Madeleine Vionnet

Dress by Madeleine Vionnet, approx. 1921–1930.

Madeleine Marie Valentine Vionnet (born June 22, 1876 in Chilleurs-aux-Bois , Département Loiret , † March 2, 1975 in Paris ) was a French haute couture designer who became famous for her diagonal cut dresses.

Life

Madeleine Vionnet was born as the daughter of Marie Gardembois and the customs officer Abel Vionnet in Chilleurs-aux-Bois near Orléans , but grew up on the French-Swiss border in Aubervilliers in the Jura department . After her parents separated in 1879, she was raised by her father, who trained her early on with a lace maker.

After a short marriage, Vionnet went to England and found a job with the successful London seamstress Kate Reily , who dressed the ladies of the English aristocracy. Back in Paris, Vionnet worked from 1901 to 1906 as a cutter of muslin and Schnittenwerferin for the licensed models in fashion studio Callot Soeurs worked. In contrast to the autodidacts Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel , she learned designing and tailoring from scratch. In 1907 she became a designer for Jacques Doucet , who had also employed Paul Poiret .

With a starting capital of 100,000 francs saved and 200,000 francs borrowed, she was able to open her own salon in Paris' Rue de Rivoli in 1912 , which she had to close again in 1914 because of the outbreak of war . Vionnet temporarily moved to Rome. Her experiences there and studies of ancient Greece had a lasting influence on her work. In 1923 Vionnet reopened her antique-style salon, this time in the Paris fashion district on Avenue Montaigne. Vionnet's company grew despite the global economic crisis , and in 1932 it comprised 21 studios and a second boutique in Biarritz .

Unlicensed plagiarism of Vionnet's “Little Horses” dress, 1925.

She largely rejected draft models for licenses. Despite ongoing attempts to stop the plagiarism of their designs in France and the United States - including a won legal battle - this widespread problem meant heavy losses for Vionnet as well as for Chanel and other fashion houses.

In 1939 Vionnet was awarded the Order of the Légion d'Honneur . After the outbreak of the Second World War , the Vionnet house had to close for good in 1940. Vionnet withdrew completely to her farmhouse in Cély , from where she gave lessons in diagonal cutting after the end of the war. Among other things, she taught Marcelle Chaumont (1891–1990) and Jacques Griffe .

Madeleine Vionnet died in 1975 shortly before the age of 99.

Private life

At the age of 18 Vionnet married Emile Dépoutot, their child died in childbirth in 1895. In 1898 the marriage was divorced again. In 1923 Vionnet married again, this time the 18 years younger Russian officer Dimitri Netchvolodoff, to whom she transferred responsibility for a shoe shop, in which he soon lost interest. The marriage remained childless and was divorced in 1943.

style

Like Paul Poiret , Vionnet did without the corset from the start of her career.

In the 1930s, Vionnet changed her line, going into the romantic: dresses with attached wide skirts made of tulle and gauze , distantly inspired by the fashions of the mid-19th century, with the long, wide skirts supported by crinolines , however with movement-friendly cuts.

Way of working

Vionnet paid special attention to the spatial effect of a dress and therefore made the first “sketch” as a physical structure in space, never as a two-dimensional drawing on paper.

The draperies typical of Vionnet were created during the practical work with the fabric, which she designed from all sides on a wooden dummy . Madeleine Vionnet always tried out all the cuts first with a simple nettle cloth on an approx. 80 cm high doll made of rosewood. She worked on a design until she liked it, then handed the work over to an assistant, who made sure that the pattern was made in its original size. In favor of elegant drapery, Vionnet primarily used very elegant fabrics such as crepe romain , crepe de chine , silk muslin and charmeuse . In this way, Madeleine Vionnet developed a completely new profile for women's clothing.

Body and cut

Like a classical artist, she was concerned with realizing a timeless concept of beauty, for which she literally used haute couture, the “high art of tailoring”. Her outstanding achievement consisted of her new handling (diagonal cut) with the fabric: the clothes looked as if they had a kind of life of their own, flowed around the wearer's body and followed its movements.

