Madeleine Vionnet was born June 22, 1876 into a poor family
Chilleurs-aux-Bois, in the department Loiret of France.
She began her apprenticeship as a
seamstress at age 11 in the suburbs Paris
and after a short marriage at age 18 she
became a hospital seamstress in London
for a short while.
Returning to Paris, Vionnet was then trained by the Callot
sisters who were some of the first to use gold and silver
lamé and created a a line of clothing known for its exotic
detail
Later she became an apprentice to Jacques Doucet, who
was known to use sheer materials in pastel colors.
She opened up her own fashion house in 1912
women’s fashion consisted of lots
of material covering up much of
the body, which had been bound
up in corsets and stuffed with a
petticoat.
Women were
padded and
squeezed in
order to
enhance and
somewhat
deform the
female figure.
She began using materials such as crêpe de chine, gabardine,
and satin which was unusual for the time.
She then invented the bias cut, which is
cutting the material at a diagonal. This
allowed the material to flow, have volume
and motion.
She cut and designed all her creations on
miniature dolls, before remaking them on lifesize models.
She always bought an extra two yards of
material than needed in order to
anticipate all the draping she had in
mind.
Vionnet’s fashion creations freed women from the constraint
of corsets and all the padding of their huge dresses and
petticoats.
Her clothes expressed what a
woman’s body really looked like.
The material followed the body’s
shape yet the draping gave it
movement and life.
Many of her different designs showed a lot
more skin and breast than what was typical at
the time.
In the 1930’s Vionnet was all the trend.
But very expensive, her
creations were favored
among european nobility and
Hollywood stars including
Katherine Hepburn, Marlene
Dietrich, Gypsy Rose Lee
and Greta Garbo.
Madeleine Vionnet’s outlook on fashion was extremely influential and
inspirational. Her visions were ahead of it’s time. The designs she
created are still used in contemporary fashion today.
She has given the world of
fashion the bias cut, the
halter, the cowl neckline and
emphasized the idea that a
woman’s natural body should
be enhanced but cut and
material, not cover up and
squeezed by corsets.