian,” explains Ruiz Dorado with amusement. At that time Wladzio D’Attainville, partner and partner of Balenciaga since its beginnings in Spain, will take care of the spectacular hats that mark the suits and that will attract the attention of the big magazines.
A born worker, through daily work, the workshop, modeling, he evolves, unleashes his creativity in a line that is “very iconic, structural, architectural, different from the greats of his time.” One of the rooms shows how between the forties and sixties “he worked on the neck, took it off, and at a time when in 1947 Dior launched the new look silhouettes with a very marked waist, he did the opposite and completely pick up. And he arrives at a very simple silhouette that is very flattering and marks the sixties very much,” says Daigeler.
“Three years later everyone does that, they know that they are the ones ahead, seeing the future. He was refining the lines, creating from the inside to remove everything unnecessary,” adds the costume designer. In the fifties his sales will skyrocket, with a waiting list, but with the glimpses of ready-to-wear already – he will only venture once, in 1968 – he will decide that he wants to continue controlling his work.
“He was a designer of a unique, very advanced technique. A couturier. He started sewing since he was a child. He had talent, he knew how to make patterns. Taking off the nape of the neck, losing the waist, making a balloon dress, that had never occurred to anyone. And he continues to inspire. He has left an enormous legacy of creativity, spontaneity, of being able to investigate, do something special and be true to himself,” Daigeler concludes.