Pink gazar silk evening dress with lace bustier, designed by Cristóbal Balenciaga for Eisa, Spain, winter 1965

Pink gazar silk evening dress with lace bustier. There is a built-in brassiere which forms the bodice section at the front. The dress itself is bagged out with a second layer and is cut from one rectangular piece of silk gazar. The gazar is mounted under the front skirt sections. The bow at the back is double folded with pleated tabs. The shoulders also have pleated tabs.

Given by Miss Ava Gardner

Registered File number 1985/1585.

If the cost of his Paris salon was out of reach, there were other ways to buy a Balenciaga design. Some were sold less expensively under Balenciaga’s label Eisa in Spain, where labour costs were lower and cheaper fabrics might be used.

Ava Gardner moved to Madrid in the 1950s. She found Spain ‘unspoiled . . . dramatic . . .and so god-damn cheap to live in, that it was almost unbelievable’. She bought Balenciaga designs both in Paris and at Eisa, which may have appealed to what she called her ‘frugal side’. Gardner spent her final years living around the corner from the V&A and donated several of her clothes to the museum.

Gardner referred to her couture garments as her ‘babies’ and insisted on opening her wardrobes daily to let them ‘breathe’.

T.435-1985