Basque Firsts by Juaristi Vince J.;

Author:Juaristi, Vince J.; [Juaristi, Vince J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Nevada Press

IN AUGUST 1971, Balenciaga at age 76 gave his first official interview to the London Times. “Nobody knows what a hard métier it is, how killing is the work under all this luxury and glamour,” he said. Three years had passed since closing his salons and his sense about haute couture’s doom had come to pass. “This age is marked by the lack of elegance in women,” he said. “The life which supported couture is finished. Real couture is a luxury which is just impossible to do anymore.” The British magazine Queen took another step when it reported, “Haute Couture is dead and so is Balenciaga.”

He did not return to fashion as a career. Occasionally, while dining with a friend, he would comment on his suit or her dress. The fabric is fine, he’d say, but the sleeve—dear Lord—the sleeve! Then he’d go to his apartment with the offending friend in tow, stand on a stool with scissors, and dismantle and reassemble the sleeve. He was a perfectionist, an artisan who believed that creation was divine, and to fit divinely was godliness.

On only one other occasion would he pick up his scissors again. In March 1972, General Franco’s granddaughter, María del Carmen Martínez-Boriú y Franco, married Alfonso de Bourbon y Dampierre, the grandson of Alfonso XIII. The wedding gown was regal, fit for a queen, reminiscent of Isabelle’s Catholic glories. It would be one of his finest creations, and it had to be perfect. “Two days before the wedding,” said the bride, “he pulled the dress completely apart because he didn’t like the way it fit. I thought I’d never get married.” But her dress felt different from Fabiola’s dress in 1960. The fanfare had gone. If Fabiola’s dress had been a bold statement, María del Carmen’s felt more like a soft echo.

The dress would be Balenciaga’s last. Two weeks later, on a trip with Esparza to Javea, Spain, a coastal town on the Mediterranean Sea, a sudden heart attack ended his life on March 23, 1972. Within 24 hours, in accordance with Spanish law, he was buried in Getaria’s town cemetery. Father Pieplu, his priest from Paris where he had attended mass, delivered the eulogy, wearing a brilliant black-buttoned cassock that Balenciaga had made for him. Women’s Wear Daily headlined, The King is Dead, and all the fashion industry and the women whom he had dressed mourned the death of a legend and the passing of an era.

Esparza suffered thereafter since Balenciaga had not left a will. Having spent every moment of the past 20 years with him, Esparza sued the family for at least part of the Balenciaga’s estate. He failed and went on to live a modest life until his death in 1997.

After Balenciaga closed his salons in 1968, Florette worked for Givenchy and then Courréges, her black book of clients worth a fortune in the fashion world. She never tired of representing the last gasps of haute couture. At 90 years old, she sold a few

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