Couture Confessions: Fashion Legends in Their Own Words by Rizzoli International Publications

IMAGINARY INTERVIEW WITH MADELEINE VIONNET PAMELA GOLBIN

Marie Madeleine Valentine Vionnet was born in Chilleurs-aux-Bois (Loiret) on June 22, 1876. She died in Paris on March 2, 1975, at the age of ninety-eight.

You married a policeman, Émile Députot, when you were eighteen years old, but you separated very soon after. You then left for England to learn English and became a head dressmaker. “I worked for five years in London, from the You come from eastern France. “I’m a Jura girl, my father came from there. age of twenty to twenty-five.11” ‘Franche-Comté bred, knucklehead,’ as they say. I was born independent; I never could belong to anyone, even a husband. I was married twice and I couldn’t stand it. Madeleine Vionnet is my maiden name. I always wanted to keep my own name!1” Your parents separated when you were three and a half years old. “My mother left [my father] because she wanted to work, to do things her own way. She had a tremendous sense of organization and responsibility; she started the Petit Casino, which was one of the best café-concerts in Paris at the time.2” “Maman took me to her mother, who took care of me in Joigny. Later, Papa came for me when I was five years old.3”

Preceding page: Madeleine Vionnet in her atelier on avenue Montaigne,

photograph by Manuel, 1923.

“TASTE IS A FEELING THAT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL AND WHAT IS MERELY SHOWY.”

After seeing a classified ad in the Morning Post, you started working for Kate Reily, a London dressmaker. “I dressed the [Vanderbilt] daughter, who married the Duke of Marlborough. A tall woman, a What did your father do? beautiful woman, magnificent. “Papa was a tax collector.4” “He lived in Aubervilliers. We had an apart- And then I dressed her for her ment; we each had our own room. I thought presentation . . . at court.12” he was handsome.5” Back in Paris, you worked for Tell us how you started in the dressmaking two of the most prestigious Parisian fashion houses. You business. “It was accidental, as things almost always started with the Callot sisters are. My schoolteacher thought I was intelli- in 1901. gent and wanted me to continue my studies “I was a head dressmaker in Mme and become a teacher. My father didn’t agree; Gerber’s own atelier, responsible he listened to advice from one of his friends, for some twenty seamstresses. whose wife was a dressmaker. I worked as an First, I worked as a bodice cutter and then as a skirt cutter. I was apprentice with her.6” the first to create a woman’s suit. It was with Callot that I started Did you want to continue your studies? creating my own designs.13” “I cried like a . . . Madeleine.7” “[Mme Gerber was] a great lady, completely involved in a trade Where did you learn your trade? “My school was the dressmaking shop. I that was devoted to adorning first learned everything about sewing tech- women, dressing a body with niques. While I sometimes wish I could fabric, not constructing an outfit; draw, it’s only because I could then explain a true couturière, not a decorator or a painter, like those working today.14” myself more quickly.8” “For me, it was . . . a lesson in magnificence. Myself, I greatly simplified things, but workAnd good taste? “Taste is a feeling that makes all the differ- ing with her prevented me from creating ence between what is beautiful and what mediocre things.15” is merely showy—and also what is ugly! It “That’s where . . . I discovered that dressmakis transmitted from mother to daughter. ing is an art. Without them, without what But some people don’t need to be educated; they taught me, I would have continued they are innately tasteful. I think I am one making Fords. It’s because of them that I was of them.9” able to create Rolls Royces.16”

Were you talented? Why did you leave for Jacques Doucet “Talented? That’s funny . . . I didn’t have any in 1906? talent. [Well,] I didn’t know if I had any, I was “I quit the astonishing, single-minded Mme [just] certain that I knew my trade. GerberInternational because M. Doucet offered me a po- All ” © 102016 Rizzoli Publications.

