Transcript

#315 Balenciaga

0:00 Of all the creative people I've come across, Balenciaga was easily the most dedicated to the business of making beautiful things. His work absorbed him totally. And there was no room in his life for anything. Or anyone else? When the cultural revolution of the nineteen sixties

0:14 made it impossible, as he saw it, To produce work of the highest quality. He retired and quickly of a broken heart. Among the masters of Parisian fashion, Balenciaga was the greatest. Indeed, many would rate him the most original and creative couturier in history.

0:33 And he was a true couturier, not just a designer. That is, he could design. Cut. So Fit.

0:39 And finish. And some of his finest dresses were entirely his own work. Let me just pause there when he says indeed many would rate him the most original and creative coachoriaire in history. I'm always fascinated by these people where their peers the people are doing very similar things with them. It's like no no no

0:55 This is the the the person you should pay attention to. Christian Dior called Balenciaga the master of us all. And Coco Chanel said that Balenciaga was the only Katoriar in the truest sense of the word. And that everybody else was simply a fashion designer.

1:09 I've come across this level of adulation for peers in the same industry before. I was reading a bunch of books on uh John D Rockefeller. And Cornelius Vanderbilt. And I was shocked because I'd never I didn't know who Jay Gold was at the time. And Rockefeller he was asked questions like who's the best businessman you ever know?

1:23 You've ever known. And he said without hesitation Jay Gold and then Cornelius Vanderbilt when he was in his seventies and by far the richest American alive. He said that Jay Gold, who was in his thirties at the time, was the smartest man in America. And so we see something similar happen here with Coco Chineau and Christian Dior, super successful. in their own right in the same industry and they're like, No, no, Balenciaga is the greatest. And part of that is tied to that he could do every single aspect of his work. We just saw this

1:48 with uh the episode I did on James Cameron. He can do any job. that a movie needs to be to be made, James Cameron can do it. And so back to Balenciaga. It says that he could design cut so fit and finish and some of his finish dresses were entirely of his own work. And there's a bunch of hints in his early life.

2:04 Uh the greatest. So He's born in eighteen ninety five. in Spain in a little fishing village. His father was a sailor. But he died young, leaving his wife and his children

2:15 very badly off. And so his mother is left with not a lot of money and has to raise her kids on her own. She is the key to all of this, which I didn't understand. The first time I read this. But as I once you finish this and you go back through, you're like, Oh, she she was the key the whole time. So sh her name is Issa.

2:30 Uh she set up as a dressmaker and taught the entire village, a little village. uh all the women in the village on how to sew. Balenciaga at age three and a half. He joins her class And he winds up showing immediately

2:43 Astonishing skill with a needle. So we saw this with Tiger Woods, we saw this with Mozart. You're gonna see it over and over again. You have some kind of level of innate talent for what you're doing, and then you start unbelievably young. He starts at three and a half. He works in this industry till the day he dies. Or I guess right before he dies,'cause he retired and then then died of a broken heart.

3:01 And so it says for the next seventy four years, he could and did sew superbly and kept his hand in by doing a piece of sew every day of his life. That is insane. Sewing every day for seventy four years. I've never even heard of anything like that. Reminded me of what Paul Graham said. in his essay on episode three fourteen. one of my favorite lines in that essay he said that being prolific is underrated. In fact, I said this in the Picasso episode.

3:26 So if you haven't listened to the Walt Disney Picasso episode, that is episode three ten. That is based on the same book that I'm reading from and going over Uh with you now. This is about Balenciaga and Dior. It's this book by Paul Johnson called Creators. It Profiles, I would say maybe twenty. of the greatest creators

3:43 in history. I highly recommend buying the book. Do not read it in chronological order. Just pick the people that you're most interested in. Shakespeare, Twain, whoever it is, Dior, Disney Picasso, and just go straight to those chapters. And so in that Picasso episode, I'm pretty sure I said this, but here's another example of something that was unbelievably prolific. Just like Balenciago. Picasso lived a total of th thirty three thousand four hundred and three days, with twenty-six thousand and seventy-five published works. That means Picasso averaged one new piece of artwork. Every day of his life from age twenty.

