Figurine

Drawing of a figurine painted in gouache of the Haute Couture firm Pedro Rodriguez. \This model reflects the influence that the popular costumes had on the work of Pedro Rodriguez. Possibly this model was made either for a party or as costumes for a theatrical performance or film. \Pedro Rodríguez was born in Valencia in 1895 and died in Barcelona in 1990. He opened his Haute Couture house in 1919, which was the first to be opened in Spain, and in 1940 he founded the Haute Couture Cooperative, of which he was president until his death. He was the first Spanish couturier to present his models on live mannequins on which he modelled the fabric with just pins and scissors. Then he made the pattern and the drawing, which had a sample of fabric stapled, and all this was passed to the workshops where the models were made. \The illustrator Ramón Gullón began his career in the French press where he drew the models of couturiers such as Lanvin, Schiapparelli or Dior for women's magazines. Madame Rochas hires him as a draughtsman of her house and Gullón makes the collections from 1948 to 1950. At this time he meets Pedro Rodriguez in Venice who hires him for his house in Madrid, working together on twelve collections including the collection that Pedro Rodriguez made for the New York department store 'Franklin Simon' inspired by the great masters of Spanish painting and made the 200 designs for the 'Ball of the century' organized by the Marquis de Cuevas in Biarritz with models inspired by the eighteenth century. He then moved to New York where he presented his own collections. At the end of the 50's he settled in Madrid as a couturier.