Afternoon dress

Madeleine Vionnet

1931–32 · silk · Costume Institute

The beauty of this dress is its expressed construction, revealing the turnings of cuffs and the elegant passage of loose material to form a soft neckline. The confirming beauty is the inescapable expression of the body within revealed through bias drapery. The unerring sensuousness of a Vionnet dress resides in the liberation and articulation of the body it achieves.

Artist

Madeleine Vionnet

Date

1931–32

Medium

silk

Culture

French

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Gift of Miss Isabel Shults, 1944