4:12 Until his death at ninety one, he created something new every day. For seventi one years. I've also seen this before a long time ago, I think it was on episode one fifty four, I read the autobiography of Charles Schultz. Charles Schultz is the animator, the guy that created peanuts and like Charlie Brown. Check out this crazy

4:32 uh stat from his autobiography. Begin with the first strip published on october second, nineteen fifty, until the last published. On February thirteenth, two thousand, so it's a fi almost a fifty year run. Schultz wrote. Penciled.

4:44 Int. And lettered by hand every single one of the daily and Sunday strips to leave his studio. Seventeen thousand. eight hundred and ninety seven in all. in an almost fifty year Run. What did we just say on the previous page, right?

4:57 Just said Schultz wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered by hand every single one. We just said that Balenciaga was able to design, cut, sew, fit, and finish. It's the exact same idea, just a different uh industry and a different product that they're making. Back to Balenciaga's early life. Big things start small, something you and I have talked about over and over again. Balenciaga's first product was for a cat. His first original work was a collar set with pearls for his cat.

5:18 The collar was noticed by a grand lady of the neighborhood. So like increasing your surface area f for luck is really smart something really smart to do. 'Cause the person that's noticing this, right, just happens to be the great grandmother of the Queen of Spain. So she becomes his first patron. At twelve, he becomes an apprentice. At a tailor to learn cutting.

5:37 An art that few dress designers actually possess. So that's another You can't just skip over that. You gotta pause. Like, wait a minute. So he's got he can do everything himself and then he's also adding other skills that other people in his industry lack. How can you obtain skills? Few others in your industry possess this reminds me of Kobe Bryant taking tap tap dancing lessons.

5:56 Uh to strengthen his ankles. And Arnold Schwarzenegger taking posing instruction from ballet dancers. There's very few NBA players that were in the tap dance class. And Maybe none. And very few or none in the ballet uh dancing like getting tutored one on one from a ballet dancer.

6:10 That is a really smart idea. How can you obtain Skills few others in your industry possess. By age eighteen. He was learning the women's wear trade. In a store in San Sebastian, in a luxury shop. And so Balenciaga is great illustration of this maxim.

6:24 The public praises people for what they practice in private. He starts sewing at three and a half, he's apprentices at twelve, he's in it. He's in a luxury shop at eighteen. You see this pop popping up later on in his career. Experts as well as customers marveled at the speed he went about his work. Especially the difficult business of fitting models with scores of garments. just before collection, he could do a hundred and eighty in a day.

6:45 The explanation is that from the age of three To his mid twenties, he learned thoroughly every aspect of his trade. In other words, he's practicing in private. This is way before. He was regarded as the best designer in Europe. He put in decades of practice. Building on his immense natural gifts.

7:02 He had, for instance, strong, powerful, but also delicate hands. And this is wild. And he's also ambidextrous. He could cut and sew with either hand. That would be like me being able to read two books at once, one with each eye.

7:14 Like that's crazy. Uh in nineteen nineteen, so that me Balenciaga's about twenty four at this time. He opened his first shop. He's still in Spain. He has not gone to Paris yet. Uh so he opened his first shop in San Sebastian on a coast more frequently By high society.

7:29 go to where your customers are. He only from the very beginning. He only wanted to dress the very best. Remember this for more and later when he's compared to Christian Dior. Okay, this is very, very important. He only wanted to go to the very, very top. go to where your customers are. He's like all right, go to where the rich people are because that's the people I want as customers. And this works because he gets the attention of the Spanish royal family. He was soon in demand at court.

7:52 In the Spanish royal family. In the last phase of the Spanish monarchy before suspension in nineteen thirty one, he was working for the Queen. And guess what happens if other people know that you designed for the Queen, they're gonna want your stuff too. He has rapid expansion of his business. Uh from a from an early age. So he's got the first

8:09 Uh the first of his shops. And San Sebastian. Then he's going to expand. He opened a second house in Madrid and then a third in Barcelona. All three were called Esa after his mom. What I say this is She's the key to everything. Wait till you get to the end. He's got like a shrine to her.

8:22 So they're named after his mother. His Spanish business, this was a family run business. His Spanish business was run with the help of his sister, his brother, and other relatives. And was from the first to the very last time very much a family firm. Though it was a very s substantial scale. They had two hundred and fifty people in the Madrid house alone and another hundred working in Barcelona.

