Lot Essay
Illustrated here by a gouache from Lanvin's daybook for 1923 courtesy of Archives Lanvin
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THE SPANISH STAR OF THEATRE AND FILM
Catalina Barcena was a supremely beautiful actress, born in Cuba, who came to fame on the stage in Madrid acting in plays by Pirandello, Marcel Pagnol and George Bernard Shaw in addition to classics of the Spanish theatre.
In the mid l920's, partly to escape the scandal of her well known love triangle with her husband (whom she had married by arrangement) and her lover, Gregorio Martinez Sierra, by whom she had a daughter, Catalina Barcena went on a very long theatrical tour of South America which led her to Hollywood and a contract with 20th Century Fox. In Hollywood in the early l930s, she made seven extremely popular films for the Spanish speaking market.
From the very early l920's, Catalina Barcena dressed at the major French couturiers, chiefly, Lanvin. At the time, Lanvin was making dresses owing much to the l8th Century revivalist mood prevalent in the applied arts of the time. Catalina Barcena's cameo-like beauty suited these supremely romantic clothes which she wore both off stage, and also in the theatre and on film.
Her relationship with Jeanne Lanvin produced some of the prettiest and most feminine clothes of the early part of the l920's, documented by original correspondence and invoices.
LA MONTERIA, A JEANNE LANVIN ROBE DE STYLE OF BLACK ORGANZA
1923-4
Details
LA MONTERIA, A JEANNE LANVIN ROBE DE STYLE OF BLACK ORGANZA
1923-4
The sheer black robe embroidered with white tamboured and beaded vortices to the skirts, the bodice trimmed with three coral pink ribbon streamers
1923-4
The sheer black robe embroidered with white tamboured and beaded vortices to the skirts, the bodice trimmed with three coral pink ribbon streamers