Madeleine Vionnet - "fashion architect". A school of stylish images and ideas To which Madame the world of fashion owes a slanting cut
Madeleine Vionnet (1876 - 1975) - Madeleine Vionnet was born on June 22, 1876 into a poor family.
was a famous French fashion designer. She has been called the "Queen of Bias" and "the tailor's architect". Born into a poor family in Chilleurs-aux-Bois, Vionnet started working as a seamstress at the age of 11.
From childhood, Madeleine dreamed of becoming a sculptor, and at school she showed great ability in mathematics, but poverty forced the girl to leave school and become a dressmaker's assistant. At the age of 17, Madeleine got married and moved to Paris with her husband in search of a better life. Things were going well for the young: Madeleine got a job at the famous Vincent Fashion House and soon became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter. However, here fortune turned away from the young dressmaker: the girl died, the marriage broke up and she lost her job.At 18, she left her husband....
In such conditions, Madeleine decided on a desperate act: with the last money, not knowing the language, she left for England.
Pretty quickly, Madeleine got a job at Kat Reilly's atelier (as a seamstress), which was engaged in copying Parisian models. Thanks to Madeleine for one year the institution became famous and prosperous. The biggest success of the atelier was the wedding dress created by Vionnet for the bride of the Duke of Marlborough.
After this triumph, Madeleine Vionnet was invited to work for her sister Callot. Vionnet became the main assistant to her older sister, Madame Marie Gerber, and thanks to her she was able to understand the cutting technique and the fashion world in all its subtleties.
In 1906, fashion designer Jacques Duse invited Vionnet to update his old collection. Madeleine removed the corsets and shortened the length of the dresses, which caused displeasure of the couturier.
Then Vionnet created her first own collection. The dresses were cut "along the bias", which gave the products additional flexibility and made it possible to fit the figure, similar to knitwear unknown at that time. During the show, Madeleine did not want to break the harmony of the lines, and she demanded that the fashion models wear a dress on a naked body.
A scandal followed that attracted the attention of free-thinking women, bohemians and demi-monde ladies to Madeleine's models. Thanks to these clients, Madeleine was able to create her own fashion house.
It opened in 1912. That's when Vionnet was able to bring to life their most diverse ideas. Madeleine's favorite method was cutting "along the bias", i.e. at an angle of 45% to the direction of the shared thread, for which she was called the "master of the oblique cut." Vionnet rarely drew her models, usually she made sketches by pinning fabric on a mannequin about 80 cm high, and then enlarged the resulting pattern and created another masterpiece. Models managed with a minimum of seams, and the relief was achieved through a variety of draperies and folds. Madeleine admired the clothes of the ancient Greeks, but she argued that modern people should go further in the ability to create clothes. And she developed the art of drapery and tailoring to incredible heights. Each Vionnet dress was special, inimitable and specially created to emphasize the individuality and style of the customer: "If a woman smiles, the dress should smile with her."
However, Madeleine Vionnet's dresses were a real puzzle. Many clients had to turn to a fashion designer to learn how to put on a dress. Patterns of even simple, at first glance, things from Vionnet resembled geometric and abstract shapes. To decipher the pattern and construction of one dress from Vionnet, fashion designer Azedine Allaya spent a whole month!
Madeleine herself saw her creations as simple, so since 1920 she tried to protect herself from fakes: before getting to the client, each dress was photographed from three sides and the pictures were placed in the "Copyright Album". In total, during the work of the Vionnet Fashion House, 75 such albums have accumulated, on the pages of which about one and a half thousand models are displayed.
Each dress was labeled with Madeleine's signature and thumbprint, an idea better than hologram stickers, which had not yet been invented. Vionnet tried not to give her models to stores, fearing that they would be copied, but she regularly arranged sales of old collections, which were as popular as shows.
Madeleine Vionnet's personal life was unsuccessful. In 1923 she married Dmitry Nechvolodov, with whom she broke up in 1943, and spent the rest of her life alone.