8:41 And so then the Spanish Civil War breaks out and he's gonna have to shut down. So he would be around early forties at this point. And so he's gotta figure out where to go. You're interested in fashion, you know where you're going, he's going to Paris. He eventually is going to reopen in Spain. I I think he's just closed for two years.

8:56 But most of the industry attention and energy is in Paris. And important to note, this is not the first time that he's gonna have to shut down temporarily because war obviously going to Paris. When the the Nazis invade he's gonna have to shut down temporarily as well. So he's forty two years old, he's in Paris. And he presents his first collection.

9:13 Uh the next year. For his second collection. He actually gets the Duchess of Windsor as a client and then for his third collection the next year. Sacks Fifth Avenue. places a giant order. So from here on in, it says he was launched and thereafter until his retirement at the end of the nineteen sixties

9:27 He was one of the major Parisian houses. and himself was regarded as a very top dressmaker. And I do want to pause here because I did something this morning.

9:36 Before recorded. Because this is another example of like uh you and I've talked about this like If you ha if your industry has some kind of like city center where all the talent is, it's probably a good idea to go there. This has been like shown over again in history. Uh the example I use uh there's a bunch of examples, but I think the best one is actually

9:52 if you were a mech young, mechanically declined man, uh interested in building a car. And you were alive in nineteen hundred, you better get your ass to Detroit. that's where all the talent was. They wind up knowing each other, just makes for a very fascinating uh life story. And so you see the same thing that's happening in the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties. In Paris.

10:08 And so there's a bunch of examples in the book. It's like Dior, Coco Chanel, Balenciaga, Balmain, I think is how you pronounce it. E Sha E Saint Laurent. They're all in this book. And I went and walked through uh the design district, which is like where all these people are housed in the city that I live in. And one, I thought it was interesting that a lot of these brands are still alive, you know, eighty years later or whatever the case is. But When I think of Balenciaga now, I think of like you know, it's kinda like loud, trendy, my opinion, very ugly. It wasn't like that. It was the opposite of like that when Balenciaga was running it himself.

10:38 I think In my opinion, if he was alive, the founder would be rolling over in his grave. I'm gonna get to this later, but he designed one of his ba basic principles of the products that he made. was the importance of permanence. I have never heard of this. It blew my mind and I'll get there in a minute.

10:53 His dresses were bequeath. There is dresses still like the dresses that he made with his hands. Are still women are have passed them long to I guess Great either granddaughter or great granddaughter.

11:06 I had never even heard of such a thing. And so I I uh one I just thought was interesting when I was looking I was I w when I went on the walk this morning, I was looking through the store window, everything was closed. It was early in the morning. I was like, wow, this stuff is really ugly and very trendy. And I just can't imagine somebody wearing this, you know, forty years from now where You literally have examples of

11:24 People wearing a dress that he made. Seventy five years ago. And so that came to mind when I read that line where it's like, No, no, this guy was the top dressmaker in the the s very center of his industry at the at the time when it was, you know, expanding and there's all this energy and wait till you get to how important the um the

11:42 the fashion was to the Paris economy. Before we get there, I wanna pull out one paragraph that I thought was very interesting'cause He's very he's deadly serious about his work. Deadly serious about the quality. It's not a game to him at all. He gets invited.

11:54 To like design, there's like a collection of dolls that they're giving to some princesses. I think they might be in England or something. And so all the top Parisian fashion designers were invited to make pieces. For the the wardrobe of the dolls. And Balenciaga was not having it. It says the fact that Balenciaga was invited to contribute underlined his membership in the Parisian elite.

12:12 But he declined. not wishing to take part in mere pul publicity stunts. A characteristic assertion of his high seriousness. And then we see again just a few years after having to shut down uh his fashion houses in

12:25 Spain, he has to do the same thing in Paris. Uh, Valenciaga soon had to contend with a new war. This is Hitler's war, the World War Two. in September nineteen thirty nine and shut down his Paris house. For a time. in France. Now this is what I mentioned earlier. This surprised me.

12:39 In France, the fashion industry was regarded as a vital exporter. I don't even know. Paul Johnson's a great writer and a historian. I read this and like there's no way this could be true. But if it's in the book I trust that Paul researched it in nineteen thirty eight and nineteen thirty nine.

