College News

The fashion of Balenciaga fascinates QE students

A Level Textiles and Art Foundation students from QE, recently had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Anne Haworth, lecturer at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, about the Balenciaga exhibition currently being staged by the museum. Cristóbal Balenciaga founded his luxury fashion house almost 100 years ago and his ideas continue to influence contemporary fashion designers today.

Students were highly engaged by the lecture which explored Balenciaga’s life and the impact his key fashion garments have had in shaping today’s couture fashions. Anne examined Balenciaga’s skills in recreating the female form, avoiding emphasis on the waist and utilising the effect of fullness, volume and drapery to carefully select fabrics which were used to create garments considered innovative and pioneering at that time.

Art Foundation and fashion specialist student, Zara Shamlou, explains: “I am fascinated by the unique way in which Balenciaga worked, inspiring new ways of constructing shapes and forms,” whilst A Level Textiles student, Jade Cook, adds: “It was an excellent presentation and truly interesting to learn about the history of Balenciaga and the designer himself”.

Anne described her visit as “vibrant, wonderful and engaging. It was fantastic to explore the life and work of Balenciaga with such lovely students”. Sarah Steel, teacher of Textiles, concludes: “We were very lucky to be able to host such a high profile lecture. Anne was incredibly knowledgeable, engaging and made Balenciaga’s work very accessible to the students by contextualising it with contemporary fashion design. We are also very grateful to the North Yorkshire and South Durham Arts Society for sponsoring the event and for contributing prizes to a competition to be launched in local schools and colleges based on the Balenciaga lecture and the theme of ‘Form and Function’”.

The ‘Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion’ exhibition is on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London until Sunday 18^th February 2018.