In 1939, Vionnet released the last collection and closed her fashion house.
Madeleine lived for 99 years, remaining cheerful and in a clear mind. Until the last days, she lectured to young fashion designers who literally prayed for her.
Madeleine Vionnet spoke about fashion like this: "I have always been an enemy of fashion. There is something superficial and disappearing in her seasonal whims that offends my sense of beauty. I don't think about fashion, but just make dresses."
Of the several thousand products of Vionnet, not so many things survived. What was left became an adornment of fashion museums in Paris, London, Tokyo, Milan and private collections.
patterns of trousers on an oblique and dresses with a scarf.
Vionnet puff sleeve dress:
French fashion designer who had a huge impact on fashion in the first half of the 20th century. Today, Vionnet is little known to the general public, although among experts she is still considered one of the most significant couturiers in France (France). The fashion house of Madeleine Vionnet (La Maison de couture Vionnet), who was called the "Queen of the oblique cut" and the "Architect among tailors", opened in Paris (Paris) in 1912 and in New York (New York City) in 1924. Perhaps, her most famous inventions remain elegant dresses in the Greek style and the widespread use of oblique cuts.
Madeleine Vionnet was born into a poor gendarme family on June 22, 1876, in the town of Shayer-aux-Bois, Loiret department (Chilleurs-aux-Bois, Loiret), and already at the age of 11 she was apprenticed to a local seamstress, the wife of a rural policeman. At 16, she moved to Paris, where she became a fashion tailor's apprentice with the rue de la Paix, full of chic shops, and married at 18. When Madeleine was 20 years old, her little daughter died, which became a source of great suffering for the young mother. Madeleine decided to completely change her life. She left her husband and, under the pretext of studying English, went to London (London), where she first got a job as a seamstress in a mental hospital, and then moved to a dressmaker's workshop that served wealthy English women, copying Parisian models. There, Madeleine not only learned the technical tricks of excellent British tailors, but also learned how to more or less copy one or another style so as not to embarrass anyone.
At the turn of the century, she became interested in Isadora Duncan and freeform and studied the art of drapery in detail, and then, returning to Paris, she entered the famous Fashion House of the Callot Soeurs, and polished her skills in the workshops of the great couturier Jacques Doucet (Jacques Doucet). Vionne said this about the Callo sisters: "Thanks to the Callo sisters, I was able to make a Rolls-Royce. Without them, I would have made Fords." Thanks to Doucet, Madeleine abandoned the use of a corset in all her models, starting
in and leading a real revolution in the fashion world.
In 1912, after the huge success of her creations at the Maison Doucet, Vionnet opened her own fashion house, "Vionnet", at 222 Rue de Rivoli, where all the fashionistas of Paris have been crowded ever since. Two years later, World War I forced her to close her home, but that didn't mean she stopped working. Models 1917-1919 were probably the most daring among all that Vionnet designed. Since the early 1920s, Vionnet has created a sensation with the introduction of the bias cut, a diagonal cutting technique that allows the finished garment to flow, gently hugging the wearer's body as she moves. Surprisingly, no one had thought of this before. Vionnet's use of the bias cut resulted in a completely new, form-fitting and slender silhouette, revolutionizing womenswear and propelling her to the pinnacle of global fashion. The press literally idolized her - newspaper photographs of ladies from high society and famous actresses in Vionnet's toilets have been preserved.
In addition, remembering the lessons learned in the London workshop, Madeleine Vionnet developed a system to protect her models from copying, thus laying the foundation for the copyright system in the fashion industry. She put serial numbers on every piece of clothing or footwear that came out of her workshops, and kept lists of people who were officially allowed to copy their models in several copies. Thus, at the disposal of the descendants was an invaluable archival collection, with detailed photographs and descriptions.
each Madeleine Vionnet model. It was not for nothing that she was called an architect among tailors. Vionnet did not like sketches that did not convey the form, and preferred to work with small wooden mannequins, on which she recreated the shape of the future dress from a piece of fabric. Madeleine kept the famous figurine in her room until the end of her days and used it to explain to inquisitive visitors the principles of her work. Vionnet took the well-being of her employees seriously, providing comfortable workplaces for them, organizing a canteen, a nursery, a doctor's and a dentist's work, and giving paid holidays before it was enshrined in law.