12:53 One exported Courtier dress. Would pay for ten tons of imported coal. and a liter of exported perfume Would pay for two tons of imporine.

13:06 Seeing words on paper doesn't even that doesn't even seem real. That's incredible. So he's he's closed down for a year or two. The fact that he was one of the few that were allowed to reopen. Because he w his ally, Balenciaga's ally. was King Franco of Spain. Remember Belantiago was from Spain, and Franco

13:23 was an ally of Hitler. So he was able to reopen uh his fashion house in September nineteen forty. And he was just one of sixty firms that the Germans allowed to function. And so once the war ends, France is devastated. It's bitterly divided, it's impoverished.

13:38 What's interesting is these are conditions ripe for launching something new. And then this is where we have This He's rather he's an older person in the sense that like uh Christian Dior wasn't uh successful fashion designer to this point. He only had like a ten year run or something like that'cause he winds up dying young.

13:53 But he comes in and he realizes like oh the conditions are right for launching something exciting. giving the people something to be excited about after going to, you know, what is six years of war or whatever it was. Now This is really important. I mentioned earlier. Industry specific talent tends to cluster in the same physical location.

14:11 And this is important because both Dior and Balenciaga would insist on the very best like subcontractors, the people actually producing like the materials that they're using to make their creation. So I'll get there in a minute. But the big thing uh that you're gonna learn about Christian Dior is that you don't get to the top by fitting in. You you need to stand out. This is the James Dyson approach, right? Difference for the sake of it.

14:31 All this was in preparation for his first proper post war collection. This is Christian Dior now. When a sensation was caused by an unknown designer, that's the or Dior was using prodigious quantities of precious materials and thumbing his nose up at wartime austerity. And what's fascinating about Dior is he kind of comes out of nowhere, right? He just went from series of kind of one failure after another. So let me give you background to to understand like how unique this was.

14:55 First of all, this was fascinating. So Dior's father was a successful businessman Who ran a fertilizer factory. His dad specialized in producing liquid manure.

15:05 Another way to think about this is the foundation of the D or Empire was literally shit. In the literal sense. And what's crazy is fifty years from now Right, from where we are in the story. Dior.

15:17 of Bernardo Noel's LVM H empire. If you haven't learned about that connection, go back and listen to the the first of many episodes that I'll make on Bernard. Oh no. Uh it's episode two ninety six.

15:27 It's very fasting and he's gonna come up a few times in Dior's story as well. But back to his dad, this idea where The fact the only reason that Christian Dior could afford like how he got to Paris Was that His Tad's

15:41 Liquid manure business. Was so profitable. that he had a bunch of houses and one of those houses was in Paris. And even before he was a fashion designer, we see that uh with like a lot of the people that you and I talk about, true interest is usually revealed early. D he loved drawing, he loved dressing up, he would uh design like fancy clothes for his sisters when he was like a young kid.

16:00 But what was fascinating and surprising about that is he didn't first go into the fashion business. In fact, he also loved art. So we actually be the prehistory of DR's fashion business is the fact that he becomes a partner in an art business. In Paris. His father put up the money so he could get into the business.

16:16 And then when I read this next paragraph, let me tell you what I thought. Let me read the paragraph to you first. It says Then troubles came. The or said I never really got over them. His brother was locked up in an insane asylum. His mother died. And During the depression, his father went bankrupt. And at the same time Dior's

16:30 Our galler failed. And so I wrote, Would there be a Dior fashion brand? If this never happened, opportunity is a strange beast. It frequently appears after a loss. My previous note th what I just read to you was written before I read this sentence and it's exactly what had just come to mind. Without this financial disaster, Dior would probably have spent his life as a middle ranking art dealer and died unknown. And so he takes this opportunity, he just takes a bunch of like random jobs.

16:55 Like the way you would describe what Christian Dior is doing before he's gonna get this crazy opportunity. Like you won't even believe what's about to happen. was that he was essentially hovering on the fridges of the fashion industry. Right?

