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One of the main aims of the Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation is to promote research into the life and work of Cristóbal Balenciaga. The foundation is thus organising the second International Conference on the fashion designer, which is scheduled to take place on 2 and 3 October, 2025 at the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum in Getaria.
This internationally oriented conference aims to serve as a platform for presenting innovative, high-quality research on the figure and legacy of the couturier in all his dimensions personal, business, creative, technical and others. It also welcomes papers that analyse the various biographical, cultural and professional contexts in which Balenciaga worked.
This edition will showcase 24 groundbreaking studies focusing on the couturier and his legacy, selected from over 60 proposals submitted by researchers from academic institutions around the world.
Miren Arzalluz graduated in History from Deusto University, has a Master's Degree in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics, and a Master's Degree in History of Art, where she majored in History of Dress from the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 2021, Miren completed her PhD at Deusto University, focusing on the rise of fashion on the Côte Basque as a fundamental factor of its development as an international summer tourist destinations, and on the key role that names such as Gabrielle Chanel and Cristóbal Balenciaga played in that regard.
She was Head of Collections and Exhibitions at the Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation between 2006 and 2013, when she published her book Cristóbal Balenciaga. La forja del maestro (1895-1936) (English edition: ‘Cristóbal Balenciaga. The Making of a Master (1895-1936)’. Between 2013 and 2017, Miren worked as a freelance curator and researcher, working with museums including the Palais Galliera in Paris and the Mode Museum (MoMu) in Antwerp.
In January 2018, she was appointed as Director of the Palais Galliera Fashion Museum in Paris, where she headed its refurbishment. In 2024, she was chosen by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao board to replace Juan Ignacio Vidarte as the museum's director, from his retirement in April 2025.
Ana Balda is a full professor (officially accredited by ANECA in 2024). In 2013, she joined the Department of Audiovisual Culture and Communication at Navarra University as an associate professor, where she teaches History of Fashion and Fashion Illustration & Photography.
Since she completed her PhD on the communication at the Balenciaga fashion house (1937-1968), Balda has continued to research the life, works and context of the Basque designer. Her research work has led to her curating several exhibitions and to publishing articles in academic journals and specialist books.
Ana co-authored with María Kublin Kublin-Balenciaga. A Fashion Record (Thames & Hudson, 2024).
Emily Brayshaw is internationally known for her work on the visual culture of fashion and costume design. She is an honorary research fellow at the University of Technology Sydney.
Her interdisciplinary research analyses the past, present and future of critical fashion and costume design, with a focus on the identities, the luxury, the costumes per se, the corporeality and methodologies of design from the 19th century to the present.
At the same time, Emily is actively involved with the artistic scene in Sydney, where she has worked as a costume designer for critically acclaimed theatrical productions.
Professor Sophie Kurkdjian has lectured in the social and cultural history of the garment and fashion at the American University of Paris since September 2020. She has been a research associate at the Institut d’histoire du temps présent (CNRS) since 2012, where she runs a research seminar on the cultural history of fashion.
In 2018, Sophie set up the Culture(s) de Mode research network in conjunction with the French Ministry of Culture. As an exhibition curator, she organised the Mode & Femmes, 14–18 show at the Forney Library in Paris in 2017.
After completing her cultural history studies, she earned her PhD in 2013 with a dissertation on the history of the fashion press and publishers in the early 20th century. After completing a research project on the historical construction of the standing of Paris as the 'capital of fashion' between 1858 and 1947, she is currently studying the history of the work and workers in the fashion and garment industry between 1880 and 1940.
Lesley E. Miller has been Professor of Dress and Textile History at the University of Glasgow since 2013. She was Senior Curator of Textiles and Dress in the Furniture, Textiles and Fashion Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Her first book on Balenciaga was published in 1993, and the second edition was extensively revised to accompany Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion (V&A, 2016-2017), an exhibition where she was a consultant curator.
Lesley is currently researching the design and trade of Spanish and French silks in the 18th century, which is central to her forthcoming monographs.
Carlos Naya has been Dean of the School of Architecture at Navarra University since 2021. He received the Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award for his theoretical research into the main documents and manifestos of the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century.
He was a visiting researcher at the GSAPP of Columbia University (New York, 2007-2008), where he worked with leading theoreticians of architecture, including Kenneth Frampton, Mark Wigley and Joan Ockman. Carlos has lectured at ISEM Fashion Business School (Navarra University, Madrid), as well as at different European and US schools of architecture, including the Architectural Association School of Architecture (London).
Carlos is currently working with the London College of Fashion (UAL, London) on organising an international master's degree.