Despite the fact that Madeleine was at the peak of her fame, on the day when World War II began, she ended her career, and the following year her Fashion House also ceased to exist. Vionnet lived another 35 years and died in Paris on March 2, 1975, having lived to be almost 100 years old. She worked with a frenzied temperament for so many years, what did she fill her life with in retirement? Madeleine Vionnet did not like luxury, but she appreciated beauty and surrounded herself with wonderful pieces of contemporary art. She gardened, enjoyed the outdoors and had very interesting correspondence with friends, including Belle Epoque star Liane de Pougy. Her only connection to fashion remained teaching tailoring and the rich traditions of haute couture at the fashion schools in Paris.
She is buried next to the graves of Russian officers in the town of La Chassagne, where her father was from.
Even before the appearance of Chanel on the fashionable Olympus in Paris, the icon of style and the goddess of cut Madeleine Vionnet lived and worked. She owns many inventions - cut on the bias, clothing without seams, the use of labels. She called on women to be free, like her idol, Isadora Duncan. However, for many years the name of Madeleine Vionnet was forgotten ...
She was born in 1876 in Albertville, a small provincial town. As a child, she dreamed of being a sculptor, but the dream was not destined to come true - at least in the way that little Madeleine imagined. Her family was poor, and instead of an art school, twelve-year-old Madeleine went to be an apprentice to a local dressmaker. She did not even receive a full-fledged school education, having studied for only a few years. A talent for mathematics means nothing if you have to earn your living from a young age.
At seventeen, Madeleine, who had mastered the art of sewing, got a job in a Parisian fashion house - and a fate awaited her, in general, completely ordinary. Some time later, she married a Russian emigrant and gave birth to a girl, but the child died and her husband left her. Since then, Madeleine no longer tied the knot.
Shortly after this tragedy, Madeleine lost her job. Completely crushed, she went to England, where at first she agreed to any hard work - for example, as a laundress, and then mastered the business of a cutter in a workshop that copied French outfits for English fashionistas.
Returning to Paris at the turn of the century, she took a job as a cutter at the fashion house of the Callot sisters, who saw potential in her and promoted her to assistant chief artist. Together with the Callot sisters, Madeleine came up with new models, silhouettes and decor. Then Madeleine began working with couturier Jacques Doucet, but the collaboration turned out to be short-lived and not particularly successful - Madeleine was seized by a thirst for experiments that turned out to be too extravagant.
She was a passionate admirer of Isadora Duncan - her freedom, audacity, liberated plasticity, and sought to embody in her models that strength, that joy of life that she saw in the great dancer.
Even before Chanel, she talked about the rejection of corsets, decisively shortened the length of dresses and insisted on the use of soft dresses that emphasized the natural curves of the female body. She invited Duce to hold fashion shows, but the very first show caused a scandal - even bohemian Paris was not ready for such innovations. Vionnet advised fashion models not to wear underwear under her tight-fitting dresses, they walked barefoot on the runway like the gorgeous Duncan. Doucet hastened to part with a too active assistant, and then the First World War broke out.
Madeleine opened her business back in 1912, but gained fame only in 1919 - and immediately gained wild popularity. She fought fakes using branded labels and a specially designed logo, which is now quite common in the fashion industry.
Each dress from Vionnet was photographed from three angles using a special mirror and placed in an album - such albums for more than thirty years of existence, the House of Vionnet has released seventy-five.