17:07 Taking humble jobs. in the industry that he wanted to work in. And then let me read this to you. This is fascinating. Then came a unique stroke of fortune that transformed his life. And this is what Paul writes. In this book, I do not perhaps pay enough attention to the rule of luck and the creative process, especially to the way it it sometimes allows. A frustrated would be creator to fulfill his destiny.

17:25 Dior certainly believed in luck. Wanna pause there before I get into Dior's like superstitious behavior. Last week f in the Paul Graham episode on three fourteen, he said this 'Cause he's read a bunch of biography just like I have. When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting or by reading a book they happen to pick up. So you need to make yourself a big target for luck.

17:46 And the way you do that is to be curious. This is exactly what's about to happen. to Christian Dior. So let's go back to this idea that Dor Dior certainly believed in luck. He would go and Like he he just believed in fortune tellers.

17:59 And so One of his fortune tellers told him that women will be very lucky for you, you will earn uh much money from them and you will travel widely. And so he believed that even though he had no reason to believe that at that point. What does I mean by that? As of July nineteen forty six, Dior was a nobody who was in his forties with nothing in his design career to suggest a genius. Yet it is at this precise time, right?

18:20 This is the stroke of fortune that changed Dior's life. Opportunity is a strange beast, it frequently appears after a loss. So he gets this meeting in this month, he meets Marcel Busac. Now the crazy thing is, this is the business, Busak's business. is the business that a young Bernard O'Naul buys. I think he's like thirty five years old at the time. So Bernard is going to buy This business

18:43 Forty years from where we are in the story. I love how all this stuff connects together. It's always fascinating to me. So Dior meets Busack. Right, Busak at the time is a textile magnate who was called The King of Cotton.

18:54 Busac wanted to own a big Paris fashion house. To give prestige to his booming But Kind of boring business. And so someone had told Busack that

19:03 Dior might be able to help produce his ideas. That's the reason for the meeting. Now this is wild. Think about how courageous Dior had to be at this point, right? And this is what your response to I'm not interested in managing a clothing factory. What you need and what I would like to run is a craftsman workshop.

19:18 In which we recruit The very best people in the trade To reestablish in Paris a salon. for the greatest luxury and the highest standards of workmanship. It will cost a great deal of money.

19:29 And entail much risk. Now this is fascinating'cause if you stop and think what's happening, you need to know who you're talking to. For some people, a slight minority of humans, they're not trying to go through the easiest route for life. They want to go for great And so this idea where it's just like Oh, what you really want is We're gonna d hire the best craftsmen.

19:48 In the world, we're gonna reestablish Paris as a salon for the greatest luxury and the highest standards of workmanship. And by the way, Busak. It's gonna cost you a great deal of money. And entail much risk. Most people would run away from that. Busak runs towards it in to an astonishing degree, which I'll get to in a minute.

20:04 But I couldn't help but think. I've seen this before where it's like okay. Uh a few m weeks ago I did the the episode on Mark Twain. One of the things that Mark Twain wanted to see when he was a young man, he was going west across uh uh the United States, or I guess it wasn't even United States back then. Or at least a lot large parts of where he was covering wasn't yet part of the United States, I guess the way to put it.

20:23 And so he was fascinated by this new thing called the Pony Express. Pony Express. Right, when they wanted to they delivered mail rapidly. Way faster than anyone else could. And so when they want to attract the right kind of risk taking people, you see that in in how you present this to them. Just like Dior presented this to Busak.

20:39 This is what the founder of the entrepreneur Pony Express said. This is the ad for that. Wanted young, skinny. Wiery fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, horse riders.

20:49 Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. What was the result? Hundreds of adventure seeking young men actually up responded to that ad. Go back even further in the founders archives, I did an episode on Ernest Shackleton, the famous Polar Explorer, right? He has a world famous

21:05 Uh they they call one of his uh his ad one of the greatest job ads of all time. He said men wanted. For hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger.

21:17 Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success. There's an element in that into what Dior's pitching Busac. And this is a response. Busak liked the idea and offered to set Dior up immediately with an investment of ten million francs, and this was later increased to a hundred million francs.

21:34 And we see that Dior came out of the gate swinging. Remember what James Lyson said, different for the sake of it. Uh, so it says Dior doubled the risk of opening a new house with his revolutionary quote unquote new look, a deliberate and defiant return to the most extravagant use of material. He spat in the face of post war egalitarianism. And said, I want to make the rich feel rich again.