Model from the 1913

collection. Rights Winter Reserved

sition I had been dreaming of for years . . . to design—my own models! All alone and without anyone looking over my shoulder!17 He said to me: ‘You can do what you like, a young Doucet house in an old Doucet house!’18”

“I PRESENTED MODELS WITH BARE LEGS AND SANDALS FOR THE FIRST TIME.” “It was I who took off the corsets . . . With Doucet, I presented models with bare legs and sandals for the first time.19” “At the time . . . they called me Dame Châtaigne (Lady Chestnut) because my hair, my eyes, and all my clothes were brown. I was always the first to arrive and the last to leave; I always walked around the entire building turning off all the lights, because I have always been maniacally tidy.20” “One day I made a straight dress . . . I had created it for Lantelme [the stage name of famous actress Mathilde Fossey]. I don’t think it will ever go out of fashion. It’s a layering of three chemises of striped and white foulard. The saleswomen were in a panic and asked Doucet to have me remove it from the collection.21” “The saleswomen used to say of my models, ‘We won’t talk about those dresses’; it annoyed me. And Lantelme used to say to me: ‘It’s ridiculous. Why do you work there? . . . You have to leave Doucet and work for yourself.’22”

I had saved . . . Before leaving Doucet, I had received commissions for my designs . . . I started up a small business on rue de Rivoli . . . I was living on very little money at the time. But it didn’t matter. I was easygoing. I didn’t care. I had to worry about only one thing in life and that’s my independence.25” “I told myself: . . . If I lose the 300,000 francs . . . it doesn’t matter. I know how to work, I can always work even if my models are not always accepted, and I can dress women in other designs [in] other houses . . . I am perfectly fluent in English, as I spent five years in London. I told myself, I’d go and work in America.26” How did you live through the First World War? “We suffered so much . . . I still get emotional thinking about it.27” “I closed during the war, but my seamstresses who wanted to work continued to do so for their clients. I didn’t sell any dresses: clients took them and paid the seamstresses directly for them. I did this, I can’t say out of charity, but as a favor. And it helped me as well, because when the war was over, all my staff and clients returned.28” “I reopened on April 18, 1918.29” “My success was like an explosion.30” Was it hard to find a balance between the creative side and the finances? “For a fashion house to be viable, it must consist of two elements: the technical side and the administrative side. One without the other will create problems. Freed from administrative concerns, the technical element, in other words the couturière can then quietly give her imagination free rein at all times; according to her ideas and inspiration, she creates models, particularly at the start of each season.31”

With a production of more than six hundred designs a year, how do you manage to remain fresh? “It was never hard for me to create my first dresses . . . They come out of me like a baker mixing dough. It was later, toward the end of my career, that it was more difficult for me. Because I had invented everything! I couldn’t come up with anything new.32” “I definitely have had to find forms that weren’t already done. In order to change, I’d spend my time constantly adapting my formula, this formula was born at the same time Unfortunately, they left on a cruise, and Lantelme drowned. In as I was learning my trade—to work with the 1912 you decided to open your own three directions of fabric: length, breadth, and bias. The warp and the weft, if you like, and fashion house anyway, at 222 rue de Rivoli. “I found myself without a single franc. Alone, the 45-degree angle that bisects them.33” without anything.24” “Because I had planned to leave Doucet, I What did you invent? told myself that I needed money. But instead “Everything, we did everything . . . But what of 400,000 francs, I found only 300,000, I did wasn’t fashion; it was designed to last including 100,000 of my own money, which a lifetime.34” In fact, Lantelme offered to introduce you to her husband, Alfred Charles Edwards, founder of the daily newspaper Le Matin, to find the necessary financing. You needed 800,000 gold francs. “Edwards told me: ‘Find 400,000 francs, and I will find you the other 400,000.’23”

The actress Lantelme in her mandarin negligee, created by Madeleine Vionnet in 1910.

Postcard with the address of the Vionnet fashion house, illustration by Thayaht, ca. 1920–23.

