27.12.2017『ヴィオネ』のページよりFrom Vionnet (in English)

Madeleine Vionnet

Text and patterns by Betty Kirke
Foreword by Issey Miyake
Preface by Jacques Griffe

Editing, original edition: Harumi Tokai
Original art direction and book design: Motoko Naruse
Original translation supervisor: Jun I. Kanai
Original technical supervisor: Atsuko Miyoshi

Madeleine Vionnet was legendary among haute couture designers. In her twenty-year career she created over twelve thousand garments, changing the course of fashion with her innovative and sensuous designs, now venerated as masterpieces. This intimate portrait of the greatest dressmaker in the world has been hailed as “a spectacular tribute to a designer of breathtaking grace and originality” (Threads).

Author Betty Kirke chronicles Vionnet’s life through extensive interviews with the designer, her relatives, and her colleagues, tracing Vionnet’s rise in Parisian haute couture from twelve-year-old apprentice to premier of an atelier to proprietor of her own couture house. Kirke also illuminates the designer’s intricate methods and philosophy: Considered a genius for her innovations with the bias cut – one of the most difficult and desirable cuts in clothing design – Vionnet was a superb technician who dressed the stars of the thirties and forties. She was also a maverick dressmaker who invented new pattern-making techniques (using a small wooden doll instead of sketches to work out her designs) and eschewed corsets for her models in favor of the body’s natural form.

Showcasing more than four hundred photographs and illustrations, and including thirty-eight patterns from Vionnet originals and an inspiring foreword by designer Issey Miyake, a great admirer of Vionnet’s work, this stunning edition uncovers the designer’s techniques and the architecture behind her magnificent dresses. Madeleine Vionnet truly is “a revelation” (The Seattle Times).

Betty Kirke has had a long career in the fashion industry. She began as a designer in California and, after moving to New York, started a business as a manufacturer of ready-to-wear apparel. Twenty years later she began a new career as a costume restorer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Institute. Later, she became a senior conservator of the costume and textile collection at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, as well as a teacher at FIT’s graduate program for museum studies.

In 1973, a Vionnet dress caught eye and, inspired by its unusual craftsmanship, she embarked on a remarkable odyssey of nearly two decades to research and write Madeleine Vionnet. Kirke continues to lecture and give demonstrations of Vionnet’s techniques, as well as to consult on costume conservation. She lives in New York City.

Original edition first published in Japan in 1991 by Kyuryudo Art Publishing Co., Ltd.
First published in the US in 1998 by Chronicle Books LLC.
Photos by Hideoki, Sindy Sirco
(Swallow motif dress only)