Madeleine Vionnet
Encyclopedia
This article is about the haute couture designer. For the fashion label, see Vionnet (company)

Madeleine Vionnet (ma.də.lɛn vjɔ.ne; June 22, 1876 – March 2, 1975) was a French fashion designer. Called the "Queen of the bias cut" and "the architect among dressmakers", Vionnet is best-known today for her elegant Grecian
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

-style dresses and for introducing the bias cut
Bias (textile)
The bias or cross-grain direction of a piece of woven fabric, usually referred to simply as "the bias" or "the cross-grain", is at 45 degrees to its warp and weft threads. Every piece of woven fabric has two biases, perpendicular to each other...

 to the fashion world.

Born into a poor family in Chilleurs-aux-Bois, Loiret
Loiret
Loiret is a department in north-central FranceThe department is named after the river Loiret, a tributary of the Loire. The Loiret is located wholly within the department.- History :...

, Vionnet began her apprenticeship as a seamstress at age 11. After a brief marriage at age 18, she left her husband and went to London to work as a hospital seamstress. While in London, Vionnet worked as a fitter for Kate Reily
Kate Reily
Kate Reily was a noted British dressmaker who had a shop at 11-12 Dover Street, London in the late 19th–early 20th century. A New York branch of the enterprise was located at 277 Fifth Avenue, and a Chicago store was at 1305 Michigan Avenue...

. Vionnet eventually returned to Paris and trained with the well known fashion house
Fashion House
Fashion House is an American telenovela that aired at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT Monday through Saturday on MyNetworkTV stations. The series premiered on September 5, 2006 and concluded on December 5, 2006...

 Callot Soeurs
Callot Soeurs
Callot Soeurs was a fashion design house opened in 1895 at 24, rue Taitbout in Paris, France. It was operated by the four Callot sisters: Marie Callot Gerber, Marthe Callot Bertrand, Regina Callot Tennyson-Chantrell and Joséphine Callot Crimont. The eldest sister, Marie, was trained in dressmaking...

 and later with Jacques Doucet
Jacques Doucet (fashion designer)
Jacques Doucet was a French fashion designer, known for his elegant dresses, made with flimsy translucent materials in superimposing pastel colors....

. In 1912 she founded her own fashion house, "Vionnet". In the 1920s Vionnet created a stir by introducing the bias cut, a technique for cutting cloth diagonal to the grain of the fabric enabling it to cling to the body while moving with the wearer. Vionnet's use of the bias cut to create a sleek, flattering, body-skimming look would help revolutionize women's clothing and carry her to the top of the fashion world.

Madeleine Vionnet believed that "when a woman smiles, then her dress should smile too." Eschewing corsets, padding, stiffening, and anything that distorted the natural curves of a woman's body, her clothes were famous for accentuating the natural female form. Influenced by the modern dances of Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life...

, Vionnet created designs that showed off a woman's natural shape. Like Duncan, Vionnet was inspired by ancient Greek art
Art in Ancient Greece
The arts of ancient Greece have exercised an enormous influence on the culture of many countries all over the world, particularly in the areas of sculpture and architecture. In the West, the art of the Roman Empire was largely derived from Greek models...

, in which garments appear to float freely around the body rather than distort or mold its shape. As an expert couturier, Vionnet knew that textiles cut on the diagonal or bias could be draped to match the curves of a woman's body and echo its fluidity of motion. She used this "bias cut" to promote the potential for expression and motion, integrating comfort and movement as well as form into her designs.

Vionnet's apparently simple styles involved a lengthy preparation process, including cutting, draping, and pinning fabric
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

 designs on to miniature dolls, before recreating them in chiffon, silk
Silk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...

, or Moroccan crepe on life-size models. Vionnet used materials such as crêpe de chine, gabardine
Gabardine
Gabardine is a tough, tightly woven fabric used to make suits, overcoats, trousers, uniforms, windbreakers, and other garments. The fibre used to make the fabric is traditionally worsted wool, but may also be cotton, texturized polyester, or a blend. Gabardine is woven as a warp-faced steep or...

