The use of lace in Cristóbal Balenciaga’s majestic work was honored with a 2015 retrospective at the Cité de la Dentelle et de la Mode in Calais, France. The “magician of lace” that Balenciaga was never ceased to experiment with the preciousness, delicateness, and charm of this material in his visionary fashion. Like a number of fashion stories, this one started with a collision of two cultures. Cristóbal Balenciaga founded his brand in 1918 in San Sebastian, in the north of Spain. In 1935, the civil war would force him to leave the country – he would thus inaugurate Balenciaga’s first boutique in Paris two years later at 10 Avenue Georges V. In those days, women were still obliged to follow certain etiquette when it came to their wardrobe: a blouse and a skirt in the morning, a lace tunic in the afternoon, and evening or cocktail dresses at night, topped off by gloves and a bolero or a hat. They wouldn’t be freed from these constraints until World War II.
Balenciaga would lead these woman on a quest for modernity. His favorite fabric? Lace in all its forms. Cristóbal Balenciaga would make reference to the paintings of a certain grand master from his homeland in his quest to comprehend this fabric: “Of all the characteristics of lace, its transparency was what the couturier most liked to magnify by taking inspiration […] from Goya’s portraits.” as the book Balenciaga Magicien de la Dentelle puts it. One can only notice the resemblance and inspirational link between Balenciaga’s lace creations and Goya’s portraits of Queen Maria Luisa done a century beforehand. The couturier also explored different ways of using lace, magnifying its characteristics in the meantime. Playing with motifs and colors, Balenciaga lace touches up blouses, cocktail dresses, tunics, and accessories, bearing witness to the stylistic originality of this “couturier of couturiers” as Christian Dior liked to call him.
From 1957 onward, Balenciaga has been offering lace pieces to an international clientele, from bag dresses to the iconic baby doll dress, the piece that symbolizes innocence tied to a desire for youth. In 1958, Balenciaga composed a gift for Claudia Heard De Osborne: a baby doll dress made of sun green lace. “It was the finesse, the craftsmanship, and the glorification of lace,” remarked Shazia Boucher, deputy director of conservation at the Cité de la Dentelle. For Spring/Summer 2006, it was then-creative director Nicolas Ghesquière’s turn to explore the founder’s favorite playing field. A fervent talent of the fashion world who largely contributed to the brand’s return to centerstage, he created a collection that admirably put lace back at the heart of Balenciaga fashion. With sprinkles of feathers and ribbons, Ghesquière’s dresses for Balenciaga went back to transparency as well, with silk and inserted cascading adornments. With black as the key color for the Spring/Summer 2006 collection, Nicolas Ghesquière expressed all the magic of Balenciaga in an updated 21st century version.
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