"The French designer was the first to combine effortless elegance with natural comfort. She was known as the "Queen of the bias cut" - and yet she is now practically forgotten.
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Although the grand master of Fashion, Paul Poiret, claimed exclusive credit for getting rid of the corset, the young Vionnet was actually the first designer to banish the armor-like garment from her creations. At the start of the twentieth century, during her time with fashion designer Jacques Doucet, Madeleine Vionnet designed feaher-light, softly draped clothing distinguished not merely by the absence of a corset. The adoptive Parisian also forged entirely new paths in her handling of fabrics. Vionnet not only experimented with cuts (she was the first to work consistently with triangular inserts, circular cuts, vents, cowl necklines, and halter necks), but also, with her exceptional feel for form and pattern, raised women's couture to a whole new level. This fashion architect's most important innovation was the bias cut, in which the fabric is cut and worked, not as usual in parallel lines, but on the bias, at 45 degrees to the direction of the thread. This technique results in flattering clothes that flow softly around the body, following the wearer's movements and yet seeming to lead a fascinating life of their own. The symbiosis of body and clothes was in fact one of the most important principles in the work of this skilled couturier: "When a woman smiles, her dress must smile with her".
Vionnet was fascinated by classical antiquity and its draperies. Her fashion house was adorned with frescoes showing Greek beauties wearing Vionnet designs. Inspired by the fall of the drapes in ancient Greek robes, she never created her designs as mere two-dimensional sketches on paper. Her "fashion illustrations" were models in simple course cloth, displayed on an eighty-centimeter-tall wooden doll. For the realization of her creations, however, she used more sophisticated fabrics such as crêpe de chine, charmeuse and silk muslin.
In spite of it all, Madeleine Vionnet, perhaps the most gifted fashion designer of the twentieth century, has found only a supporting role in fashion's collective memory in comparison to her contemporaries Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli. Vionnet may have discovered the perfect cut, but she understood comparatively little about crowd-pleasing self-promotion. Perhaps it was merely her reserved manner that ensured we know the clothes but not the woman who designed them. And so her legacy today remains visible - yet nameless."
in 50 Fashion Designers you should know by Simone Werle
