An Exclusive Preview

THE profound - and lasting - influence of Cristobal Balenciaga on the fashion world is to be celebrated this month at London's V&A in the exhibition,
Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion, that has us all counting down the days until May 27
when it opens. None more so than curator Cassie Davies-Strodder, who took us
around the legendary location's private stores as the final preparations started
to take place last week.
For Davies-Strodder, the 18-month culmination of work that will form the body of the exhibition not only proved to be fascinating as one would expect, but a
deep exploration that took her all over the world acquiring pieces from private
collectors - not easy, given the designer's penchant for not courting the
press.
"He is such a mystery, because he didn’t do many interviews or write a biography," Davies-Strodder explained. "It’s tricky because there’s a lot of
mythology that builds up about someone like that. There’s all these stories, but
he only ever gave one interview... He was very private. For the first 10 years
of his fashion house he banned the press from the first showings of his
collections – they made separate journeys a month later. It could be seen as
career suicide but he had such confidence."
The lack of recorded work hasn't stopped the exhibition from being comprehensive. Split into three sections called Front Of House, Workrooms, and
Balenciaga's Legacy, it builds on previous retrospectives of the designer's work
and design temperament (Diana Vreeland famously chose to profile Balenciaga for
her first major fashion retrospective at the New York Met in 1973), while
bringing something new to the table: showing how his handwriting can still be
seen.

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