Madeleine believed that clothes should follow the lines of a woman's body, and not the body be disfigured and broken with special devices to match the fashionable silhouette. She loved simple forms, draperies and cocoons. It was Madeleine Vionnet who came up with the bias cut, which allows the fabric to slide around the body and lie in beautiful folds. Invented the hood collar and collar collar. She often experimented with seamless clothing - for example, she created a coat from a wide cut of wool without a single seam.
She often made sets of coats and dresses, where the lining of the coat and dress were made of the same fabric - this technique received a second birth in the 60s.
“When a woman smiles, the dress should smile with her” - Vionne repeated this mysterious phrase very often. What did she mean? Maybe Madeleine wanted to emphasize that her dresses follow the natural movements of the owner and emphasize her mood - or maybe some kind of modernist charade lurked in these words.
Vionnet was inspired by the sculpture of cubism and futurism, as well as ancient art. In the photographs, her models appeared in the poses of ancient vase painting and ancient Greek friezes. And ancient Roman statues served as the starting point for draperies, the secret of which designers and engineers cannot unravel to this day.
Vionnet was indifferent to color, although a new fabric was created especially for her - a mixture of silk and acetate in a soft pink hue.
Madeleine Vionnet left practically no patterns - each dress was created individually by tattooing, so it is simply impossible to repeat her outfits exactly. She left no sketches. Madeleine believed that it was necessary not to design a dress, but to envelop the figure with fabric, allowing the material and the body to do their work, she preferred to adapt to the individuality of the clients, and not dictate her will to them. She wanted to open up, liberate women.
True, no matter how beautiful the dresses from Vionnet were, the customers often returned them to their creator - because they could not figure out the folds and draperies on their own. In the box and on the hanger, the dresses looked like shapeless rags, and only on the female body turned into real masterpieces. Madeleine had to conduct dressing workshops for clients. It is surprising that these difficulties arose precisely with the dresses of the artist, who dreamed of giving women the freedom of ancient nymphs and bacchantes!
Madeleine never called what she does fashionable. “I want my dresses to survive the time,” she said.
The Second World War left Vionnet practically without a livelihood, her fashion house was closed, and her name was forgotten for many years. However, the achievements of Madeleine Vionnet were used by fashion designers around the world - stolen from the one that so protected her work from fakes. Only in the 2000s did the Vionnet fashion house resume work with young ambitious managers and designers.
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"When a woman smiles, her dress should smile with her."
Madeleine Vionnet
Madeleine Vione became famous primarily for her cutting technique, which involves laying out on the fabric not as usual along the share thread, but along the oblique, at an angle of 45 degrees to the share thread. It is impossible not to notice that Madeleine was not the author of this technique, but it was she who brought it to absolute perfection. It all started in 1901, when Madeleine Vionnet went to work in the atelier of the Callot sisters, where she worked with one of the co-owners of the atelier, Madame Gerber. Madeleine notices that some details of the clothes, namely small inserts, are oblique, but this technique is not used very often. Vionnet, on the other hand, begins to use this technique everywhere, cutting out all the details of the dress along the oblique. As a result, the finished product takes on a completely different shape, the dress seems to flow and completely fits the figure. This approach radically changes clothing and has a huge impact on fashion in the future.
NOT ONLY A SEASMAN, BUT ALSO A CREATOR
Thanks to the vast experience that Vionnet gained while working in various ateliers in London and Paris, she was able to develop her own style unlike anyone else. She created a unique cutting technique and thus was able to excite the fashion world of the twentieth century.
Being a modernist by nature, Vionnet believed that the presence of jewelry on clothes should be minimized, they should not weigh down the fabric. Clothing should combine such qualities as comfort and freedom of movement. Vionnet believed that clothing should completely repeat the shape of the female body, and not vice versa, the figure should adapt to uncomfortable and unnatural forms of clothing. She was one of a small number of designers of the early twentieth century, along with Paul Poirot and Coco Chanel, who created women's clothing on a corset basis. Moreover, the Vionnet models demonstrated their dresses on a naked body, without underwear, which was quite provocative even for a Parisian audience ready for a lot. Largely thanks to Vionne, courageous and open-minded women were able to abandon corsets and feel freedom in movement. In a 1924 interview with The New York Times, Vionnet admitted: “The best control of the body is a natural muscular corset - which any woman can create through physical training. I do not mean hard training, but rather what you love and what makes you healthy and happy. It is very important that we are happy."
