Figurine

Drawing of a gouache painted figurine of the Haute Couture firm Pedro Rodriguez. It has stapled a piece of stapled paper in which, typed, it is indicated which parts have the set and the materials and colors in which it would have to be made. \This dress was designed exclusively by Pedro Rodriguez for the 'Franklin Simon' department store in New York. It was part of a collection called 'Spanish Renaisance Collection' that these stores requested the couturier. It was a collection of evening gowns inspired by portraits from the Prado Museum, in this case, a Spanish soldier from the painting `Socorro a Génova por el Marqués de Santa Cruz' by Antonio Pereda, a picture painted in 1634 for the series of battles that would decorate the Salón de Reinos in the new Palacio del Buen Retiro, and that today is in the Prado Museum. \Franklin Simon' was a New York department store that was founded in 1902 and more than a conventional department store, it was a group of stores specialized in a different type of merchandise. The main store specializing in women's fashion was on 5th Avenue. In the New York Times of October 25, 1953, there is a full-page advertisement of some of these models with their figurines. \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 designer of this collection was Ramón Gullón who 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. From 1951 to 1953 he worked for Pedro Rodríguez in twelve collections, among them, the 150 designs of the 'Ball of the century' organized by the Marquis of Cuevas in Biarritz with models inspired in the XVIII century. Then he moved to New York where he presented his own collections. At the end of the 50's he settles in Madrid as a couturier.