She strived to create a timeless beauty and thus positioned herself, in her opinion, as acting outside of fashion:

“Si l'on peut dire qu'il existe une école Vionnet, c'est surtout parce que je me suis montrée une ennemie de la mode. Il ya dans les caprices Saisonniers, fugitifs, un élément superficiel et instable qui choque mon sens de la beauté. »

“If you can say that a Vionnet school exists, it is mainly because I was an enemy of fashion. There is a superficial and unstable element in seasonal, fleeting whims that offends my sense of beauty. "

- Madeleine Vionnet : May 29, 1937

Diagonal cut

Madeleine Vionnet is considered to be the inventor of the diagonal cut , in which the fabric, instead of being cut following the grain of the thread, is processed diagonally and which is still one of the most important techniques of haute couture today. However, fashion historians today also agree that some parts made with a diagonal cut already existed before, so Vionnet did not develop this cut from scratch, but rather perfected it. Issey Miyake once compared her robes with the Nike of Samothrace : “When I first saw a dress by Madeleine Vionnet, I thought of a reincarnation of the Nike statue. Madame Vionnet had captured the most beautiful aspect of classical Greek aesthetics, namely the body and the movement. "

inspiration

Thayaht: Logo of Vionnets Salon, approx. 1912–1914.

After Vionnets was inspired by the kimono at the beginning of her career , her designs were soon predominantly shaped by a Greek-antique ideal of beauty. Her interest in it probably aroused the dancer Isadora Duncan , who redesigned the artistic dance in the sense of the ancient Greek choir dance. Vionnet's stay in Rome also contributed to this.

Their clothes draped in this way had a great influence on young designers like Claire McCardell and Elizabeth Hawes . Ancient Greek clothing consisted of v. a. made of drapery and was not sewn, so the drapery could be simple and straight but also extraordinarily rich and animated when moving.

Vionnet was also interested in contemporary art, especially futurism ; for example, the artist Thayaht designed her logo.

Ideal of beauty

Her clothes demanded a slim, taut body - but a body that is kept in shape by movement and not by a corset. Your customers should be tall, slim, blonde and attractive: "If I saw an ugly, stocky or obese woman in my salon, I would throw her out."

influence

Vionnet influenced Azzedine Alaïa , Comme des Garçons , Issey Miyake, John Galliano , Yohji Yamamoto and Claire McCardell , among others .

The Vionnet brand today

After Madeleine Vionnet showed her farewell collection in August 1939 and bequeathed her designs to the Union Française des Arts du Costume (UFAC) (now Les Arts Décoratifs ) in 1952 , the Vionnet brand was idle for decades.

In 1988 the French entrepreneur Guy de Lummen, then a Balmain manager , bought the rights to the Vionnet brand. In 1996 he opened a Vionnet store on Place Vendôme in Paris with accessories and a women's perfume called Haute Couture . The perfumes MV (1998) and MV Green (2000) followed. In mid-2006, de Lummen's son Arnaud appointed designer Sophia Kokosalaki (* 1974) as creative director of Vionnet. The fashion collection was sold exclusively through the American fashion chain Barneys New York and the store on Place Vendôme. Kokosalaki was replaced for one season in 2007 by Marc Audibet (* 1955). Afterwards, de Lummen hired designers for Vionnet, whose names he did not make public in order to put the brand in the foreground. De Lummen was able to win Matteo Marzotto as an investor .

In 2009 Matteo Marzotto bought the company together with Gianni Castiglioni, Consuelo Castiglioni's husband , and established Vionnet SpA , based in Milan . He named Rodolfo Paglialunga chief designer. At the end of 2011, twin sisters Barbara and Lucia Croce were entrusted with the design of the Vionnet fashion and a flagship store was opened in Milan.

