Just when you thought telly didn’t get fashion, this year is fit to burst with glossy dramas retelling the life stories of some of its most notable figures (next month AppleTV+ will launch The New Look, based in Paris during WW2, while a Karl Lagerfeld biopic will air later this year on Disney+). Given its predilection to the ridiculous, it's always refreshing when fashion is taken seriously as a subject.
The first of these mid-century-set series is Disney+’s six part serious deep dive into the life and fashionable times of Cristóbal Balenciaga (Alberto San Juan), the Basque-born Spaniard feted as ‘the master’ of Parisian haute couture.
Written and conceived by Lourdes Iglesias, shot on location in Paris and Spain, the series is one of the first fruits of Disney+’s Spanish arm. It is entirely in French, Spanish and Basque which offers an air of authenticity lost when, in other shows, hackneyed ‘Allo Allo accents are affected by English speaking actors.
The scene is set on the grey, overcast day in Paris of the 1971 funeral of Coco Chanel, where Prudence Glynn (played by the excellent Gemma Whelan), the admirably persistent fashion editor of The Times, has spotted an opening to get close to the reclusive, and by then retired Balenciaga.
The designer was averse to the press, and had never given an interview, Glynn was doggedly determined to get the scoop. Impressively, she succeeded, the six episodes follow their conversations as the designer reflects on his life and thirty year career in Paris.
(In reality, the interview was short and held at Glynn’s Parisian country house and in it the real Balenciaga gave little away; it was however still billed as a world exclusive in 1971).
He is shown newly emigrated to the city in 1937, having fled from the Spanish Civil War, opening his own house, racked with insecurity and doubt, vexing over his perceived rivals, nervously inserting himself into Parisian high society. He is an obsessive workaholic perfectionist, he shouts in frustration at his seamstresses and business partners, he agonises over sleeve lengths and the placement of pleats.
It is a period rife with starry names. Anouk Grinberg’s Coco Chanel is perfectly animated, equal parts sharp, gossipy and bitchy. “Don’t forget this is the jungle darlings, don’t expect my help, we’re rivals now” she teases her friend Balenciaga at a party with Harper’s Bazaar’s legendary, exacting editrix Carmel Snow.
But he is swiftly viewed as Paris’ great talent. Chanel declares “Balenciaga is the last true designer, the rest of us are just dressmakers”; she helps get Snow to his next show where she is shown in raptures.
Haute Couture in Paris in the 1930s was a serious employer, so when the Nazis occupied the city its future was put into jeopardy. A meeting is shown with all its major names gathered for a meeting with the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture (the body which ran the industry) to discuss what they should do - there’s Chanel, Vionnet, Schiaparelli, Poiret, Lanvin, Molyneaux, Piguet, Jacques Fath Madame Grès and Lelong… a fashion nerd's Roman empire of name-spotting.
Somewhat controversially, in a bid to survive, Balenciaga stayed open. He travels back and forth to Spain to smuggle in fabric; his clients are no longer the elegant Rothschilds but his show audiences are now a “festival for bad taste”. “High fashion has always served the elite classes” he tells Glynn. “It wasn’t about collaboration it was about survival.”
The power of the fashion industry then is underscored by the Nazi fashion police who shut him down for three months, sanctioned for “inciting rebellion through provocative hats’”.
The war done, the mighty figure of Christian Dior looms over Balenciaga, and a new rivalry for the attention of the high society ladies who can afford their work is created.
The series blends politics with aesthetics, charting the rise of the modern fashion era, and with it the demise of this rarefied world of haute couture. It certainly provokes questions about the legacy of these grand houses which reverberate today, and what these lofty founders might make of their ‘brands’ now. “Can you imagine people making Picassos with Picasso” he quips to Glynn when considering whether anyone else could have continued on with his house (it closed when he retired in 1968, but was sold in the 1980s by his nieces and nephews and resurrected). One imagines he might be horrified by the Kardashian-ifcation of his name now.
It is exquisitely produced; the costume designers Bina Daigeler (who also worked on Tár) and Pepr Ruiz Dorado worked with the archives from Balenciaga, Chanel and Dior to create the costumes which are entirely faithful to the originals. They also used vintage pieces to dress some cast members in. But the details are heavenly, they often had to create a piece in several stages - to show Balenciaga’s work developing - the toile in the workroom, the work in progress he slashes up and the final, catwalk look.
Balenciaga’s whole world is poignantly explored, his closeted personal life, his family and losses which shape his ambition. He is shown to be a taut, controlling, inflexible character, caught between conservatism and fierce modernism, and eventually what happens when the world changes and shifts a little too far beyond his vision.
As a study in the changing politics and times of the Twentieth century it's riveting; as a biopic of a man perhaps lost in the annals of time to the brand identity of his name, a timely, much-needed revelation.
