#315 Balenciaga

**David Senra** (0:00)
If you've been listening to Founders for a while and you have not joined the private AMA feed, I really think you're missing out. This is something that I've made that is exclusively for enthusiasts of Founders, these people that completely understand the benefit of this intense studying of great people and the great work that came before us and how valuable it is to know what happened that came before you so you can apply it to what you're working on. If that is you, I recommend that you sign up for the private Founders AMA feed. I've been making these short episodes every week based on questions that I get from members. If you become a member, you'll be able to ask me questions directly. There's a private email address that you get access to in the confirmation email. I read every single one of these emails myself. I do not have an assistant that looks over them. I read every single one myself. The questions I get from these emails, I then turn into these short AMA episodes. So that allows other members to learn from questions of other members. You can also add your name and a link to your website with your question so that other members can check out what you're working on. That feature alone is worth the investment. I've actually already heard from people that have gotten new customers as a result of other AMA members hearing about their business from these episodes. So far, I've made 33 episodes. If you become a member, you can listen to those immediately. And I plan on making several episodes every week. Just got this feedback from a new subscriber. Your AMA is fantastic. I'm going through it. And I love the focused nature of the questions and the answers. If you consider yourself an enthusiast of Founders Podcast, I highly recommend that you become a member and you can join by using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player or by going to founderspodcast.com. And so one more thing before we jump into the incredible story of Balenciaga, this actually surprised me. I was so hyped up after studying and then listening to this episode, that I think I'm going to be, or try to be the Balenciaga of entrepreneurial podcasts. I do want to tell you about one of the best podcasts I've heard this year. It is episode 336 of Invest Like the Best with my friend Jeremy Giffin. It is called Special Situations in Private Markets. This episode has gone viral and disturbingly so. I actually saw somebody say that they've listened to 750 episodes of podcasts in the last year, and they think it's the best episode they've heard. I will leave a link down below, but you could probably just search whatever you're listening to this on. If you search for Invest Like the Best, make sure you follow that show and then make sure you listen to episode 336
Of all the creative people I've come across, Balenciaga was easily the most dedicated to the business of making beautiful things.
His work absorbed him totally, and there was no room in his life for anything or anyone else.
When the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s made it impossible, as he saw it, to produce work of the highest quality, he retired and quickly died of a broken heart.
Among the masters of Parisian fashion, Balenciaga was the greatest. Indeed, many would rate him the most original and creative couturier in history. And he was a true couturier, not just a designer. That is, he could design, cut, sew, fit and finish. And some of his finest dresses were entirely his own work. Let me just pause there when he says, indeed, many would rate him the most original and creative couturier in history. I'm always fascinated by these people where their peers, the people are doing very similar things of them. It's like, no, no, no. This is the person you should pay attention to. Christian Durer called Balenciaga the master of us all. And Coco Chanel said that Balenciaga was the only couturier in the truest sense of the word and that everybody else was simply a fashion designer. I've come across this level of adulation for peers in the same industry. Before, I was reading a bunch of books on John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt. And I was shocked because I didn't know who J. Gold was at the time. And Rockefeller, he was asked the question, like, who's the best businessman you've ever known? And he said, without hesitation, J. Gold. And then Cornelius Vanderbilt, when he was in his seventies and by far the richest American alive, he said that J. Gold, who was in his thirties at the time, was the smartest man in America. And so we see something similar happening here with Coco Chanel and Christian Durer, who are super successful in their own right, in the same industry. And they're like, no, no, no, Balenciaga is the greatest. And part of that is tied to that he could do every single aspect of his work. We just saw this with the episode I did on James Cameron. He can do any job that a movie needs to be made, James Cameron can do it. And so back to Balenciaga, it says that he could design, cut, sew, fit and finish. And some of his finest dresses were entirely of his own work. And there's a bunch of hints in his early life to how he became the greatest. So he's born in 1895 in Spain, in a little fishing village. His father was a sailor, but he died young leaving his wife and his children very badly off. And so his mother is left with not a lot of money and has to raise her kids on her own. She is the key to all of this, which I didn't understand the first time I read this. But as I, once you finish this and you go back through, you're like, oh, she was the key the whole time.