Alexandra Palmer was the Nora E. Vaughan Fashion Costume Senior Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), where she was responsible for a collection of 44,000 western fashion and textile items from Europe and North America.
She is associate professor at the History of Art Department at Toronto University, where she lectures on the impact of textiles and fashion on climate change.
Alexendra has curated over 20 exhibitions at the ROM, contributed to international museum catalogues, books and academic journals, and is the author of three prize-winning publications. In 2023, she was appointed Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques for her contribution to French culture.
Elisa Palomino has 25 years' experience designing for luxury brands such as John Galliano, Christian Dior, Moschino and Roberto Cavalli, and her work is where fashion, education and anthropology meet.
She has a PhD in Anthropology and Sustainable Fashion from the London College of Fashion, is an international conference speaker, and was the Director of the Fashion Print Department at Central Saint Martins for a decade.
Elisa has successfully led EU-funded projects, such as FishSkin on the Horizon 2020 programme, and has been the recipient of prestigious scholarships, including the Fulbright, the Library of Congress Kluge Fellowship, the Max Planck for the History of Science, the Fondazione Cini, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, the Max-Planck Institute and ANAMED.
She is currently a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, where she specialises in indigenous fashion of the Arctic. She is also an educational advisor for the Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation and the co-creator of the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum Transmissions educational programme.
Karena De Perthuis is full professor at the School of Humanities and Communication Arts of Western Sydney University and co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Fashion Studies.
Her research explores the intersection of fashion, media and the body. Recent publications include work on fashion photography, fashion performativity and fashion utopias Instagram influencers and Tilda Swinton.
She is currently working on a monograph entitled The Fashionable Ideal: Undoing Bodies and Images in Fashion, which will be published by Bloomsbury in 2024.
Dr. Véronique Pouillard is full professor at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at Oslo University. Her research is in the field of business and economic history, with special focus on areas including the media, luxury, manufacturing, and the history of intellectual property rights, topics on which she has published books and articles.
She is the author of Paris to New York: The Transatlantic Fashion Industry in the Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press, 2021) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Luxury Business (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Véronique was lead researcher on the HERA II project on The Enterprise of Culture, funded by the European Science Foundation, and one of the four coordinators of the Nordic Branding project funded by the UiO:Norden transdisciplinary initiative (2017-2019).
At present, Véronique heads the CREATIVE IPR – The History of Intellectual Property Rights in the Creative Industries (2019-2025), funded by the ERC Consolidator programme (Grant 818523). She is currently writing a book on the history of the internationalization and the colonization of intellectual property.
Giorgio Riello is Professor of Global History of the Modern Era at the European University Institute in Fiesole (Italy). He is also professor of Global Culture and History at the University of Warwick (United Kingdom) (currently on leave of absence).
He is the author of A Foot in the Past (2006), Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (2013), Luxury: A Rich History (2016, co-written with P. McNeil), Back in Fashion: Western Fashion from the Middle Ages to the Present (2020) and Tutte le perle del mondo (2023, co-written with M.G. Muzzarelli and L. Mola).
He co-edited The Right to Dress: Sumptuary in a Global Perspective (2019), Dressing Global Bodies (2020) and The Cambridge Global History of Fashion (2 vols., 2023).
Simona Segre-Reinach is full professor of Fashion Studies at the University of Bologna. She has written extensively on fashion from a global perspective.
Her more recent publication include: Fashion in Multiple Chinas. Chinese Styles in the Transglobal Landscape (2019), Biki. French Visions for Italian Fashion (2019) and Per un vestire gentile. Moda e liberación animale (2022).
Simona is a member of the editorial committee of the Fashion Theory and Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty journals.
Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), where she has personally organized more than 25 exhibitions since 1997.
She is author or editor of over 30 books, translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. She is also founder and editor in chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, the first peer-reviewed academic journal in Fashion Studies.
From 2014 to the present, Valerie has appeared on The Business of Fashion 500 list, as one of the people shaping the global fashion industry.
Igor Uria graduated in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country, where he majored in Conservation and Restoration. He went on to specialise at Deusto and Alcalá de Henares universities, along with studying at the CIETA in Lyon and Curating Fashion and Dress on the V&A International Training Course in London.
In 2004, Igor was put in charge of the Conservation and Records Department at the Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation. He is currently Director of Collections at Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa, a post that he has held since 2014, and has curated most of the exhibitions at the institution.
Parque Aldamar, 6
20808 Getaria, Gipuzkoa
Email: info@cristobalbalenciagamuseoa.com
Phone: + 34 943 00 88 40
