Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion

Cristóbal Balenciaga was, by unanimous agreement of everyone who knew and worked with him, the greatest couturier of the twentieth century — the designer whose technical mastery of construction, material, and silhouette was so complete that his peers regarded him as an artist and themselves as craftspeople by comparison. Chanel said he was the only true couturier; Dior called him the master of us all. His 1951 collection changed the shape of fashion; his 1967 farewell collection did it again.

This visual history traces Balenciaga’s career from his origins in Spain through the decades of his Paris house, documenting the evolution of a vision that was simultaneously the purest expression of the haute couture tradition and its most radical subversion.

An essential reference for fashion historians and collectors. Published by Thames & Hudson.