Queen Letizia’s Balenciaga dress for the portrait of Annie Leibovitz: a 1948 design on loan for the occasion

Among the striking details, the Queen’s styling, once again, has created great expectation. For the occasion, Doña Letizia has worn a Balenciaga design composed of dress and cape from 1948which currently belongs to the Antoni de Montpalau Foundationan organization with twenty years of experience and headquarters in Sabadell.

The dress is an evening dress made around 1948, probably in the workshop that Balenciaga I had in Barcelona. This sea tulle draped design belonged to Maria Junyentniece and collaborator of the painter, set designer and collector Oleguer Junyent and who lived very close to the couturier’s workshop. It was donated to the foundation by Oleguer Armengol Junyent. This dress has been exhibited at the Costume Museum or the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum in Getaria.

For its part, the gazar cape It belongs to a ceremony set also made in the Barcelona workshop in 1962. In this case it belongs to a set composed of an ivory dress and the cape, both ordered to be made by the Countess of Torroella de Montgrí and Marchioness of Robert, Maria del Carmen Ferrer-Cajigal de Robertfor the wedding ceremony of Juan Carlos de Borbón and Sofía de Grecia. The design was donated to the foundation by Carmen de Robert Ferrer-Cajigal and has been exhibited at the Thyssen Museum in the 2019 Balenciaga and Spanish Painting exhibition.

The Queen’s jewels

Although it is striking that Doña Letizia does not wear any attribute that distinguishes her as Queen consort: neither a diadem nor the band of the Order of Carlos III, but for the occasion she has chosen to wear the earrings and the chaton necklace, a gift from Alfonso XIII to his fiancée, Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg. While on the index finger of her left hand she wears her inseparable 18-karat solid yellow gold ring by the Italian goldsmith Coreterno, a gift that the King and his daughters gave her years ago.