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It was in Paris in the 1960s, and during the meeting Prom Dresses 2011 threw a copy of Paris Match across the room, outraged that a Pierre Cardin baby-doll dress was on the cover. This flare-up from the man who can be thought of as fashion's Eternal Flame was a moment that the young Beene never forgot: A dress was worthy of passion, analysis and anger. Why did Balenciaga object to the baby-doll? No doubt he didn't like Cocktail Dresses vulnerable thighs exposed by high hemlines. Writing of the 1930s, the decade in which Balenciaga began to make his mark upon the world, Vogue's Bettina Ballard noted in her memoir, "In My Fashion" (1960), that it was a period when young women had no "standing in the smart world. A woman Floor Length Strapless Waterfall Dress not considered important in Paris until she was well in her thirties and had her children behind her so she could concentrate on a fashionable life." Taut young things in first flower didn't wear couture. Female bodies with some experience and perhaps a bit "more" in the tummy, bust and arms did. ("Monsieur Balenciaga likes a little stomach," his fitters would say.) Gravity, dignity, spirituality. These tonalities were alive in Balenciaga's design and were important to his cultured clientele: women of means, Floral One Shoulder Backless Slit Long Prom Dress of a certain age, women who understood that he was first among equals. (Coco Chanel and Christian Dior both bowed to his endless originality.) Balenciaga designed for the magisterial likes of Gloria Guinness, Pauline de Rothschild and Bunny Mellon, not for the Twiggies, groupies and hippies of the 1960s youthquake those skinny girls wearing the brave new minis of Cardin and Andre Courreges. Yet no matter how brave and new the work of young designers, none of it was free of Balenciaga's elemental influence.