Farewell to Renato Balestra. The great designer passes away at the age of 98

The great fashion designer Renato Balestra, a true doyen of Italian fashion, has passed away in Rome at the age of 98. The news was given to Ansa by his daughters Fabiana and Federica and granddaughter Sofia, who will manage the brand. The funeral will be held Tuesday, Nov. 29, at the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome.

Born in Trieste on May 3, 1924, Renato Balestra began his career as an artist (in particular, he was a painter and set designer), however, preparing in parallel his studies in engineering (in fact, the family worked in the branch) and switched to fashion almost by chance: some of his sketches, in 1953, were in fact sent by a friend to the Italian Fashion Center, where they were greatly appreciated, and already that same year Balestra was invited to a fashion show. He therefore left his studies and began his training as a stylist in Jole Veneziani’satelier , the first step in his rapid career that led him to work as early as 1954 in Rome for the greatest Italian designers of the time, from Emilio Schuberth to the Sorelle Fontana. In this early phase, Balestra worked extensively for the cinema, designing costumes for such successful films as La contessa scalza, La donna più bella del mondo, La fortuna di essere donna, and L’intrigo.

His work as a costume designer also took him to Hollywood, where he designed clothes for actresses such as Zsa Zsa Gábor, Liz Taylor, Claudia Cardinale, and many others. The opening of his atelier in Rome, on Via Gregoriana, dates back to 1959, and his first Haute-Couture collection, presented moreover at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, was in 1961. Also in the 1960s, Balestra invented Blu Balestra, the bright blue that was first presented on a short satin dress and later became the symbol of his fashion house. In 1962 he became a member of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, and in 1963 he walked the runway in the White Room of the Pitti Palace. Meanwhile, his fashion house ’s commercial success also began , and by the 1970s his creations were already being sold worldwide.

Balestra is also remembered for being one of the first major fashion designers to invest in licensing, the practice whereby a house has third-party companies produce certain products and then resell them under its own brand (think, for example, of perfumes: today it is the practice for fashion houses to have fragrance lines). Balestra thus invested in perfumes (the famous Blu Balestra launched in 1978), eyewear, luggage, make-up, and household items, getting more and more hits. The Trieste designer then continued to work for film and theater as well: his last creations, in 2019 (Balestra, despite his age, was in fact still in full swing), were the sets for Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake for the Belgrade Opera House.

Also in 2019, his archive was declared of historical interest: it includes documents that testify to his history from the 1950s to the present, as well as 40,000 objects including sketches, drawings, dresses, and photographs.

Farewell to Renato Balestra. The great designer passes away at the age of 98

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