, and satin
Satin
Satin is a weave that typically has a glossy surface and a dull back. It is a warp-dominated weaving technique that forms a minimum number of interlacings in a fabric. If a fabric is formed with a satin weave using filament fibres such as silk, nylon, or polyester, the corresponding fabric is...

 to make her clothes; fabrics that were unusual in women's fashion of the 1920s and 30s. She would order fabrics two yards wider than necessary in order to accommodate draping, creating clothes - particularly dresses - that were luxurious and sensual but also simple and modern. Characteristic Vionnet styles that clung to and moved with the wearer included the handkerchief dress, cowl neck, and halter top.

While famous as a designer of high fashion Vionnet's most important impact on the fashion industry was the probably in the design of mass production, ready to wear clothing. Unlike most designers of that era Vionnet had worked in a mass production environment (a hospital seamstress) and was able to simplify her designs for the retail market. Up until the 1920s and 1930s high fashion had largely been inaccessible to working people, it was Vionnet's ability to take the design off the cat walk and into the high street that revolutionised the fashion industry and popular culture.

An intensely private individual, Vionnet avoided public displays and mundane frivolities and often expressed a dislike for the world of fashion, stating: "Insofar as one can talk of a Vionnet school, it comes mostly from my having been an enemy of fashion. There is something superficial and volatile about the seasonal and elusive whims of fashion which offends my sense of beauty." Vionnet was not concerned with being the "designer of the moment", preferring to remain true to her own vision of female beauty.

With her bias cut clothes, Vionnet dominated haute couture in the 1930s setting trends with her sensual gowns worn by such stars as Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...

, Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...

 and Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...

. Vionnet's vision of the female form revolutionized modern clothing and the success of her unique cuts assured her reputation. She fought for copyright laws in fashion and employed what were considered revolutionary labor practices at the time - paid holidays and maternity leave, day-care, a dining hall, a resident doctor and dentist. Although the onset of World War II forced her to close her fashion house in 1939, Vionnet acted as a mentor to later designers, passing on her principles of elegance, movement, architectural form, and timeless style.

Today, Madeleine Vionnet is considered one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century. Both her bias cut and her urbanely sensual approach to couture remain a strong and pervasive influence on contemporary fashion as evidenced by the collections of such past and present-day designers as Ossie Clark
Ossie Clark
Raymond "Ossie" Clark was an English fashion designer who was a major figure in the Swinging Sixties scene in London and the fashion industry in that era...

, Halston
Halston
Roy Halston Frowick, also known as Halston was a clothing designer of the 1970s. His long dresses or copies of his style were popular fashion wear in mid-1970s discotheques.-Early life and career:...

, John Galliano
John Galliano
John Charles Galliano CBE, RDI is a Gibraltan-born British fashion designer who was best known as head designer of French haute couture houses Givenchy and Christian Dior , and his own self titled fashion house.-Family:He was born in Gibraltar to a Gibraltarian father, Juan Galliano, and a...

, Comme des Garçons
Comme des Garçons
Comme des Garçons, written コム・デ・ギャルソン in Japanese and French for "Like Boys," is a Japanese fashion label headed by Rei Kawakubo, who owns the company with her husband Adrian Joffe....

, Azzedine Alaia
Azzedine Alaia
Azzedine Alaïa is a Tunisian-born couturier and shoe designer, particularly successful since the 1980s.-Biography:Alaïa was born in Siliana, Tunisia on 7 June 1940. His parents were wheat farmers but his glamorous twin sister inspired his love for couture. A French friend of his mother fed Alaïa's...

, Issey Miyake
Issey Miyake
is a Japanese fashion designer. He is known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances.-Life and career:Miyake was born 22 April 1938 in Hiroshima, Japan. As a seven year-old, he witnessed and survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. He studied...

 and Marchesa.

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