Balenciaga

Cristobal Balenciaga opened his first house in Spain in 1919 and his Paris atelier in 1937, arriving as a master so complete that his peers called him 'the couturier of couturiers'.

Where others draped, Balenciaga built. His command of cut and construction allowed him to sculpt cloth into pure architectural forms, freeing the body rather than confining it.

Through the 1950s he reshaped the silhouette with revolutionary inventions, the tunic, the sack dress, the balloon hem and the cocoon coat, that anticipated modern fashion by decades.

A perfectionist and a recluse, he worked in austere blacks and Spanish-inspired colour, and trained a lineage of designers, Givenchy, Courreges, Ungaro, who carried his discipline into the future.

Reborn for the modern era, Balenciaga today fuses that founding rigour with a provocative, boundary-pushing vision, remaining one of fashion's most intellectually fearless houses.