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| 1943 |
New images of mannequins wearing garments by Cristobal Balenciaga (1895-1972) – now generally acknowledged as the most original and influential of the numerous dead 20th century couturiers who founded eponymous houses.
I located these splendid dresses on a site called Europeana, which appears to have been conceived as a gathering place for holdings from the ever-increasing number of European institutions preserving fashion-as-history.
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| 1953 |
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| 1954 |
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| 1956 |
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| 1957 |
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| 1960 |
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| 1961 |
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| 1961 |
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| 1964 |
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| 1965 |
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| 1970 |
In silhouette and fabrication the Balenciaga ethos found its most authroitative posthumous voice in Nicolas Ghesquière, who designed the two-piece costume below in 1998 and remained at the house leaping from strength to strength until 2012 and the inevitable rupture between modern free-lance Talent and the modern corporate Paymaster.
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| 1998 |