Illuminating Gala’s complex personality through her clothes

The ex­hi­bi­tion in 2020 that the Púbol Cas­tle de­voted to Sal­vador Dalí and Gala Dyakonova’s re­la­tion­ship with Chris­t­ian Dior opened up a hith­erto un­ex­plored line of re­search. Now the Dalí Foun­da­tion has taken this fur­ther with an­other ex­hi­bi­tion in the cas­tle that gives greater in­sight into Gala’s per­son­al­ity through her wardrobe.

The Awak­en­ing of the Myth is the re­sult of a col­lab­o­ra­tion with La Roca Vil­lage shop­ping cen­tre with the pur­pose of in­ter­na­tion­al­is­ing the “free and chameleon-like” fig­ure of Gala on the 130th an­niver­sary of her birth. The ex­hi­bi­tion will dis­play a se­lec­tion of out­fits from among the thou­sand that make up the tex­tile col­lec­tion of the Dalís, in three phases over the course of a year. The first phase of the ex­hi­bi­tion, Spring-Sum­mer, opened on March 18 and until June 2 will dis­play eight of Gala’s dresses in the attic of Púbol Cas­tle.

Most of the out­fits, which have re­quired metic­u­lous restora­tion by Carme Mas­deu and Mari Luz Morata, be­long to pres­ti­gious fash­ion firms, such as Dior, Cardin, Loewe or Givenchy. How­ever, Gala would re­sort to more quirky pieces if they re­sponded to the pub­lic image she wanted to pro­ject, such as a dress pur­chased at the El Dique Flotante de­part­ment store in the six­ties. Also note­wor­thy is the out­fit de­signed by Dalí in 1948, with a brick pat­tern rem­i­nis­cent of the trompe-l’oeil he cre­ated for the dec­o­ra­tion of Púbol Cas­tle, and the Dress of Tears de­signed with the cou­turier Elsa Schi­a­par­elli in 1938.

The pur­pose of the ex­hi­bi­tion, says the di­rec­tor of Dalí Mu­se­ums, Montse Aguer, is to “con­tinue to il­lu­mi­nate the enig­matic and com­plex per­son­al­ity of Gala” be­yond the stereo­type of pas­sive muse to the ge­nius artist that is usu­ally at­trib­uted to her.

For Bea Cre­spo, co­or­di­na­tor of the Cen­tre for Dalin­ian Stud­ies and the cu­ra­tor of the ex­hi­bi­tion to­gether with Noelia Col­lado, the con­tent di­rec­tor of La Roca Vil­lage, “fash­ion is a means to play with iden­tity, and Gala builds her image con­sciously, with an abil­ity to change skin ac­cord­ing to the de­mands of each event but with­out ever ceas­ing to be her­self”. Gala’s choice of dresses also served to pro­mote Dalí’s work, points out Col­lado, who re­calls that dur­ing their years in the US, she was care­ful to choose Amer­i­can de­sign­ers. The next phase – Col­lec­tion of Haute Cou­ture – be­gins on June 17, while the Au­tumn-Win­ter Col­lec­tion opens on Oc­to­ber 7. The pro­ject is com­ple­mented by pho­tographs by Jordi Bernadó on dis­play at La Roca Vil­lage with il­lus­tra­tions of Gala by Carla Fuentes.