Madeleine Vionnet Biography

Without this creator's dream, Hollywood's glamour would never exist, with its naked shoulders dresses, that embrace the body as it was liquid silk. It´s avant-gardist creations, as the feminine trousers, took a long while to impose themselves, but today, they´re as essential in the fashion world as a pair of trousers is in a wardrobe. Madeleine Vionnet, is the bias-cut master, and no one as ever exceeded her fabulous technique. Even Azzedine Alaïa an artist of the cut himself, took ages until he finaly understand Madeleine Vionnet´s mysteries of the cut, and remains himself the only person to understand the technique she as used to create her ivory gown from 1935.

Since that date, we can observe this dress correctly exposed at the Musée de la Mode et du Textile de Paris, as before that date, it was considered an unfinished project. It is obviously a master-piece, wich perfect shape depends only from one stitch - Madeleine Vionnets biggest aim. Probably it was her fascination for geometry that allowed her to develop such refined cuts from basic forms like squares and triangles. In spite of his talent for the mathematics, Vionnet, born in 1876 in the middle of a modest family, she had to leave school very early, at 12 years of age. Learn the cut technique while working for a while in Paris, but, at 16 years of age, she moved to London, where she started her life as a washer-woman.

After a short marriage and the death of her little daughter, Vionnet assumed the direction of Kate Reilly´s atelier in London, only with 20 years old.
In 1900, she returned to Paris, where she took a job in one of the most conceptualized fashion houses, Soueurs Callot. In 1907, Jaques Doucet trusted her the task of rejuvenate the style of his fashion house.
She finally opened her own fashion house in 1912. However, only after the war, it began to grow.

Her necessity to promote herself was never completly understood, and she almost fell into the obvilion after 1939, when her fashion house was shut down.
Compared to Chanel, Vionnet is seen as unknown. That is probably because she builted "Rolls Royces" while the other, with her popular black belts, was the "Ford" of Fashion.