Balenciaga

Cristóbal Balenciaga was born in 1895 in Getaria, a fishing village on the Basque coast, the son of a seamstress. A local aristocrat, the Marquesa de Casa Torres, noticed his talent and sent him to train as a tailor, and he opened his first fashion house in San Sebastián in 1917, followed by salons in Madrid and Barcelona under the name Eisa. The Spanish Civil War drove him to Paris, where he opened a couture house on the avenue George V in August 1937. His first collections drew on the Spanish Renaissance and quickly won a devoted clientele.

Balenciaga was the couturier other couturiers admired. Christian Dior called him "the master of us all". He could cut, sew and fit a garment entirely by hand, and he used that command of construction to move the silhouette away from the body: the balloon skirt in the early 1950s, the tunic in 1955, the sack dress in 1957 and the baby-doll dress in 1958, together with stand-away collars, seven-eighths sleeves and, from the late 1950s, the stiff silk gazar he developed with the Swiss firm Abraham. He refused to court the press and showed to buyers only after his clients had seen the collection.

In 1968, unwilling to make ready-to-wear, Balenciaga closed his house. He died in 1972. The name survived in fragrance until the Jacques Bogart group bought it in 1986 and revived ready-to-wear under Michel Goma and then Josephus Thimister.

The modern house was made by Nicolas Ghesquière, promoted from the licensing studio to creative director in 1997. Over fifteen years he combined futurism with deep study of the archive, and his soft, slouchy Motorcycle bag, introduced in 2001 and known as the City or Lariat, became one of the defining bags of the decade. The Gucci Group, now Kering, bought the house in 2001. After Ghesquière's departure in 2012, Alexander Wang led the house from 2013 to 2015.

Demna, the Georgian co-founder of Vetements, was appointed in October 2015 and made Balenciaga the most provocative name in luxury, with oversized tailoring, the Triple S trainer, the Hourglass and Le Cagole bags, and stunts that blurred fashion and internet culture. In July 2021 he revived the house's haute couture, dormant for 53 years. A 2022 advertising campaign involving children drew fierce criticism, for which he and the house apologised.

In 2025 Demna moved to Gucci and Kering appointed Pierpaolo Piccioli, formerly of Valentino, who showed his first collection for spring 2026 in Paris that October. Reviewers noted his return to Cristóbal's sack and balloon shapes, worked in airy fabrics and vivid colour, a softer register for a house founded on the architecture of cloth. The Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum, opened in 2011 in Getaria, keeps the founder's work close to where it began.