by Mary Blume
his mother was photographed: Vogue, December 15, 1948.
“Esparza was very nice”: Luc Bouchage to author, Paris, 2006.
In 1951 only one French household: Judt, Postwar, 339.
In the space of one spring afternoon: Ned Rorem, The Paris and New York Diaries of Ned Rorem 1951–1961 (Berkeley, CA: North Point Press, 1983), 6, 118.
Bousquet had glommed on to the Brooks: Natasha Parry and Peter Brook to author, Paris, 2009.
“Only he is capable of cutting material”: Miller, Balenciaga, 16.
(John Fairchild says he saw her draw blood…): John B. Fairchild to author, 2010.
The two friends fell out dramatically: Givenchy’s verbatim account says a lot about the personalities involved and illustrates the problem of pinning down facts concerning Balenciaga. There is no doubt that the rift occurred, possibly because of a Chanel interview in Le Figaro saying he was too old to continue in business but not mentioning his homosexuality, possibly because of gossip by Balenciaga’s close friend Marie-Louise Bousquet (when in doubt it is always wise to blame Bousquet). But the WWD interview referred to by Givenchy, which he told me again he had seen with his own eyes (April 12, 2012), never existed according to John Fairchild (November 12, 2010) and to WWD’s editor, James Fallon, who kindly instituted a search of the archive for me. As for Balenciaga’s returning all of Chanel’s gifts, the only known interview with him, in The Times (August 3, 1971), has Balenciaga praising her talent and mentioning that he has in his apartment “the most enchanting bronze duck, a gift from Coco Chanel.” The duck, according to Agustín Medina Balenciaga, Cristóbal’s grandnephew, is still in the family’s hands.
4
One evening, gazing disconsolately: Jouve and Demornex, Balenciaga, 55–56.
Jean-Claude, who died at the age of ninety: Jean-Claude Janet to author, Paris, 2006.
“They all hated each other”: Odette Sourdel to author, Paris, 2009.
There were ten ateliers: Balenciaga Paris, exhibition catalog, edited by Pamela Golbin, Musée de la Mode et Textiles (Arts Décoratifs museum at the Louvre), 2006, 19.
Balenciaga would hire only untrained seamstresses: Golbin, Balenciaga Paris, 19–20.
“Yes, it was a hard place”: Coqueline Courrèges to author, Paris, 2006.
Nicole Parent, who stayed only a couple of years: Nicole Parent to author, Paris, 2007.
whom Truman Capote called Swans: Truman Capote, A Capote Reader (London: Abacus, 1989), 551.
Mona Bismarck, as she had recently become: James D. Birchfield, Kentucky Countess: Mona Bismarck in Art and Fashion (Louisville: University of Kentucky Art Museum, 1997). Unless otherwise indicated, this is the source of Mona Bismarck information.
“Mona was loyal”: Gore Vidal to author, Paris, 2009.
her second-floor suite at the Ritz: C. David Heymann, Poor Little Rich Girl: The Life and Legend of Barbara Hutton (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1983), 33, 128.
(Yves Saint Laurent’s annual salary…): International Herald Tribune, March 21, 2012.
according to her daughter, Albina: Albina du Boisrouvray to author, Paris, 2010.
Karl Lagerfeld, then a German teenager: Karl Lagerfeld, “The Moving Image,” Vogue, March 2000.
One day, when Carmel Snow was having lunch: Carmel Snow and Mary Louise Aswell, The World of Carmel Snow (New York: McGraw Hill, 1962), 167.
Bizcarrondo, his great-niece says: Dominique Caillois to author, telephone, 2009.
5
His colors became more and more brilliant: Vreeland, D.V., 106, 107.
In her 1956 book: Célia Bertin, Paris à la Mode (New York: Harper, 1957), 226.
At least two French fashion chroniclers: Didier Grumbach, Histoires de la Mode (Paris: Seuil, 1993), 83; François, Comment un Nom Devient une Griffe, 143.
“Balenciaga is such a trying man”: John Fairchild, The Fashionable Savages (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 152.
many of her clothes were in a train wreck: Valentine Abdy, Mona Bismarck, Cristóbal Balenciaga, exhibition catalog, Mona Bismarck Foundation, 2006, 51.
His biggest client of all: Ibid., 58.
Claudia Heard de Osborne: Walker, passim.
Sonsolita, as she was called: Sonsoles Díez de Rivera to author, 2011.
Danielle Slavik, blond and somewhat shy: Danielle Slavik to author, 2010.
When a young assistant: Claudia Verbaum to author, telephone, 2011.
says Benoît Gaubert: Benoît Gaubert to author, 2008.
The first was Schiaparelli: Elsa Schiaparelli to author, 1965.
When her goddaughter asked: Madeleine Chapsal, La Chair de la Robe (Paris: Fayard, 1989), 188.
