The Balenciaga Four Cone Dress

Just as a revolutionary phase in fashion design was just beginning in the 60s with flatter and more geometric silhouettes, the image of the woman from the 50s was slowly disappearing in favor of a new body and a new way of thinking. The new generation defied decorum and took a stand against bourgeois restrictions in an era of important sociocultural change, brought on most notably by the legalization of “the pill”, the ultimate emancipation of womankind. Boldness was in the air, and the Spanish couturier earned his pedigree in this frenzy of new liberty. 1967 was a year marked by the master’s most beautiful creation: the four cone dress made of black gazar that laid out the entirety of Balenciaga’s geometry. Pursuing his quest for purer and more abstract forms, the couturier sculpted the space around the body, giving it a new dimensionality all while redesigning the universe of appearance. The dress seems to be both simple and made of complex architecture. Four cones frame the woman’s shoulders, held in place by satin ribboned straps embroidered with pearls and rhinestones. From the “bag” line, named thus by the press, the article “En suivant la mode” from the the March 1954 edition of French magazine L’Officiel refers to this surprising look where the body is liberated from the extreme constraints of corsets all while maintaining the body’s role as the main structural support for the dress itself: “The 1958 woman may have lesser forms, but she certainly still has some, for the “bag” dress, without the discreet support of the chest and the hips, would be insipid.” This innovative fashion already intrigued with its volumes employed in opposition to the accumulation of materials and adornments. The rigor of this dress can also be found in its radicalness, bringing the designer into the realm of architecture for its initial blueprint and sculpture for its shape according to Olivier Saillard, curator for an exhibit dedicated to the designer in 2012 at the Palais Galliera. One could easily discuss this artist through his work with black gazar, for just like the avant-gardists, he departed from what once was, taking inspiration from folkloric costumes in the beginning stages to arrive at the pure traits of this dress, just like a figurative painter would proceed throughout their research on abstraction. The parallel that Olivier Saillard draws with the famous Spanish painter Picasso seems to find its echo in a demanding fashion that mirrors Guernica, refusing to deny the past all while recomposing a new reality.