Dress

Madeleine Vionnet

1920 · silk · Costume Institute

One of Vionnet's most triumphant dresses carries the grand patterns of silk around the body, while the fabric twists and tucks back upon itself. The "subject" of this dress is ultimately how it was made and how it works as a composition. It is the fascination of a Vionnet to recognize that the dress is, in its way, transparent, yet it is also a kind of three-dimensional, silk-swathing puzzle.

Artist

Madeleine Vionnet

Date

1920

Medium

silk

Culture

French

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Gift of Judith Backer Grunberg, 1993