21:56 His first collection turned out to be the most successful in fashion history. With no expense spared and endless trouble taken, D are recruited and continue to employ The best people to be found in France. France. Men and women who would die.

22:11 rather than turn out an article which was in the tiniest degree below the best in the world. That is how you win. The success of the house was immediate and prolonged. And the volume of business continued to grow steadily in the ten years up to Dior's death in nineteen fifty seven. By which time the house employed.

22:27 One thousand They are the Pixar. of fashion houses. During this decade, Dior sold over one hundred thousand dresses.

22:39 Made from sixteen thousand Design sketches and using one thousand miles of fabric. Again, another example that being prolific is underrated. And another thing that being prolific does, it increases your surface area of luck. It was it's present in I think a lot of industries, but it's explicit.

22:57 In the fashion industry. It has to be understood that designers or courtiers never present just one line. They produce a variety of styles in each collection. And though for publicity purp purposes they stress a particular favorite, they know that in the end The magazine writers, the big buyers, and above all, the individual customers will decide which is dominant. the sheer volume that they produce being prolific increases your surface area of luck. Made me think of uh Picasso where

23:22 You know, Picasso's one of the ma the most famous artists in history. He produced twenty six thousand or whatever it was. We only remember a a few. And somebody responded to me, they're like, Yeah, but most of his Stuff was crap. And I go, that's the point. One of the most important ideas that we fundamentally do not understand that is counterintuitive to how our brain naturally works.

23:40 People don't remember the crap. Another way to think about this is what Paul Graham said in that essay. Fast week's episode. You can have a lot of good ideas without also having a lot of bad ones. If you have great ideas, no one will remember the bad ones.

23:55 Now we go back to Balenciaga. Balenciaga never commented. On other designers. Another way to say is Balenciaga focused on his own house, or Jimmy Ivine would have said Balenciaga had blinders on. And yet as successful as Dior was, everybody knew. that Balenciaga was a one of one, it says in every other way, now comparing directly comparing Balenciaga and Dor, in every other way Balenciaga was immeasurably superior.

24:21 And why? Because Dior could not actually make a dress. He was a designer, as Coco Chanel said, not a courtier. And then Paul Johnson, the author, says this was true of virtually all of the others then and since. And in fact he encouraged what Dior was doing. Why?'Cause he's also a very smart businessman. He realizes that more new customers in the Parisian fashion is good for everyone in the instr industry. Balenciaga did not regret the success of the new look. He was a businessman and a very astute one.

24:48 And he recognized That it had done wonders for the Parisian fashion industry and everyone involved in it. Himself, perhaps most of all, had benefited from the publicity. He certainly did not see Dior as a rival, and he had no fear that his own claims to excellence would ever be overlooked. Do you address the rich?

25:05 Balenciaga. The very rich. And this was known at the time. It says during the nineteen fifties, a woman graduated. From Dior to Balenciaga. So what is Dior doing for Balenciaga? He's filling

25:18 the top of the funnel. He's just gonna bring him more customers. It just may take a few years. And then to Dior's part, he recognized like I'm not Balenciaga. Dior was never jealous of Balenciaga's superior skills. He recognized them and revered the man who possessed them. Dior always called Balenciaga master. And again, they know each other. That's why it's so important for to getting to the wherever your industry is like located. B when Balenciaga's partner, this was uh his lover, died.

25:43 Balenciaga was so upset that he seriously considered retiring and then Dior went to see him and begged him to stay. We need your example and all that is best in our trade. And so what kind of person gets to the absolute very top of their profession We're gonna we've seen this before. Balenciaga had a religious level devotion to his craft. He regarded making dresses

26:02 As a vocation. Like the priesthood. And an act of wors. God

26:08 By suitably adorning the female form which God had made beautiful. His approach was reverential. And indeed sacred. His premises Reflected

26:19 His own vocational Ton So this part was fascinating, so what they mean is not only does The the best companies take on the personality of their founders.

26:28 But their actual headquarters will look like the founder's approach to his business. Balenciaga's house in Paris looked like a church. And they compare it to some of the other designers at the time, and some look like a London townhouse townhouse or something that's like warm and inviting. And so it says his house was like a church and indeed a monastery. When people visited they said it was like entering a covenant.

