The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its Costume Institute exhibition The World of Balenciaga in the spring of 1973, honoring the Spanish couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga, who died in 1972. The exhibition was organized by Diana Vreeland, the former editor-in-chief of Vogue who had joined the Museum as special consultant to the Costume Institute the year before, and it is regarded as the moment the Costume Institute's fashion presentations shifted decisively toward the museum-scale retrospective. The galleries displayed Balenciaga's garments against walls hung with paintings by Goya, Picasso, and Velázquez, among other Spanish works, an arrangement that set his design against the grand masters of Spanish art and asserted the couturier's craft as a subject of the same seriousness. Vreeland's approach drew a line between past and present, presenting costume as historical artifact and as a living reference point for contemporary design.

The show was presented under the auspices of the Government of Spain and ran from March 23 to June 30, 1973, accompanied by…