Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney

“I want to make the rich feel rich again.”

For this reason he did not, like some designers, expect a client to suppress her personality; he expected her to emphasize it—he rejoiced when a woman “added to” his work. Strict and implacable in many ways, he had a certain creative modesty which allowed him to see that his dresses only became alive when worn, and that the wearer was needed to com

Charles Frederick Worth (1825–1895)

He opened a second house in Madrid and a third in Barcelona, all three called Eisa, after his mother.

In December 1948, Balenciaga’s partner, Vladzio, died at age forty-nine. The master was so upset that he seriously considered retiring and returning to Spain. The word got around, and Dior went to see him on Avenue George V and begged him to stay: “We need your example in all that is best in our trade.” Dior suggested, instead, that Balenciaga shou

Then, that month, he met Marcel Boussac, a textile magnate who was called “King Cotton.” Boussac wanted to own a big Paris fashion house to give prestige to his booming but humdrum business; and he had a crumbling house called Philippe et Gaston. Someone told him that Dior might be able to produce ideas—hence their meeting. Dior told him:

So the fashionable world went to Paris, and all the great designers were to be found there. Among the foreign-born masters of Parisian fashion, Balenciaga was the greatest.4 Indeed many would rate him the most original and creative couturier in history. And he was a true couturier, not just a designer: that is, he could design, cut, sew, fit, and f

His fundamental principle as a dressmaker was to make women happy. “He liked to make a duchess of sixty look forty, and the wife of a millionaire tradesman look like a duchess.” His clothes were, above all, comfortable to wear, an amazing fact—and it was a fact—considering their grandeur, their complexity, and the magnificence of their materials.

Wallis Simpson,