Figurine

Drawing of a figurine painted in gouache of the Haute Couture firm Pedro Rodriguez. \It belongs to the spring-summer collection 1953. This type of large format figurines were used to decorate the walls of the headquarters of the firm and thus, make a first presentation to customers of the lines of each season. \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 draughtsman Ramón Gullón began his career in Paris. From 1950 to 1953 he worked for Pedro Rodríguez in twelve collections among them, the collection that the couturier 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 of 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.