It all started with a thread…
Going through Bunny Mellon scraps (read about why I am doing this here), I found a spool of thread, and curious about it, I took a photo and put it in Chat GPT to see what it can tell me about it. From the spool markings, it knows it is from 1950’s or 1960’s. After I told it where it came from, it said, "Bunny Mellon was one of Hubert de Givenchy's closest friends and a premier patron of Cristóbal Balenciaga, often buying entire collections of haute couture. A luxury German filament silk thread like Gütermann Soie Laska would have been standard in a workspace creating or altering elite garments during the mid-20th century.”
Balenciaga made most of her clothes. Even her gardening clothes. She liked to keep fabric scraps from her garments and furnishings. That made me think that it would be nice to see if I could find photos of her wearing clothes with the scraps I have. That sent me down the rabbit hole, and I have spent a couple of days researching. I have made a few nice discoveries. I found a lot in this article about the Rachel Mellon Collection in the Cristobal Balenciaga Museum.
The first thing I saw was this fabric, which, when I opened the link, was right in front of me. It was used in a gown she wore for an art opening at the National Gallery of Art, which was founded by her father-in-law, Andrew Mellon.
I haven’t used the fabric in my quilt, but I think I will. I am making a design of a chandelier in her gardening shed. Yes, she had a chandelier in her gardening shed. This fabric may be part of it.
Then I saw this dress. Now this fabric I have used a lot of in the quilt. It makes great foliage around the buildings.
This beautiful blue makes the perfect sky around all the buildings and tie them together.
I almost feel guilty cutting up these fabrics. Think how many times my cats have slept on them!
Here is one of her bills. She got 5 dresses for $6,326. In the 50s, the average house was around $7,000.
She ordered so many clothes from Balenciaga that there were 50 people in his atelier exclusively working on her wardrobe. Clients would usually go there to get fitted, but she had mannequins made in her size.
I don’t know why, but I left the most difficult and important part of the quilt for last. Her house. I’m getting ready to do this in the next few days, and I’m a little intimidated by it. Maybe that is why I left it for last.
