Biopics about the founders of fashion brands that have made history are all the rage. Disney + has just released one about Cristobal Balenciaga and Apple +, another about Christian Dior and Coco Chanel.

There are several reasons for this phenomenon, but I would briefly highlight three. On the one hand, there is an audience that is curious to know more about the origins and characters behind cult brands that it recognizes by a style of sneaker, a handbag or a perfume. On the other hand, the platforms and producers of this entertainment format subject know that any content related to these brands is an attraction.

Finally, fashion houses, some of which are hundreds of years old, such as Balenciaga (1917) or Chanel (1913), publicize their historical dimension because doing so gives them prestige and financial aid to remain in the luxury sector. Consequently, they tend to support this subject of initiatives.

The story of Cristóbal Balenciaga (Getaria, 1895-Valencia, 1972) deserves to be told as a novel. How did a boy born in a fishing village on the coast of Gipuzkoa come to be considered the king of international fashion?

His entrance in haute couture, when he was barely twelve years old, was told by himself in one of the few interviews he gave. He began working in San Sebastian, at that time the seat of the royal summer and cosmopolitan city thanks to its proximity to Biarritz, another resort town on the French Basque coast and holiday destination of the international elite.

There he founded his own fashion house, specializing in women's haute couture, in 1917. In 1924 he was already dressing Spanish royalty. The establishment of the second republic was a setback for the luxury sector of the city, and Balenciaga diversified his business and opened branches in Madrid (1933) and Barcelona (1935).

During the twenties and thirties he used to frequent the fashion shows of the couturiers of reference letter of the French scene, where he bought models that he sold under licence at his headquarters in San Sebastian. These visits, besides helping him to improve his technique, allowed him to get to know the workings of the leading houses in the sector.

The economic and social uncertainty, caused by the outbreak of the Spanish civil war, accelerated the opening of another headquarters in Paris. He did it with the financial financial aid of two partners, Wladzio d'Attainville and Nicolas Bizcarrondo. He presented his first collection there in August 1937, and the international press received it with good reviews. From this date, he combined the work in the French capital with the activity of his Spanish workshops.

The years following the end of World War II marked a turning point for Balenciaga's degree program . His designs of the 1950s and 1960s made the front pages of the international press reference letter, and competitors such as Christian Dior and Coco Chanel repeatedly expressed their admiration for Balenciaga's skill technique and unquestionable taste.

Among his clients were queens and princesses and, in general, the women at the top of the most elegant lists. The teams of tailors and dressmakers he had formed over the years contributed to the excellence he sought in fashion.

But his enormous prestige also generated a market for illegal copies of his designs that was detrimental to him. This phenomenon explains his distancing from the press and much of his fame as a hermetic character. After all, the photographs of his creations in magazines were the seed of a rogue trade that never stopped growing, especially in the United States.

Balenciaga announced that he was leaving his activity during the turbulent month of May 1968, at the age of 77, in a context of general crisis of Parisian haute couture. The success of ready-to-wear and the rise of a class average who wanted to dress fashionably, but at more affordable prices, diminished the revenues of previous decades. And Balenciaga decided that his business ended there, that no one would continue it. He closed all his workshops and returned to set his main residency program in San Sebastian.

He died in Valencia on March 23, 1972 of a heart attack. He had not written a will. His nephews, heirs to the brand, sold it to a perfumer group in 1976. Since then, Balenciaga has undergone successive sales transactions. Today it is part of the French conglomerate Kering.

The six-part biopic produced by Moriarti for Disney + tells the story of Balenciaga's debut in Paris in 1937 and some episodes of his French period.

The script uses the interview that the couturier gave to the journalist Prudence Glynn for the British newspaper The Times in the summer of 1971 as a guiding thread. In reality, more than an interview, it was a brief statement, although posing it as a dialogue in Balenciaga's house in San Sebastian is a clever screenplay resource .

As it is logical, the costumes section , one of the most complicated challenges, has been very well cared for. The art direction is also remarkable. The fashion show scenes were shot at the current Balenciaga headquarters, which remodeled its salons in 2021, on the occasion of the launch of the first haute couture collection since Cristóbal's retirement, faithfully following the decoration of the original 1937 space.

The script does not allude to the beginnings, development and consolidation of Balenciaga, in the San Sebastian of the twenties and thirties of the last century. There he had already achieved leadership in Spanish fashion and was known in Parisian circles of haute couture. That is why the insecure and uncomfortable character presented in the first chapter is so striking.

Those who come to the series to learn about the founder of Balenciaga will be left with a partial image of who the king of 20th century fashion really was. Nor will they know the importance of San Sebastian in the context of the internationalization of French haute couture. Because, in fact, Balenciaga tells in that famous interview to Glynn that he met Coco Chanel in a casino in the city, when he was a young man just starting out. Chanel used to go to San Sebastian to enjoy the city, but also to sell, as many French creators did.

At final, a biopic is a fiction, not a documentary. If someone is interested in having a global and summarized view of the character and his work, my recommendation is to read Balenciaga. Shaping fashion by Lesley Miller. You will better understand that for Balenciaga fashion, beyond pure perfectionism, had to mean excellence. In addition to his prolific output, some of which can be seen in his native Getaria, his refusal of mediocrity is probably Balenciaga's real bequest .