“I am the greatest dressmaker in the world.”
Madeleine Vionnet

Many designers have made me appreciate beauty and its deep aspects, but Madeleine Vionnet is one of the few among them whose creations I felt obliged calling “artwork” rather than just “work”. And with due respect to all other high fashion couturiers whom I admire, when it comes to dresses, Madame Vionnet is the one at the top of my ranking (well, John Galliano too…). I have never thought that the look of a dress could make me gape in such awe and not just inspire me to dream, but touch me on a very personal level. The dresses of Vionnet the way she made them back in the 1920-1930s, are embodiment of a long and very old history- the history of tradition and philosophy that takes the craft of making clothes to a new dimension.Comparatively few are the people nowadays who recognize the name of Vionnet and even fewer those who connect it with anything but Sophia Kokosalaki. Not surprising, considering the fact that it took more than 60 years for the Vionnet dresses to come back to life.

Madeleine Vionnet was a French designer, whose history goes way back to the epoch of Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and Cristobal Balenciaga. Her first Paris atelier opens in 1923, and the New York one- in 1925. The Vionnet Maison grows to employ 1,200 seamstresses and creates over twelve thousands haute couture garments through the years. Madeleine Vionnet presents her farewell collection in 1939. The Spring-Summer 2007 collection designed by Sophia Kokosalaki is the first Vionnet collection since Fall-Winter 1939-40. After 2 seasons as a chief designer however, with Kokosalaki gone back to her own collection, this May the designer Marc Audibet (Hermes, Prada..) took over. Lookng forward to seeing his contribution.

As for Vionnet, her whole life passes dedicated to creating dresses of superior grace, turning them to a natural part of the female body rather than an attachment to it. The unique philosophy of Vionnet actually lays in the belief that body structure, body movement and clothes are interrelated, with none of them being able to look beautiful without a consideration to the others. You walk, sit, run - and the dress wrapped around you, comes to life, shimmering and floating. The dress becomes the frame of the woman…

Inspired by Greek and Japanese art heritage Vionnet reflects on beauty, symmetry (and asymmetry), femininity and as a results many an exquisite dress were born to create a revolutionary new look on the fashion scene in the early years of the 20^th century.

The secrets of Vionnet- she is most often associated with the invention of the so called bias cut-a special technique of treating the fabric which allows the creation of beautiful draping- it looks simple but is in reality the result of a very complex process. She cuts and stitches together patches of fabric directly on her mannequin, at unbelievable angles, knots and twists, creating extremely elegant pieces, a very very high class dresses, with a touch of soft and almost painful romanticism, making you ask yourself how on earth she made this…

Another typical Vionnet element-this is the rose-her favorite flower, which is constantly embodied in her works as a pattern, single detail or silhouette. You can see this preserved to some extent in the Sophia Kokosalaki interpretations of Vionnet, together with the elaborate back details and fine draping and pleats. Of course the 2 collections of Kokosalaki are much more mundane in terms of silhouettes and colors, and well…include jackets and pants too, but can this be helped? With the change of the epoch, the picture has inevitably changed, so has the frame.

Let`s see what Marc Audibet has to say. And for those with passion for delicate, sleek dresses- better keep an eye on the Vionnet Maison.