by Paris — Cristóbal Balenciaga, the Spanish couturier who reigned for three decades at the height of his career, was the fiercest designer of his generation. But that didn’t stop Bina Daigeler from replicating some of his most famous pieces for “Cristóbal Balenciaga,” the eagerly awaited Disney+ series that explores the life of the secret master.
“I didn’t hesitate. I just thought, wow, that’s a great project and what a responsibility,” the winning costume designer told WWD in an interview ahead of the show’s streaming release in Europe on Friday.
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“I’m also a perfectionist and I think my big advantage in a project like that is mine [training] comes from haute couture, so I’m a tailor myself,” she said.
The six-issue Spanish series is a film trader’s dream, with fashion driving the story, focusing on the period between 1937, when the designer presented his first haute couture collection in Paris, and his death in 1972.
Since Balenciaga rarely appeared in public and gave only a handful of interviews, the only thing clearly documented is his work.
When it came to research, Daigeler and her co-signer, Pepo Ruiz Dorado, were able to count on help from the house of Balenciaga, now owned by the French luxury group Kering, as well as Miren Arzalluz, director of the Palais Galliera fashion . museum in Paris and former head of the Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation in Getaria, Spain.
“For some of the dresses, we had the opportunity to see them in real life, but then my workroom was in Madrid so we had to do it based on pictures and books,” said the German designer, who moved to Spain in the ’80s.
“The research process is really important because when you’re looking at all these photos and studying them, you really educate your eye and that helps you transfer it to your own work,” she said.
Balenciaga staff shared sketches, photos and videos from their archives and provided access to their couture salons at 10 Avenue George V. The house revived the launch in 2021 when Demna, its current creative director, presented his first couture collection in 53 years in one year. a fully restored version of the original space.
The internal experts also reviewed the script with the directors Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga, who – like Balenciaga himself – comes from the Basque country, the area across the border between France and Spain along the Bay of Biscayne.
Spanish actor Alberto San Juan had to learn French and Basque, not to mention sewing techniques, to play the titular character.
In a statement, the house of Balenciaga said they wanted to “encourage accuracy and ensure a compelling story to portray Cristóbal Balenciaga’s journey.” However, the story is still fictional and free interpretation on Disney +. Balenciaga is not responsible for the exact accuracy, timeline or artistic choices.”
Since Balenciaga’s personality remains a mystery even to fashion connoisseurs, many will enjoy the scenes showing his relationships with peers including Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, Christian Dior and above all, Hubert de Givenchy, consider him a mentor. It also highlights his life and his business partners Wladzio d’Attainville and Ramón Esparza.
The series attempts to shed light on the multi-layered personality of the designer, who never attended a fitting or took a bow at the end of his shows, setting a template for inscrutable creative directors from Martin Margiela to Hedi Slimane.
“He was ahead of his time in marketing and communication strategies, artistic and business control, and the identity of his fashion designs. He was the first creative director of fashion and his life and work make for a great contemporary and relevant reading,” said Sofía Fábregas, Vice President of original production at Disney+ Spain, in a statement.
With credits including Spanish productions such as “All About My Mother” and “Volver” by Pedro Almodóvar, as well as international films and TV series including “Narcos,” “Snowden,” “Mulan” and “Tar ,” Daigeler clearly had the chips. to tackle such a huge undertaking.
Her next project is “Mother Mary,” another style-centric affair starring Anne Hathaway as a fictional pop star and Michaela Coel as a fashion designer. But the “Balenciaga” outfit was extremely complicated.
“I learned a lot, for example, dressing fashion shows. I wasn’t used to doing it, so learning how to find the right model for each of the dresses, that was a very interesting process,” she said, singing Nine d’Urso, daughter of French style icon Inès. de la Fressange, who plays longtime house model Colette.
“She was great,” Daigeler said enthusiastically. “She just has the right attitude and image.”
The costume designer oversaw most of the fashion show segments in the series, which also features collections by Dior and Chanel. “Both houses helped us,” she said, noting that Atelier Caraco, a specialized workshop in Paris, reproduced the famous Dior jacket.
Meanwhile, Chanel worked with Daigeler on the looks worn by French actress Anouk Grinberg, who plays Coco Chanel, borrowing archival pieces from jewelers Goossens and Desrues. Her specialized workshops Maison Michel, Massaro and Lemarié also made hats, shoes and fabric flowers.
“We tried to be really authentic and do justice to these amazing designers and these amazing haute couture houses,” explained Daigeler.
She also had to show the garments in various stages of construction for the atelier sequences, which gives insight into why Balenciaga’s intricate architectural creations were so daunting to reproduce.
Described by Dior as “the master of us all,” Balenciaga was revered by clients, fashion critics and peers for his technical prowess and relentless reinvention of the female silhouette with revolutionary designs such as the cocoon coat and sack dress .
“It’s a big difficulty because it’s not the only one [do] you have to get the prototype and the shape right, you also have to get the right fabrics, and that’s a big challenge because today, the fabrics, they don’t have the same weight anymore,” said Daigeler.
“The wools now, they are much softer and no longer have this stiff body that the wools had in the ’40s, ’50s. And he also used a lot of heavy weight silks, and we were lucky that we could find gazar, which is like this famous fabric that Balenciaga used, and that helped a lot,” said she
Daigeler admits she struggled with the balloon shapes, but was fortunate to work with a patternmaker who trained with members of the Balenciaga team.
Among the outstanding garments on show is the white satin and mink wedding dress worn by Spanish aristocrat Fabiola de Mora y Aragón for her wedding to King Baudoin of Belgium in 1960. Daigeler hesitated to describe it as a magnum opus. opus Balenciaga.
“I can’t decide which one is really a masterpiece, because there are so many interesting shapes,” she said. “Sometimes he created serious sculptures and I think that’s his masterpiece, that he didn’t follow mainstream. He has his own style completely and has progressed all the time. His masterpiece was a breakthrough.”
Address Gallery: Inside the series Disney + “Cristóbal Balenciaga.”
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