San Sebastián (EFE).- “San Sebastián, fashion scene” is the title of a photographic exhibition that opens in the Kubo Room. The exhibition reviews what the first decades of the 20th century were like in a city in which fashion played a fundamental role.
The city offered “a concentrated experience” of what could be found in capitals like Paris and London, in which fashion played a fundamental role.
San Sebastian as a fashion scene
There are more than a hundred black and white images gathered for this exhibition, baptized as “San Sebastián, fashion scenes”. It can be visited from this Thursday until October 15.
Image of a model posing on the beach of La Concha. EFE/Juan Herrero
Its curator is Miren Arzalluz, director of the Palais Galiera, the Fashion Museum in Paris. She has presented this new proposal together with Ane Abalde, director of Art and Heritage at Kutxa Fundazioa and responsible for the Kubo and Artegunea rooms.
The selected images come from the Fototeka de Kutxa. They belonged to the Photo Carte and Foto Marín shops in San Sebastian, whose funds the entity acquired in 1973. There are true jewels in black and white signed by Ricardo Martín and Pascual Marín.
A city that emerges as a center of leisure and socialization
Arzalluz has warned that the exhibition is not planned as “an exercise in nostalgia”. Its purpose is to convey “the importance that fashion played in the emergence of the city as a center of leisure and socialization”, when also “the Côte Basque was being defined as a tourist territory”, in which Biarritz also played a key role.
In this development, which had begun at the end of the 19th century, the summer holidays in San Sebastián of the royal family had to do. They attracted “the aristocratic, economic and artistic elites”, who were “the main fashion prescribers” in the first decades of the 20th century.
Graphic reporters at the presentation of “San Sebastián, a fashion scene”. EFE/Juan Herrero.
“San Sebastián offered each season a concentrated version of the experience in the modern city, with streets, avenues, parks, gardens and promenades; casinos, hotels, theaters, and cafes; concerts, theatrical performances, masked balls and ‘kermesses’, explained the curator. All of them were erected “in new settings where seeing and being seen constituted an essential part of the experience,” she added.
distinguished visitors
“Queen Victoria Eugenia leaving the famous ‘Marzo’ jewelry store”, “Woman pilot dressed in a knitted outfit and trench coat at the San Sebastián Grand Prix” and “Dancing teas on the casino terrace” are three of the photographs on display. They attest to what was lived in the city in those years. A time in which the “degree of sophistication” of the wealthy classes was even transferred to the models of swimsuits that they wore on the beaches of La Concha and Ondarreta.
Horse riding, bullfighting and sports such as golf and tennis also attracted these visitors, who also had a “very intense” cultural program and shows. For example, Josephine Baker went through the Teatro Príncipe and the French multi-champion Suzanne Lenglen played at the Royal Tennis Club, as anyone who attends the exhibition will see.
The boost to local development
“As a different suit was necessary for each occasion, the demand multiplied, and with it the sewing workshops and shops selling all kinds of accessories, hats, gloves, costume jewelery and jewellery.
Numerous women, dressmakers, tailors, hat makers, cutters, testers, embroiderers, salespeople, or models, found in this thriving industry a way to become independent, to undertake and to create”, Arzalluz recounted.
That impulse led many people from San Sebastian to train abroad and then return and set up their businesses. Also, to “high fashion” houses in Paris to rent apartments or spaces in hotels in the Gipuzkoan capital to organize fashion shows in which to show their collections.
A woman walks through the San Sebastián of a century ago in the black and white image. EFE/Juan Herrero
That bustling society and the work of those women in the workshops where the clothes were made to be up to date were captured by the cameras of Martín and Marín.
From his enormous material, a small sample of the best images is exhibited, divided in the spaces of the Kubo Room into six thematic sections: “Beach scenes. Style and freedom”, “Urban scenes. See and be seen”, “Horse riding and bullfighting. Parade and show”, “Elite sport. Comfort and sport fashion”, “Social life. Luxury and sophistication” and “Dressmakers and tailors. Office and excellence”.
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