At the beginning of 2012, the Kazakh entrepreneur Goga Ashkenazi took over the Vionnet brand. Vionnet has been represented at the ready-to-wear fashion shows at Paris Fashion Week since 2013 . In 2014 she hired designer Hussein Chalayan to create a demi-couture collection for Vionnet. From 2015, Chalayan also took on the creation of the ready-to-wear collection for the 2016 season . In 2018, Ashkenazi dissolved the brand with a plan to reopen the label with a focus on sustainability after one to two years.

Exhibitions

• 1973/74: The 10's, the 20's, the 30's: Inventive clothes, 1909-1939 . New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 1995: Madeleine Vionnet: Les Années d'Innovation 1919–1939. Lyon, Musee des Tissus
• 2010: Madeleine Vionnet: puriste de la mode. Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs

literature

• Stefanie Schütte: The great fashion designers. From Coco Chanel to Miuccia Prada . CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-54820-2 .
• Ingrid Loschek: Reclam's fashion and costume lexicon. 5th edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-010577-3 , p. 578.
• NJ Stevenson: The History of Fashion. Styles, trends and stars. Haupt, Bern et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-258-60032-1 , pp. 104f.
• Harold Koda, Richard Martin, Laura Sinderbrand: Three Women: Madeleine Vionnet, Claire McCardell, and Rei Kawakubo. Fashion Institute of Technology, New York 1987, OCLC 16474862 .
• Pamela Golbin: Madeleine Vionnet. New York 2009, ISBN 978-2-916914-13-8 .

Web links

Commons : Madeleine Vionnet  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Photos of Vionnet's designs , Vogue.de
• Official website of the fashion house
• Madeleine Vionnet, sculpter les apparances , Franceculture.fr, podcast and photos (French)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Généalogie de Madeleine Marie Valentine VIONNET. Retrieved January 4, 2021 (French). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Sophie Dalloz-Ramaux: Madeleine Vionnet: Créatrice de mode . Cabedita, 2006.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Julia Kunkelmann: Designer ABC: Vionnet, Madeleine . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed January 4, 2021]).
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Rebecca Arnold: Vionnet, Madeleine . In: The Berg Companion to Fashion . Bloomsbury Publishing (UK), 2010, ISBN 978-1-4742-6471-6 , doi : 10.5040 / 9781474264716.0015672 ( bloomsburyfashioncentral.com [accessed January 4, 2021]).
5. ^ ^{A b c d} Colin McDowell: Madeleine Vionnet (1876–1975). In: businessoffashion.com. Retrieved 23 August 2015, accessed 4 January 2021 (UK English). 
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Ingrid Loschek, Gundula Wolter: Reclams Mode and Costume Lexicon . 6th edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-15-010818-5 , pp. 599 .
7. ^ ^{A b} Valerie Steele: Paris Fashion: A Cultural History . Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017, ISBN 978-1-4742-6971-1 , doi : 10.5040 / 9781474269711.ch-011 ( bloomsburycollections.com [accessed January 4, 2021]).
8. ↑ Lydia Kamitsis: Madeleine Vionnet. Paris 1996, p. 4.
9. ↑ Patricia Mears: Japonisme . In: The Berg Companion to Fashion . Bloomsbury Publishing (UK), 2010, ISBN 978-1-4742-6471-6 , doi : 10.5040 / 9781474264716.0009729 ( bloomsburyfashioncentral.com [accessed January 4, 2021]).
10. ↑ Annemarie Strassel: Designing Women: Feminist Methodologies in American Fashion . In: Women's Studies Quarterly . tape 41 , no. 1/2 , 2012, ISSN  0732-1562 , p. 35-59 , JSTOR : 23611770 .
11. ↑ ^{a b c} Suzy Menkes: A Harbinger of the Modern Look. In: NY Times. January 17, 1995, accessed January 5, 2021 . 
12. ^ Revival of the Fittest , nytimes.com, Aug. 27, 2006.
13. ↑ Vionnet , vogue.fr, accessed: October 5, 2015.
14. ↑ Alessandra Turra: Vionnet to Return as Eco-Friendly Brand, Ashkenazi Says. In: WWD. October 17, 2018, accessed January 4, 2021 (American English).