Inside the V&A’s Extraordinary New Balenciaga Exhibition

Were Cristóbal Balenciaga alive today, no doubt he would have abhorred selfie culture; the couturier was notoriously private, giving only one interview in his lifetime – after he retired. And yet, despite his shunning of the spotlight, no designer invites hyperbole quite like he did. To Dior he was “the master of us all”; to Chanel the “only real designer”. Ex-apprentice Hubert de Givenchy said Balenciaga taught him more than the Bible ever did, Diana Vreeland quipped that…