“I must tell you that in the matter of the cut, I think I discovered everything that’s being done today; when I see something, I say: it’s already been done! . . . I was obsessed by my métier.35” “When I saw a woman I liked in the street, I followed her, and mentally made alterations. I redressed her according to my taste!36” And the famous bias cut? “[In those days], crepe de Chine was used only to line dresses; I was the first to do the bias cut, but only once I had my own business and I could do what I wanted . . . The bias cut was fluid, easy, promising.37” “I took my muslin, I arranged it perfectly on the bias, then I would make notches along the bias line so as not to lose it, and what directed me was the fabric bias. It guided me to make the dresses.38” Can you describe your creative process? “Every day I set myself up in the atelier in front of the small wooden mannequin that has been with me since the beginning, and then I draped, harmonized, put things together, and took them apart . . . until I was satisfied.39” “The couturière who creates, who dresses for the needs of everyday life, proceeds as follows: she has her head dressmakers, her colleagues, around her, along with a quantity of muslin (a fabric that can be cut and recut for any new idea; there are several types of fabric sizings depending on whether you want to make a fluid dress model or, on the contrary, a fur coat) . . . The couturière uses technical terms to describe to her dressmakers the dresses she sees in her imagination; or, even better, she cuts and pins the muslin herself, either on a small scale or life size. The dressmaker completes the muslin, and the model is once again examined, reworked, and discussed until the day the color and fabric are selected. The dressmaker will have it made by her seamstresses, but how many times will it be tried, undone, resewn; how many times will it return to the tribunal for judgment before it is finished and accepted!” “I am, of course, speaking [about the design] of true models, because there are ‘models’ and ‘models.’ There are those that are copied slavishly . . . there are those done from memory . . . there are combinations . . . Out of fifty models, ten are perfect, which I greet with a certain triumphal cry; it’s the dream come true, the idea that has taken form. Twenty can stand up to criticism and make their way; ten stay hidden in the closets for the entire season . . . and ten are never made . . . they are stillborn.40” “I essentially made dresses, I had a single atelier for suits and I don’t know how many for dresses, twenty maybe.41” “We never made fewer than five different colors per model.42”

“In truth, can one create easily? In my opinion, I think not, and I believe that all research is arduous and almost always thankless. A true creation is necessarily and naturally laborious: whoever creates must labor and suffer.43”

Madeleine Vionnet and Carmel Snow, photograph by François Kollar, ca. 1935.

“CREPE DE CHINE WAS USED [ . . . ] TO LINE DRESSES; I WAS THE FIRST TO DO THE BIAS CUT.” You initiated collaborative projects with various illustrators who worked with you as part of your creative process. This raises a question: who owns the intellectual property model? “It’s debatable . . . Is it the couturière . . . the illustrator? . . . The illustrator’s imagination may be rich in terms of the colors, arrangements and combinations of fabric, but he doesn’t understand the ‘essence’ of the fabric . . . The illustrator, therefore, needs to work with a couturière, and even so, surprises will come up when the sketch is reproduced. The couturière who creates the model she has imagined will likewise encounter unexpected problems when creating the dress, but she will know how to solve them more quickly.44” How do you work with the premières, the head dressmakers? “These are my immediate coworkers. They also make the muslins, but their imaginations and tastes always remain subordinate to the creative spirit who oversees them and, consequently, the fashion house that employs them. I think this must be very difficult for some of them. I am sure that among my premières and seamstresses is the one who will create another style when mine, according to an inexorable and logical law, will have become outmoded.45” “Because ultimately, the one who will push me aside, who will take the leading spot from me, she exists, she is somewhere; the one who will be successful in ten or fifteen years, she may be working for me and I don’t even know it. I am terribly frightened of that, which is why I pay such close attention . . . I always give them a chance: sometimes I let them make dresses, thinking, ‘Perhaps she is the one.’46”

“De la fumée,”

illustration by Thayaht, La Gazette du Bon Ton, 1922.