In 1912, Madeleine Vionnet opens her own fashion house in Paris, but after 2 years she is forced to suspend his activities. The reason for this was the outbreak of the First World War. During this period, Vionnet moved to Italy, engaged in self-development. In Rome, Madeleine became interested in ancient culture and art, thanks to which she began to pay more attention to draperies and gradually complicated them. The approach to draperies was similar to the cutting technique - the main idea was the naturalness of the lines and the feeling of lightness and airiness.
In the period from 1918 to 1919, Vionnet reopens the atelier. From that period and for another 20 years, Vionnet became a trendsetter in women's fashion. Thanks to the cult of the female body, her models became so popular that over time there were so many orders in the atelier that the staff working there simply could not cope with such a volume. In 1923, Vionnet, in order to expand his business, acquires a building on Avenue Montaigne, which he completely reconstructs in collaboration with the architect Ferdinand Chanu, the decorator Georges de Fer and the sculptor René Lalique. This magnificent building has received the impressive name "temple of fashion".
Around the same period of time, the Vionnet women's clothing collection crosses the ocean and ends up in New York, where it is so popular that 2 years later Madeleine Vionnet opens a branch in the United States that sells copies of Parisian models. A feature of American copies was that they were dimensionless and fit almost any figure.
Such a successful development of the Fashion House led to the fact that in 1925 it already employed 1,200 people. In terms of numbers, the Fashion House competed with such successful fashion designers as Schiaparelli, who at that time employed 800 people, Lanvin, who employed about 1,000 people. A very important point is that Madeleine Vionnet was a socially oriented employer. The working conditions in her Fashion House were significantly different from others: short breaks were a prerequisite for work, workers had the right to leave and social benefits. The workshops were equipped with dining areas and clinics.
In the photo on the left - an invitation card to the show of the Vionnet Fashion House collection; on the right - a sketch of the Vionnet model in one of the Parisian magazines
UNREVEALED SECRETS
Madeleine Vionnet was an absolute virtuoso in working with fabric, she could create the necessary shape for a dress without using intricate fixtures and tools - all that was needed for this was fabric, a mannequin and needles. For her work, she used small wooden dolls, on which she pinned the fabric, bending it as needed and pinning it with needles in the right places. Unnecessary "tails" she cut off with scissors, after Madeleine was satisfied with the result, she transferred the conceived model to a specific female figure. Currently, this method of working with fabric is called the "tatting" method.
It would not be superfluous to note that, despite the beauty and elegance of the resulting lines, Vionnet's clothes were not easy to use, namely, they were quite difficult to put on. Some models of dresses required certain skills from their owners so that they could simply wear them. Due to such complexity, there were cases when women forgot these tricks and simply could not wear dresses from Vionnet.
Gradually, Madeleine further complicated the cutting technique - her best models have neither fasteners nor darts - there is only one single diagonal seam. By the way, in the Vionnet collection there is a coat model, which is made without a single seam at all. When not worn, the models of dresses were ordinary patches of fabric. It was hard to even imagine that only with the use of special techniques of twisting and tying these pieces of fabric could turn into elegant outfits.
In the photo, a pattern and a sketch of an evening dress by Vionne Fashion House
In the process of working on the model, Madeleine pursued only one goal - as a result, the dress should sit on the client like a glove. She used many approaches to visually improve the figure, for example, reduce the waist or, on the contrary, increase the neckline. Another highlight of Vionnet's cut was the minimization of seams on the product - in the collection of her creations there are dresses with one seam. Some of the methods of working with fabric, unfortunately, still remain undiscovered.
