Madeleine Vionnet & more...

Date: October 14th
Event: Madeline Vionnet exhibit
Where: Le Musée des Arts Décoratifs

I was only allowed to snap a photo of the outside exhibit sign...
     ...i took the 1st picture and the 2nd is from TravelPod online

The symbol on the left is her logo. It is a sort of androgynous man & woman "lost" in their underpants. 

In the 1850's Charles-Fredrick Worth, an Englishman and the first official couturier of France, designed dresses for V.I.P, mainly Empress Eugenie of the Second Empire. He placed crinoline under the garments as a sort of support and way to keep the dome shape of it. The crinoline was made of horse hair and in wet/rainy weather the crinoline could not beautifully support the dress.

Thus, in 1857 Charles-Fredrick Worth sought the Peugot Brothers, famous inventors of the time of things made of metal, wood & iron, like coffee makers and sewing machines. They were asked to help Charles-Fredrick Worth to create a a metal/wood structure that could go under a woman's petticoat to support the crinoline in wet weather.

Voilà.
Being fashionable is made easy again (but of course, at the right price)...

However, the war against Prussia broke out in France in 1870.
= No more crinolines.

& 6 years later...

♥ Madeleine Vionnet was born in le Loiret.

Her mother left her and her father at age 3.
Thus, at a young age she was forced to find a paying job. She became a very talented  seamstress through her childhood jobs...but unfortunately her father forced her to marry and have kids at age 18. Vionnet did unto her daughter, as her mother did to her...she left her. She headed to London to learn English and returned to Paris in 1901, determined to make a corset that was more comfortable for women.

❝When a woman smiles, then her dress should smile too...❞

       - Wikipedia

She worked hard and diligently to free a woman's curves of the corset's constraint.

The women now must adapt to this new style and slim down...

Madeleine Vionnet came to be a well-known and great designer of the early 20th century. She opened her shop on Rue de Rivoli in Paris in the year 1912 and that same year, she completely suppressed the corset. Although the shop was closed shortly at the break of WWI, she continued with production.

In 1923, she opened her second shop. She was very aware of the changes of fashion and women in general, brought on by the war and America's Hollywood scene.

She used mostly silk fabrics and became especially known for the bias cut. Bias cut is a term used to describe the cutting of a piece of fabric on its 45° angle. At this angle, you will obtain the most stretch out of the fabric -- which is great for a nice silhouetted gown because it is easy to follow the body's curves. Before Vionnet, accessories was a very important aspect of a garment. After Vionnet, the cut and silhouette became the focus.

Vionnet was a very hard-worker. A lot of time and energy went into each 'Vionnet' garment. She would first design a garment on a small doll, and not until after satisfaction and completion of the doll's gown, was the garment put into production for real women.
I was really excited after seeing THE actual doll...

The picture is taken from Wikipedia 

The red dress on the left, is the dress I saw on the doll at the exhibit

---------------♥

As you may have noticed, I only took one picture--which was not even taken inside of the actual exhibit. I was unable to take any inside of the exhibit, out of respect for Vionnet and J-P-C. She was very obsessed with keeping her creations original and away from the eyes of copiers. So much so, that she even put her fingerprint somewhere in the inside of the dress so that she was able to identify its authenticity (or lack of).

Thus, the pictures below are all from the internet.
Bon appétit...

The 1st picture below is a rare picture of one of Vionnet's original dresses...
     -- J-P-C says that it is "quite Isadora Duncan style."

Click for Madeleine Vionnet's official site