The Archive as Narrative: Percy Savage and Alison Settle’s Role in the Mythmaking of Cristóbal Balenciaga

Writing in 1954, British journalist Alison Settle acknowledged that it was rare to find authoritative books on the creation of fashion, although histories of costume and theories on dress were common. This article focuses on material from the archives of two key fashion motivators, the British journalist Alison Settle and fashion PR Percy Savage. Together with the life writing and fashion books of contemporaries of Cristóbal Balenciaga, this research aims to understand how the mythology which has grown up around the couturier was constructed to fill an almost complete absence of his own voice. Key themes emerging from this study include the professional value of social intimacy, the use of personal testimony as a mechanism for myth making, and the dynamics of fashion authorship through archival practices. Close analysis of Alison Settle’s and Percy Savage’s archival materials illustrates how the act of collecting, curating, and writing about fashion is, in itself a historiographical intervention. Figures such as fashion editors Bettina Ballard, and Marie-Louise Bousquet also reveal how editorial authority was not only a matter of institutional power, but also of personal access, taste, and narrative control.