6
by 1967 there were more than two thousand: Judt, Postwar, 396.
a book called Elegance: Geneviève Antoine Dariaux, Elegance (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964).
Emanuel Ungaro: Lauren Milligan, Vogue.com, April 19, 2010.
The same year, WWD published: Women’s Wear Daily, January 25, 1965.
inspiring Cecil Beaton to praise: International Herald Tribune, August 25, 1967.
The photographer David Bailey: International Herald Tribune, October 15, 1985.
“a forceful reminder of the speed”: Kennedy Fraser, The Fashionable Mind: Reflections on Fashion, 1970–1982 (Boston: David R. Godine / Nonpareil, 1985), 84.
“He understood his times”: film by Pierre Thoretton, Yves Saint Laurent–Pierre Bergé, l’ Amour fou, 2010.
Saint Laurent mentioned Balenciaga’s technique: Women’s Wear Daily, March 27, 1972.
Bergé claimed to have dined: Laurence Benaïm, Yves Saint Laurent (Paris: Grasset, 2002), 135.
on holiday in Marrakesh: Alicia Drake, The Beautiful Fall (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), 60.
Diana Vreeland, staying with Mona Bismarck: Vreeland, D.V., 107.
7
“Monsieur Balenciaga was someone extraordinary”: Jacqueline Ruotte to author, telephone, 2010.
Eugenia Sheppard, describing Florette: International Herald Tribune, August 1, 1968.
“At collection time”: Anita Delion to author, 2010.
The baroness talked about: Baroness Alain de Rothschild to author, 2006.
Then Albina du Boisrouvray: People, January 17, 1994.
8
To Balenciaga, his work revealed: Father Robert Pieplu, The World of Balenciaga, exhibition catalog, 10.
An undated letter: Archive, Balenciaga Museum, Getaria, Spain.
The unsinkable Claudia: Walker, Balenciaga and His Legacy, 46.
the New York designer Chester Weinberg: Women’s Wear Daily, March 27, 1972.
Prudence Glynn: “Balenciaga and la vie d’un chien,” The Times (London), August 3, 1971.
they are a very close-knit clan: Agustín Medina Balenciaga to author, telephone, 2011.
(Why on earth Balenciaga owned works…): Givenchy, on April 12, 2012, gave me an explanation for Balenciaga’s collection of paintings by Buffet. Balenciaga liked the boyish figure of Buffet’s wife, Annabel, and each time he gave her a dress, Buffet (the former lover of Pierre Bergé) gave him a painting.
biopic by Rodolphe Marconi: Lagerfeld Confidential, 2007.
“I think that the sculpted style”: Suzy Menkes to author, e-mail, 2011.
In 1973, when Diana Vreeland launched: New York Times, March 23, 1973.
when Tom Ford can tell: The Sunday Times (London), January 31, 2010.
$101,370 one season for an evening dress: Vogue, July 2006.
35 percent of the house’s earnings: Le Point, March 30, 2006.
“When he left the world of haute couture”: Bismarck Foundation catalog, 63.
When I asked Albina: Albina du Boisrouvray to author, e-mail, 2011.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The most useful book on Balenciaga’s Spanish years is Cristóbal Balenciaga: The Making of a Master (1895–1936) by Miren Arzalluz (2011) and, for the Paris years, Pamela Golbin’s Balenciaga Paris (2006). Also helpful is the first ma
jor study, Balenciaga by Marie-Andrée Jouve and Jacqueline Demornex (1989), as are Balenciaga by Lesley Ellis Miller (2007) and Balenciaga: Spanish Master by Hamish Bowles (2010). For a memoir of Paris fashion from the 1930s to the 1950s, Bettina Ballard’s In My Fashion (1960) is excellent. Part of my material appeared, in different form, in the April 2007 issue of Vogue.
My agent, Bill Clegg, put me in the skilled and friendly hands of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, so my thanks go to him and to Jonathan Galassi, Courtney Hodell, Mark Krotov, Charlotte Strick, Jonathan Lippincott, and Jeff Seroy.
I am also deeply grateful to Samuel Abt, Miren Arzalluz, Rosamond Bernier, Luc Bouchage, Peter Brook, Elizabeth Coll, Anita Delion, Sonsoles Díez de Rivera, John B. Fairchild, Lucien Frydlender, Benoît Gaubert, Hubert de Givenchy, Pamela Golbin, Robert Gottlieb, Immaculada de Habsburgo, Ian Hassett, Jean-Claude Janet, Janet Johnson, Marie-Andrée Jouve, Brigitte Lacombe, Agustín Medina Balenciaga, Polly Mellen, Suzy Menkes, Lesley Ellis Miller, Aberri Olaskoaga, Richard Overstreet, Nicole Parent, Natasha Parry, Irving Penn, Caroline Pinon, Oscar de la Renta, Baronne Alain de Rothschild, Penelope Rowlands, Richard Sieburth, Danielle Slavik, Jean Stein, Susan Train, Florence Van der Kemp, Claudia Verbaum, and Gore Vidal.