Vionnet laid the foundation for such a particularly popular concept in our time as copyright. Fearing cases of illegal copying of her models, she sewed a special label on each product with an assigned serial number and her fingerprint. Each model was photographed from three angles, and then entered into a special album with a detailed description of the features inherent in a particular product. In general, during the period of her activity, Vionnet created about 75 albums.
Vionnet was the first to use the same fabric for both the top and the lining. This technique became quite popular in those days, but is also used by modern fashion designers.
MODELS FROM EARLY COLLECTIONS
Evening ensemble, Madeleine Vionnet. ca. 1953
Evening coat, Madeleine Vionnet. c.1935
Evening dress, Madeleine Vionnet. ca. 1937
Evening ensemble, Madeleine Vionnet. ca. 1936
Day Ensemble, Madeleine Vionnet. c.1936-38
Evening dress, Madeleine Vionnet. ca. 1939
Evening dress, Madeleine Vionnet. Spring-Summer 1938
Evening cape, Madeleine Vionnet. c.1925
Evening dress, Madeleine Vionnet. Spring-Summer 1932
Evening dress, Madeleine Vionnet. 1939
Evening dress, Madeleine Vionnet. 1932
Evening dress, Madeleine Vionnet. 1936
Dress, Madeleine Vionnet. 1917
Evening dress, Madeleine Vionnet. 1930
Bathrobe, Madeleine Vionnet. 1932-35
Evening dress, Madeleine Vionnet. 1933-37
Evening dress, Madeleine Vionnet. 1934-35
Evening cape, Madeleine Vionnet. 1930
FORWARD TO THE FUTURE
More than 100 years have passed since Madeleine Vionnet opened her Fashion House, but her ideas are still popular and in demand. Of course, her recognition is not as great as, for example, Coco Chanel and Christian Dior, but connoisseurs of fashion art know what an invaluable contribution to the fashion industry this "magnificent in all respects" woman has made. She was able to achieve her goal - to make a woman sophisticated, feminine and graceful.
It is surprising that Vionnet's models, even after more than 70 years since she retired, are still in demand by modern soda. Thanks to her easily recognizable aesthetics and invaluable contribution to design. Vionnet has influenced the work of hundreds of contemporary fashion designers. The harmony of form and proportion of her dress never ceases to evoke admiration, and the technical skill that Vionnet has managed to achieve has elevated her to the rank of one of the most influential fashion designers in the history of fashion.
SIGNIFICANT DATES
Birthplace: Chiyeur-aux-Bois, north-central France.
In 1888 she became a student of the seamstress Madame Bourgeois;
In 1895 he went to London to study tailoring. There she works for Kate Reilly, an atelier that made replicas of Parisian models;
In 1901, he began working in the atelier of the Callot sisters in Paris, where he comprehended the strict standards of the art of design;
In 1906, Jacques Doucet invites her to his job to refresh the traditions of his Fashion House;
In 1912 he opens his own Fashion House;
Due to the First World War, he closes his fashion house in 1914, leaves for Rome, where he sews models for private clients;
In the period from 1918 to 1919, Vionnet reopens the atelier, organizes a lawsuit against a fashion designer who was engaged in forging her models. In order to protect her creations from plagiarism, Madeleine decides to use special logos, numbers each model, photographs them straight, front, back, and then forms a special album of models;
1939 - after the outbreak of World War II, Vionnet decides to retire. A little later, due to lack of funding, the Vionnet Fashion House closes;
Since 1945, he began teaching at fashion schools in the direction of fabric drapery.
In 1952, Madeleine Vionnet donated her albums with dresses and sketches to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.
But her fashion house has not sunk into the ages of time, it exists to this day. Of course he was destined to survive several purchases and sales. The House is currently owned by Go TO Enterprise, owned by Goga Ashkenazi, a Kazakh-born billionaire.
