This Balenciaga reveals fashion's TV show fatal flaw

IF your experience of Balenciaga is a vague awareness of 2022’s bondage teddy furore or the recent “viral” hit of a towel as skirt then you may be surprised to understand the origins of the designer behind it.

- Victoria Moss

Cristóbal Balenciaga, the Spanish couturier known to his contemporaries as “the master”, is the subject of a glossy new six-part Disney+ series, out on January 19, which documents the 30 years he dominated the Paris fashion scene.

Given to shyness — Carmel Snow, the infamous Harper’s Bazaar editor, called him the “monk of couture” — a lack of interest in explaining himself and perhaps trepidation of speaking out during the Franco regime, he only ever gave one interview, after his retirement, to The Times fashion editor Prudence Glynn. She scored a coup after pinning him down at Coco Chanel’s funeral in 1971. It is this encounter that the series is hooked around. Balenciaga died at 77 in 1972, months after the interview had been published.