Hooray for Vionnet!

Yesterday's issue of The Times featured a selection of gorgeous red party dresses - two from designer du jour, Madeleine Vionnet. And isn't it lovely to see an older model, looking gorgeous and sexy, rather than mutton-y and freakish, as in The Guardian Weekend magazine? (But that's another post!)

Anyway, rant over, now for a bit of history. Vionnet's fashion house closed in 1939 because of the Second World War and also, 'Because I'd had enough,' madame said later. The label relaunched in 2006, in collaboration with Barneys, New York, and designer, Sophia Kokosalaki - another mistress of elegant drapery - seemed like a perfect match. Not so. Several designers later, and now under new ownership, Vionnet showed a cruise collection for 2010 at Paris Fashion Week. Rudolfo Paglailunga (ex-Prada) is currently working his magic at the drawing board.


Photos: Zac Frackelton, as featured in The Times

Styling: Eve Thomas

Dresses by Vionnet from Selfridges (0800 123 4000)

I love Paris, Madeleine Vionnet and er, Eurostar.

OK, OK so I probably don't actually love the Eurostar train - though it has made going to Paris a doddle - and this week Mr That's Not My Age did say he was thinking of taking up bird-watching, so we may turn into a twitcher and a trainspotter, who knows?! Anyway, let's leave our middle-aged hobbies out of this, and concentrate on Paris.

'It was never hard for me to create my first dresses,' said Madeleine Vionnet, 'they came out of me like a baker baking dough. It was later, towards the end of my career that it was more difficult for me. Because I had invented everything.' And whilst, the mistress of bias cut may not have been the most modest designer on the Rue de Rivoli, she's certainly not wrong. The current exhibition at Les Arts Decoratifs, Paris, shows off 125 stunning dresses from the 1920s and 30s (du soir et du jour) all of which are beautifully made and utterly timeless. Guest starring the wooden mannequin Vionnet engineered her scaled-down frocks on, and a fantastic animation of the one-seam dress (I watched it three times and still can't explain how it works, sorry!), it's easy to see why Mme Vionnet was viewed as 'an artist of fashion.'

As a special treat, I'll leave you with another quote, from madame (on good taste), some French bicycles and a lovely postcard from the museum shop (I'm saving up for the Vionnet book).

'Taste is a feeling that makes all the difference between what is beautiful and what is ugly! It is transmitted from mother to daughter. But some people don't need to be educated, they are innately tasteful. I think I'm one of them.'





'Madeleine Vionnet, puriste de la mode’, is on at Les Arts Décoratifs, 107 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris; + 33 01 44 55 57 50, until January 31 2010


Vionnet photos from Les Arts Decoratifs