26:48 They would describe the atmosphere as monastic. In both an architectural and in a spiritual sense. And even the environment within, like the working environment, with th it it's very much like you would you would feel like almost like monk like. Нобаді спок. If it was absolutely necessary to speak, the voice had to be hushed or reduced to a whisper.

27:08 Security was intense. It was difficult not just to get in at all. But to move from one room to another for all entrances were guarded. Customers, which were called patrons, We're only allowed in by appointment.

27:21 And in the room where Balenciaga actually worked. It was totally inaccessible, except to his most senior staff. This was hilarious. At one time it was widely believed that he did not actually exist. And that Balenciaga was a pseudonym, so they talked about the fact that he would never court public uh publicity. He wouldn't go out to dinner.

27:37 He was in it for the work itself to the activity of making s beautiful. Beautiful dresses that were Bequeath. Which we'll get to in a minute. He definitely preferred to move in silence. He never did anything to court popularity. He never gave interviews except once to the London Times when he decided to retire.

27:54 He never went out in society and there are virtually no photographs of him And none of him at work. His remoteness was not a pose, but part of his dedication to his art. He worked fanatically hard. Each collection that he made had between two hundred and two hundred and fifty designs. All of which he completed himself. Since he had few trusted assistants and often turned down promising juniors.

28:15 In fact, a seventeen year old G Vinci tried to work for him and he said no. More on how he worked, he never raised his voice. Indeed, silence was his norm. There was something noble about him. In just one day, he could get through fitting sessions for a hundred and eighty outfits by dint of intense concentration. Where have we seen that again? Edmund Land said.

28:35 Intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out In people. resources they didn't know they had. It's one of the key traits that Balenciaga used to get through these crazy days. So in one day he could get through a fitting session for 180 outfits. by dint of intense concentration and by working with a team who knew exactly what his gestures signified, for few words were spoken.

28:54 His fundamental principle. as a dressmaker. So there's three principles we're gonna go over. This is the first one. His fundamental principle as a dressmaker was to make women happy. And this description of what he made shows that he was a true master at work. His clothes were above all comfortable to wear. That's

29:10 Incredible. Because when you look When I see these designs, I would be like oh I like that has to be uncomfortable. So his clothes We're above all comfortable to wear an amazing fact. And it was a fact considering their grandeur, their complexity, and the magnificence of their materials. And he had a reason for doing this. This is what he said. Balenciaga argued that if a m woman was comfortable in her clothes, she was confident. And if she was confident, she was at her best and wore her clothes with style. He said that some designers put a strain on the client.

29:36 So that she was glad to get out of the dress at the end of the evening. He wanted his clients to be reluctant To part with their clothes. Which had become an integral part of their body. A second skin. Listen how he talks.

29:49 This reminded me of Enzo Ferraris, the first person that put this idea in my mind. You can tell when people really have stolen the soul in the game. Is because they'll describe their products the way you would describe your lover. He wants you to not want to take off your dress. He wants it to become an integral part of your body. He wants it to be a second skin. This is not normal language that people usually associate with

30:09 Products, right? Inanimate products. It's incredible. His second principle was permanence. While Dior made changes twice a year, Balenciaga was always fundamentally the same. Especially in his splendid evening dresses. Which were his specialty.

30:23 And this is what I meant about blowing my mind. Right. A woman could buy one of them as an investment because properly looked after it would last forever. In two thousand three, I saw a young woman of eighteen wearing a superb dress. Is that not a Balenciaga, I asked. Yes, she said.

30:39 It belonged To my grandmother. Balenciaga wanted his dresses to be bequeathed. How many people have ever made a dress That could be bequeathed.

30:49 Address Worn a quarter of a century after Its creator had died. Permanence. He's aiming for permanence. He was impressed by the way dresses, hats, and even accessories in certain old masters.

31:02 Remained elegant. After hundreds of years, and he constantly got ideas from them. So again. My favorite line in this book is that all creative individuals build on the works of their predecessors. No one creates in a vacuum. Balenciaga took a ton of ideas. From past dressmakers.