Madeleine Vionnet with her colleagues, ca. 1923.

Madeleine Vionnet in her atelier on avenue Montaigne, photograph by Aclay, ca. 1930.

Most of the employee benefits enjoyed today already existed in your fashion house by the 1920s. You started a relief fund for your employees, and you protected and supported maternity leave for your seamstresses. Your staff had use of the medical clinic and a dentist in your building on avenue Montaigne.

“THROUGHOUT MY ENTIRE LIFE I HAVE TRIED TO BE THE DOCTOR OF THE FEMALE FORM.” “This is all completely normal . . . and not worth discussing. We shouldn’t overlook anything to promote and protect health because you have to be in very good health to successfully work in the couture trade, which is so exhausting but also so tremendously fascinating.47” Does the creative process involve working every day? “I have worked my entire life, every day of my life. I had saleswomen, a large staff, but I still worked constantly. My studio had three doors, which were always closed . . . No one was allowed to enter. I was free and calm. When creating the collections, I was always ready, because I worked nonstop.48” What motivates you, what guides you? “The ultimate goal of our métier is to create dresses that combine a harmonious body and a pleasant silhouette, to create beauty. Everything is there!49” “I am more a sculptor than a painter, . . . more sensitive to shape than to color.50”

Madeleine Vionnet working on her mannequin, ca. 1934.

Madeleine Vionnet,

photograph by Thérese Bonney, ca. 1923–26.

Are the fabrics primordial in the creation? “No, I merely require the highest quality materials. I have worked to free fabric from the restrictions imposed on it, as with women . . . I demonstrated that a fabric falling freely over an unconstrained body created the ultimate harmonious effect. I have tried to give balance to the fabric, so that movement doesn’t alter the lines, but accentuates them even more.51” “I tend to prefer solid colored fabrics, without any patterns to interfere with the lines, fabrics that can be used in any and every direction, and especially fabrics that fall well.52

In my youth, all dresses were cut along the selvage. We used fabric as it was; myself, I did what I wanted with fabric. I liked fluid things that obeyed my hands, that were tightly woven but bent to my will, that gave up their resistance . . . I never came across any fabric that disobeyed me.53” Your dresses are particularly austere, yet you do use decorative elements from time to time. “I have never particularly looked for them, yet I use them, provided they only support the architecture of the dress and extend and intensify the overall effect.54” Do you have a favorite color? “Above all, the purity of solid colors. Black, white, and good clean, genuine tones. Blues and greens that set off eye colors, reds that echo lips, but no poorly defined colors.55” Do you think about your clients as you’re designing your models? “For me, the customer is the essential stimulant that constantly inspires me to work toward even greater perfection. I strive to renew my work, while remaining true to myself so as to satisfy them.56” “While I don’t support the idea of periodic fashion, I do believe there need to be as many fashions as there are different categories of women. I think about all of them when designing a collection, and I demand that my work allow me to showcase the most varied types of women. Throughout my entire life I have tried to be the doctor of the female form, and as a doctor, I would have liked to require my clients to respect their bodies, to exercise regularly, to maintain a strict hygiene that would eliminate forever the artificial armor that deforms them.57” What advice would you give to potential clients? “To limit themselves to one or two perfect outfits, rather than to let themselves be seduced by perpetual changes.58” Do you have a feminine ideal? “Myself, I didn’t have a neck, and I like necks. I was stocky and I need tall women. I never made dresses for myself.59” “I don’t have any preconceived preferences in terms of overall silhouettes. I find that ample shapes conceal, accommodate; but on perfect bodies, the close fitting of harmonious folds is of an indescribable beauty.60” “They always said I loved women too much! [sigh] . . . the Argentines . . . with their undulating buttocks like carnivores.61” What do you think of haute couture today? “Real couture? Is that mine? Is it the couture of today? It’s hard to say . . . Couture . . . is business! . . . When we speak of an artist, we are