“When a woman smiles, the dress should smile with her,” Madeleine Vionnet once said. This became her life principle, which she carried through her whole life. You ask who this woman with an intricate name was: maybe a philosopher or an avid feminist. No, Vionnet was a virtuoso fashion designer who left an indelible mark on the pages of fashion history, she created her own style, which was followed by millions of women around the planet.
Madeleine, although she was called the "queen of the oblique cut" by critics, did not have noble blood in her pedigree at all. On the contrary, she was born into a poor family on June 22, 1876 in the small French town of Albertville. From an early age, the girl dreamed of becoming an architect, but they were destined not to come true. Vionna had to leave school at 12 and work as a dressmaker's assistant. Parents did not pin hopes on their daughter, the lack of financial independence did not allow them to live for Madeleine. Without a full education, she did not have great prospects, it seemed that fate had already decided everything for the girl, but she unequivocally decided that everything would be my way. And so it happened: at the age of 18, the girl moved to Paris and got a job as a seamstress at the Vincent fashion house. A completely different world opened before her, in which there lived a beauty that the poor girl from the province had never seen.
Very little is known about Vionnet's personal life; in her youth, Madeleine married an emigrant from Russia, which later turned into a tragedy. The girl gave birth to a daughter, but the baby died suddenly. The marriage could not stand this loss, the couple soon divorced. The loss of a child affected Vionne's entire life, as you know, she remained alone until the end of her life, one on one with her bereavement. Madeleine saw one single goal - to start creating, because the fashion world so unexpectedly overwhelmed her, dreams of a career as an architect evaporated. However, due to personal experiences, the girl could not stay in France for a long time and went to England.
At the age of 22, Vionnet moved to London, difficulties in finding work forced the girl to work as a laundress for some time. It was a very difficult time for her, but Madeleine did not give up. Soon she was taken to the Katy O'Reilly fashion house, where copies of the clothes of famous fashion designers were created. The girl worked with enthusiasm, suddenly realizing that she was capable of more than just copying other people's ideas. Having gained strength in London, Madeleine returns to Paris, full of new ideas and a desire to create. Good luck accompanies her: in 1900, the girl gets a job in one of the most prestigious fashion houses of that time, the Callo Sisters. Success and diligence in work immediately singled out Vionne, she became better in the team, and later one of the sisters made Madeleine her main assistant. Vionne learned a lot from her mentor, because it was she who showed her the true world of fashion. So, Madeleine recalls Madame Gerber: “She taught me how to build Rolls-Royces. Without it, I produced Fords. ”
Madeleine learned a lot in the fashion house of the Callot sisters, but she realized that she needed to go further. Moving on to the famous Jacques Doucet, the aspiring designer worked as a cutter. Luxurious toilets, influential buyers and the charm of the owner of the fashion house inspired incredible enthusiasm for Vionna. The creative impulse was so strong that it discouraged and even frightened the fashion meter. Madeleine's policy was too tough, she directly told Duce that it was worth abandoning corsets and linings that change the figure. The key to beauty, in her opinion, is hard work on yourself and your own body, clothes should emphasize all the advantages, but not hide the flaws. The work of the famous fashion designer ended in a loud scandal for her, Vionnet, who dared to dictate the canons of fashion to Doucet himself, was suspended from work. But this did not discourage the novice designer from continuing his journey. In 1912, Madeleine opens her studio, but this time, life seems to put a barrier in front of a woman - the First World War begins, which crossed out Vionnet's plans. But the fashion designer finds the strength to overcome this obstacle, the studio began to work in 1919, Madeleine waited too long, it's time to start creating.
The war changed not only people, but also their views, gradually the fashion world began to lean towards the simplicity that Madeleine so glorified. Unable to draw, she approached the creation of toilets with the help of a mathematical mindset. Compliance with proportions and creativity of thinking helped her become famous. For these skills, the designer received the title of "fashion architect". Initially, costumes were not created on paper, as other couturiers did, Vionnet created dresses on a mannequin. Long, painstaking work did not bother Madeleine, she strove for the ideal.