31:15 Past painters, past artists, and then transformed them and added his own touch to create something new. Balenciaga also would create his own words for his work. Right. You don't wear A Balenciaga dress, you present it.

31:28 That's how he would talk to his patrons, his customers, right? You're not wearing this. This is how you present, this is the proper way to wear it, right? What we would use where, but he would say, This is the proper way to present it. Third principle, right? World class products are gonna contain world class ingredients. This applies to your company too. great companies are full of great people, right? Balenciaga's third principle.

31:47 Was the central importance of material in his designs. Textile and lace manufacturers, embroiderers, and specialists. lined up for appointments to see him, and often collaborated with him to produce completely new complex materials. And because he could do everything himself, that's allowed him to recognize a true genius. Somebody is way better at

32:04 that activity than he is. He could die himself and o and often did. His skill at embroidery Enabled him to pick out the occasional genius. To him a first class. Textile creator. was an equal

32:16 He patronized the best embroideries in the world. That's something Steve Jobs would do. There are no shortcuts around quality, and quality starts with people. It's one of my favorite Steve Jobs. Quotes. How again. How do you know that they're that somebody has soul in the game?

32:30 This is s this is how you could tell and this is how you could tell somebody's doing their life's work. He's making it and not even telling people that he did it. He often sowed to keep his hand in. And for every collection he design, cut, sewed, and finished entirely himself a little black dress. Usually of silk, sold like the others, but never identified as his. He had that compulsion to create.

32:50 And this is one of my favorite paragraphs. The essence of his You really think about let me back up. You really think about this is handmade Craftsmanship. Right.

32:58 The essence of his creation. Воз за ворков Хумен Ханс. Bringing into existence the images projected on paper from his powerful and inventive brain. The archives of his company survive intact. And they revealed the extent to which everything was done by hand.

33:13 The exact sums paid by his celebrated clients. Dates for fittings and deliveries. All entered in fine pen and ink. Material supplied in detail and the prices paid. And countless pieces of paper show the process.

33:26 Whereby each garment was created. In ink and pencil and crayon. With pieces of the material used pinned On by the master sketcher. A lost world of agile.

33:38 Tireless fingers. Before the computer or even the typewriter took Over. I want to draw the parallel to Enzo Ferrari yet again. When he first launched his cars in America, this is what was said about them. Nothing like a Ferrari had ever graced American roads.

33:53 They were cars built by Italian artisans. Every detail down to the steering wheel. handcrafted using some of the same methods used to make Roman suits of armor and the royal carriages of ancient kingdoms. And the result of this seventy year career. He's he's wealthy. He's rich, he's got houses in

34:10 Paris, in Madrid, in Barcelona, in Basque. But the way he designed his main resident something there's a line in there. that stuck out to me that I realized his mom was key to all of this. Remember she teaches him how to sew at three and a half years old. The centerpiece of the house was a vast antique wall table. with his mother's old singer sewing machine

34:31 In a solitary state. beneath a vast and fearsomely realistic crucifix. And then the nineteen sixties come. Everybody goes to like trendy new designs. He found the word trendy abhorrent. He's remember, he's going for permanence. So says Balenciaga continued designing for a time, and it is significant that his dresses of the late nineteen sixties.

34:51 Against the trend. cut against the bias as he put it. That is a great maxim. That's what he that's a direct quote from him. Cut against the bias. Cut against the bias is a great maximum. So says Balenciaga continued designing for a time, and it is significant that his dresses of the late nineteen sixties, against the trend, cut against the bias, as he put it, are now the ones most admired.

35:11 Collected and copied. Balenciaga has been genuinely regarded as the greatest dressmaker in the world. Abruptly he retired, shut down his paris house completely. Because there was no possible successor And return to Spain.

35:26 He died in nineteen seventy two. It is most improbable that the kind of dresses Balenciaga created in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties will ever be made again. They are indeed museum pieces to inspire women or among the fortunate descendants of his clients. Heirlooms to be treasured. And on grand occasions

35:46 Flaunted. What an ending. For the full story, highly recommend buying the book. If you buy the book using the link below. You'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. I would not recommend reading it in chronological order, like I said before.

35:59 go through the table contents, find the people you're most interested in, and read that chapter. It's the perfect book to jump around in. That is three hundred and fifteen books down, one thousand to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.