PARIS - Cristóbal Balenciaga, the Spanish couturier who reigned at the height of his profession for three decades, was known as the most demanding designer of his generation. But that didn't stop Bina Daigeler from replicating some of his most famous creations for 'Cristóbal Balenciaga,' the highly anticipated Disney+ series exploring the life of the mysterious master.
"I didn't hesitate. I just thought, wow, that's an amazing project and what a responsibility," the award-winning costume designer told WWD in an interview ahead of the streaming show's release in Europe on Friday.
More from WWD"I'm also a perfectionist and I think my big advantage in such a project is my own [training] comes from haute couture, so I am a tailor myself," she noted.
The six-episode Spanish-language series is a film costumer's dream as fashion is the driving force behind the plot, which focuses on the period between 1937, when the designer presented his first haute couture collection in Paris, and his death in 1972.
Because Balenciaga rarely appeared in public and gave only a handful of interviews, his work is the only one that has been amply documented.
When it came to research, Daigeler and her co-designer, Pepo Ruiz Dorado, had help from the house Balenciaga, now owned by the French luxury group Kering, and Miren Arzalluz, director of fashion chain Palais Galliera. museum in Paris and former head of the Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation in Getaria, Spain.
"With some dresses we had the opportunity, the chance to see them in life, but later my workroom was in Madrid, so we had to do it all from photos and books," said the German-born designer. who moved to Spain in the 1980s.
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"The research process is super important because when you look at all these photos from that era and study them, you really educate your eyes and that helps you translate it into your own work," she added.
Balenciaga teams shared sketches, photos and videos from the archives and provided access to the couture salons at 10 Avenue George V. The house revived the address in 2021 when Demna, the current creative director, showed his first couture collection in 53 years in a fully restored version of the original space.
The in-house experts also reviewed the script with directors Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga, who - like Balenciaga himself - come from the Basque Country, the region that straddles the border between France and Spain along the Bay of Biscay.
Spanish actor Alberto San Juan had to learn both French and Basque, not to mention sewing techniques, to play the titular character.
In a statement, the house of Balenciaga said it wants to "encourage accuracy and ensure a compelling story that reflects Cristóbal Balenciaga's journey. However, the story remains fictional and a free interpretation of Disney+. Balenciaga is not responsible for the exact accuracy, timeline or artistic choices."
Since Balenciaga's personality remains a mystery even to fashion connoisseurs, many will enjoy the scenes evoked by his relationships with colleagues such as Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, Christian Dior and, above all, Hubert de Givenchy, who considered him a mentor. It also highlights his life and business partners Wladzio d'Attainville and Ramón Esparza.
The series seeks to shed light on the multi-layered personality of the designer, who never attended fittings or took a bow at the end of his shows, and set a template for elusive creative directors from Martin Margiela to Hedi Slimane.
"He was ahead of his time in terms of marketing and communication strategies, artistic and business control and the identity of his fashion designs. He was fashion's first creative director and his life and work have an astonishingly contemporary and relevant reading," Sofía Fábregas, vice president of original production at Disney+ Spain, said in a statement.
With credits for Spanish productions such as Pedro Almodóvar's 'All About My Mother' and 'Volver', but also for international films and television series such as 'Narcos', 'Snowden', 'Mulan' and 'Tár', Daigeler clearly had the qualities to to tackle such a huge undertaking.
Her next project is "Mother Mary," another style-focused affair starring Anne Hathaway as a fictional pop star and Michaela Coel as a fashion designer. But equipping the cast of "Balenciaga" was extremely complex.
"I learned a lot, for example how to dress for fashion shows. It was not something I was used to doing, and so finding the right model for each of the dresses was a super interesting process," she said, mentioning Nine d'Urso, the daughter of French style icon Inès. de la Fressange, who plays old house model Colette.
"She was just fantastic," Daigeler enthuses. "She has just the right attitude and appearance."
The costume designer oversaw most of the fashion show segments in the series, which also features collections from Dior and Chanel. "Both houses helped us," she said, noting that Dior's famous Bar jacket was reproduced by Atelier Caraco, a specialist workshop in Paris.
Meanwhile, Chanel collaborated with Daigeler on the looks of French actress Anouk Grinberg, who plays Coco Chanel, and borrowed archival pieces from costume jewelers Goossens and Desrues. The specialized workshops Maison Michel, Massaro and Lemarié also made hats, shoes and fabric flowers.
"We tried to be very authentic and do justice to these great designers and these great haute couture houses," Daigeler explains.
For the studio sequences, she also had to show the garments in different stages of construction, which provide insight into why it was so difficult to reproduce Balenciaga's complex architectural creations.
Described by Dior as 'the master of us all', Balenciaga was revered by clients, fashion critics and his peers for his technical virtuosity and for endlessly reinventing the female silhouette with revolutionary designs such as the cocoon coat and the sack dress.
"It is a huge difficulty because it is not alone [do] you have to get the prototype and the shape right, you also have to get the right fabrics, and that is a big challenge because nowadays the fabrics no longer have the same weight," says Daigeler.
"Now the wool is much softer and no longer has the stiff body that wool had in the 1940s and 1950s. And he also used a lot of heavy silk, and we were lucky enough to find gazar, which is similar to the famous fabric that Balenciaga used, and that helped a lot," she said.
Daigeler admits she struggled with the balloon shapes, but was fortunate to work with a pattern maker who trained with members of Balenciaga's team.
One of the standout costumes in the show is the white satin and mink wedding gown that Spanish aristocrat Fabiola de Mora y Aragón wore for her wedding to Belgian King Baudouin in 1960. Daigeler hesitated to describe it as Balenciaga's magnum opus.
"I can't decide which one is really his masterpiece because there are so many interesting shapes," she said. "Sometimes he really made sculptures and I think that's his masterpiece, that he didn't follow the mainstream. He definitely has his own style and he kept progressing. It was progress that is his masterpiece."
Launch Gallery: A Look Inside the Disney+ Series 'Cristóbal Balenciaga'.
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