One of the first shows of Vionnet amazed the public and then gave rise to a whole string of scandals. Madeleine has always preferred to use thin flying fabrics in her models that do not constrain movements. So, she used silk, satin, cap, which flowed over the female figure. The designer forbade her fashion models to wear underwear, which was a real revelation for the society of that time. This idea was considered too frank even for the free mores of Paris.
The main innovation in the work of Madeleine is considered to be precisely the oblique cut, without which it is impossible to imagine the fashion of the 30s. This method of sewing allowed the fabric to fit the figure perfectly. The amazingness of the couturier's creations was that the dresses looked completely shapeless on the hanger, but as soon as they were tried on, they sat like a glove. She explained this success by the fact that any outfit should adapt to the human body, to its features of the figure and needs. The cut and shape of the outfit should be individually matched to it.
Oddly enough, but Vionnet was quite indifferent to colors, almost the entire color palette was present in her models: from warm to cold tones. The designer was much more interested in fabrics. By special order of the fashion designer, the supplier of materials for the atelier Vianni Biancini-Ferrier created a new fabric - a mixture of silk and acetate. Soon the richest and most influential women around the world became interested in Madeleine's work. This was facilitated by the active development of the brand. In 1923, the number of clients was so great that a new atelier had to be opened much larger and more spacious than the previous one on the rue Montaigne. A year later, the whole of America started talking about the courier. On Fifth Avenue, a representative fashion house of Vianni opened in New York.
Madeleine's dresses made a real sensation, because she came up with completely new forms of details in the shape of a rhombus and a triangle. She moderated the look for an evening dress with a hood and a coat lined in the same color and fabric as the outfit itself. Vianne not only glorified freedom of movement in clothes, she was sure that clothes would free women from empty stereotypes. So, there were dresses without fasteners or buttons on the back. Models for a long time learned to dress them on their own without outside help. These toilets were created for dancing, their owner could drive a car freely. Vionnet's work combined simplicity and luxury, which captivated the most stylish and famous women around the world.
In the mid-30s, she almost moved away from the oblique cut, following the example of other fashion designers, she became interested in antique style. Knots, plaits, complex cuts, woven fabrics - all this began to be reflected in Madeleine's works, which also enjoyed success.
Like many other couturiers of that time, Vianne was afraid of plagiarism, so she sewed tags on her models and even came up with a label for her fashion house. An innovation in this area was albums, a kind of first clothing catalogs, in which the designer placed photographs of dresses and outfits from three angles. During the period of her work, Vionnet released 75 such albums.
Madeleine was the first to take the work of a fashion model seriously, paying a large salary, organizing material assistance in case of illness. Vionnet even created a travel agency and a hospital at a fashion house for working women. It was she who made the work of the model prestigious, this stereotype remained and sowed in our world.
However, with all the success and popularity of the couturier business, it failed. The onset of the Second World War put an end to its further development, and in 1940 the Vionnet fashion house was closed. For another long 36 years, Madeleine followed the life of fashion, but being in complete oblivion.
She died in 1975, not far from her 100th birthday. Vionnet showed the world an example of how to rise to your feet, not to give up under the most difficult life circumstances. She gave women a feeling of lightness, tenderness, she put a part of her soul into each of her works, probably this is what made her one of the great couturiers of the 20th century.
The memory of her is now being revived, in 2007 the Vionnet fashion house reopened its doors. The owner of the company Arnaud de Lummen appreciates and honors the memory of the famous owner of the house. Now the art director of the company is Hussein Chayan, who presented his collection not long ago. It is worth saying that the designer did not deviate from the principles that Madeleine laid down, all the same straight lines, light fabrics that do not hinder movement. One can only hope that the name of Vionnet will again shine in the fashion firmament.