And special thanks to Gaël Mamine and the Balenciaga Archives Paris for their patience and generosity.
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following previously published material:
Excerpt from “The Balenciaga Mystique” from the April 1962 issue of Vogue. Reprinted by permission of Condé Nast. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from the exhibition catalog The World of Balenciaga, copyright © 1973 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Reprinted by permission of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from The Fashionable Mind: Reflections on Fashion, 1970–1982 by Kennedy Fraser, copyright © 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981 by Kennedy Fraser. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
© George Eastman House / Archive Photos / Getty Images
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
© Laure Albin-Guillot / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works
© Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works
Courtesy of Collection Jean-Claude Janet, All Rights Reserved
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Collection Florette Chelot, All Rights Reserved
Courtesy of Collection Florette Chelot, All Rights Reserved
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
© Irving Penn, Courtesy of Condé Nast
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
© Georges Saad, Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Hoyningen-Huene © RJ Horst / Courtesy Staley-Wise Gallery
© Henri Cartier-Bresson, Courtesy of Magnum Photos
Courtesy of Collection Florette Chelot, All Rights Reserved
Walter Sanders / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images
Courtesy of Maryhill Museum of Art
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Honeyman, Vogue Paris
Collection Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, © 1989 Arizona Board of Regents
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Balenciaga Four-Sided Dress, September 1967, © HIRO
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Collection Jean-Claude Janet, All Rights Reserved
Courtesy of Collection Jean-Claude Janet, All Rights Reserved
Courtesy of Special Collections, Gladys Marcus Library, Fashion Institute of Technology
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Collection Nicole Parent
Courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s
© Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images
Courtesy of Collection Florette Chelot, All Rights Reserved
Courtesy of Condé Nast
© Irving Penn, Courtesy of Condé Nast
Courtesy of Collection Jean-Claude Janet, All Rights Reserved
© Bert Stern, Courtesy of Condé Nast
© Irving Penn, Courtesy of Condé Nast
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
© Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images
© Tom Kublin, Balenciaga Archives Paris
© Irving Penn, Courtesy of Condé Nast
© Karen Radkai, Courtesy of Condé Nast
© Harry Meerson, All Rights Reserved
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
© Tom Kublin, Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of Special Collections, Gladys Marcus Library, Fashion Institute of Technology
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
© Manuel Outumuro, Fundación Cristóbal Balenciaga Fundazioa
© Henri Cartier-Bresson, Courtesy of Magnum Photos
Courtesy of Collection Florette Chelot, All Rights Reserved
Courtesy of Condé Nast
Courtesy of Air France
Courtesy of Air France
© Irving Penn, Courtesy of Condé Nast
Courtesy of Collection Florette Chelot, All Rights Reserved
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
Courtesy of the author
Mona Strader Bismarck Collection, Courtesy of The Filson Historical Society
INSERT
© Manuel Outumuro, Fundación Cristóbal Balenciaga Fundazioa
© Manuel Outumuro, Fundación Cristóbal Balenciaga Fundazioa
© Manuel Outumuro, Fundación Cristóbal Balenciaga Fundazioa
Courtesy of Balenciaga Archives Paris
© Manuel Outumuro, Fundación Cristóbal Balenciaga Fundazioa
© Manuel Outumuro, Fundación Cristóbal Balenciaga Fundazioa
© Manuel Outumuro, Fundación Cristóbal Balenciaga Fundazioa
© Manuel Outumuro, Fundación Cristóbal Balenciaga Fundazioa
ALSO BY MARY BLUME
Côte d’Azur: Inventing the French Riviera
A French Affair: The Paris Beat, 1965–1998
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A native New Yorker, Mary Blume lives in Paris and was a longtime columnist for the International Herald Tribune. She is the author of Côte d’Azur: Inventing the French Riviera and of a collection of Herald Tribune pieces, A French Affair.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2013 by Mary Blume
All rights reserved
First edition, 2013
Owing to limitations of space, all acknowledgments for permission to reprint previously published material can be found here.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blume, Mary.
The master of us all: Balenciaga, his workrooms, his world / Mary Blume. — First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-374-29873-9 (hardback)
1. Balenciaga, Cristóbal, 1895–1972. 2. Fashion designers—France—Biography. 3. Fashion designers—Spain—Biography. 4. Fashion design—Spain—History—20th century. 5. Fashion design—France—History—20th century. I. Title.
TT505.B28 B59 2013
746.9'2092—dc23
[B]
2012029933
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eISBN 9781466836068
