Balenciaga: Architecture & Fashion

Picture: Magazine L’Officiel

Fifty years ago, one of the greatest couture masters of all time, Cristóbal Balenciaga, died after spending his last hours in the Parador de Jávea, a place of refuge and reflection for the couturier.

It felt natural to us to sponsor "El segle de Balenciaga" event, as Bataille Living, Architecture and Fashion go hand in hand. When creating and designing, choosing the type of material, the shape and the colour in each project with the client in mind, we see ourselves reflected in Balenciaga, who revolutionised fashion without following in the wake of the trends set at the time, being innovative and visionary.

Architecture creates spaces defined by volumes. Is what Balenciaga did when he designed by creating areas around the body. From 1950 onwards, Balenciaga's work was characterised by the purity of lines, simplicity, the development of volumes and proportion.

For Balenciaga, the texture is the beginning and the end, the most sacred thing. He treated materials with extreme delicacy. He uses a liturgy with the idea of what that piece of fabric will be as soon as he cuts it. From this metamorphosis from thread to garment, the religion of art emerges, to see where no one else sees in a pure piece of material, totally extrapolated to architecture, sculpture, painting...

Balenciaga understood well that colours could bring security, well-being, comfort, pride and elegance. He understood this because he had absolute knowledge of the sensations that colours produce in human beings: they stimulate us, they make us feel cold or warm, they sadden us, they uplift us, they unite us with nature, they give us energy, they empower us...

When they are elegant and beautiful, buildings are perpetual, and so are Balenciaga's dresses, the architecture of eternal style. And us, inspired by his life and work, fulfil the maxim of drinking from the sources of the great geniuses because without a base, without references, there can be no originality.