Vionnet

Vionnet returned to active product commerce on 10 February 2024 with Vivid Memories of the Future, the first limited capsule of the ChimHaeres era. The relaunch abandoned a conventional seasonal calendar in favour of themed releases sold primarily through the house’s own digital channel.

By February 2024 Antonella Di Pietro was leading Vionnet as chief executive and Chief Branding Officer during its return to market. She guided the first capsule’s independent design team and helped frame the revived house around limited releases, direct commerce and a renewed reading of Madeleine Vionnet’s codes.

ChimHaeres Investment Holding announced on 11 April 2023 that it had acquired 100% of Vionnet. The purchase returned the dormant brand to an active ownership structure and laid the commercial groundwork for the following year’s capsule-led return.

Vionnet announced voluntary liquidation on 16 October 2018 and the closure of operations of Vionnet Srl and NVO Srl. Active fashion production then fell dormant until the ChimHaeres acquisition and later market return, while the Vionnet name and rights continued beyond the closed operating companies.

Vionnet collaborated with artist Marc Quinn on Sustainable Surf in 2018, a capsule presented through Selfridges that combined Quinn imagery with recycled, biodegradable and repurposed material choices. The project formed part of the house’s increasingly explicit sustainability-led creative direction under Goga Ashkenazi.

Vionnet announced in January 2017 that its principal fashion-week presentation would move from Paris to Milan. The Fall/Winter 2017–18 show became the first main Vionnet presentation in Milan under this calendar change.

Goga Ashkenazi acquired a substantial private body of Vionnet material from Madeleine Chapsal in late 2015. The trove included notebooks and thousands of fragments spanning photographs, drawings, fabrics, embroidery, buttons and bills, expanding the historical material available to the contemporary house.

Hussein Chalayan expanded from Vionnet Demi-Couture into the ready-to-wear creative team in September 2015 while Goga Ashkenazi remained Creative Director. The broader remit placed Chalayan inside the house’s collaborative main-line design structure through the later part of his Vionnet tenure.

Vionnet appointed Hussein Chalayan as Demi-Couture Designer in January 2014 while Goga Ashkenazi remained chair and Creative Director. Chalayan authored two public Demi-Couture collections in 2014 and later expanded into the ready-to-wear creative team before his Vionnet work ended by 2017.

Ashkenazi’s investment vehicle acquired the remaining minority shares in November 2012, giving her full control of Vionnet. By this point she was publicly identified as the house’s chair and Creative Director, concentrating ownership and creative leadership in the same period.

Vionnet introduced its modern Demi-Couture line in September 2012 as a highly crafted format outside formal haute couture. The line became a recurring creative strand under Goga Ashkenazi and later provided Hussein Chalayan with a distinct Vionnet design mandate.

By late September 2012 Goga Ashkenazi had assumed Vionnet’s creative direction while an in-house team carried out the Spring/Summer 2013 collection. Her tenure established a collaborative house model that later incorporated specialist designers including Hussein Chalayan.

Barbara and Lucia Croce ended their collaboration with Vionnet in late August 2012. The house assigned completion of the next ready-to-wear collection to its in-house team, closing the sisters’ three-collection tenure.

An investment vehicle controlled by Goga Ashkenazi acquired a majority stake in Vionnet in May 2012 while Matteo Marzotto and Gianni Castiglioni retained minority interests and operating roles. The transaction changed control of the house several months before Ashkenazi’s creative-director role became public.

Vionnet opened its first directly operated monobrand boutique at Corso Monforte 16 in Milan on 16 December 2011. Headquarters, showroom and atelier functions were consolidated in the same Palazzo Premoli complex, giving the revived house a more integrated Milan base.

Vionnet appointed Barbara and Lucia Croce as Co-Creative Directors in October 2011 following Rodolfo Paglialunga’s departure. Their shared tenure produced three completed collections before ending in August 2012.

Rodolfo Paglialunga and Vionnet ended their collaboration by mutual consent in early October 2011 after ten collections. His departure closed the first long creative-director tenure of the modern revival.

Four original Vionnet gowns were remade for Madonna’s film W.E. in 2011. The project treated specific historical dresses as costume reproductions and brought the archive into a film context during the modern revival.

Vionnet and Giuseppe Zanotti introduced a footwear collaboration in 2010, integrating shoes with Rodolfo Paglialunga’s approach to the house. The project extended Vionnet’s historical language into accessories during the Milan-led revival.

Vionnet appointed Rodolfo Paglialunga Creative Director in February 2009 as the house entered its Milan-based phase. Across ten collections he developed Vionnet’s drape, geometric construction and exposed-shoulder vocabulary through a modern ready-to-wear lens.

Following the 2009 acquisition, Vionnet moved its headquarters to Milan and operated through an Italian Vionnet S.p.A. structure. The move reset the revived house around Italian management and production while it continued to present its main collections in Paris.

Control of Vionnet passed in February 2009 to a Matteo Marzotto-led ownership structure with Gianni Castiglioni materially involved. The transaction ended the de Lummen operating phase and supplied the basis for a larger Milan-led revival.

After Audibet’s departure, Vionnet chose to develop collections through an in-house team without naming a single artistic director. The studio phase began publicly in February 2008 and continued until the 2009 ownership change and Rodolfo Paglialunga appointment.

Marc Audibet left Vionnet on 11 January 2008 after one season. His exit ended the brief named-adviser phase and preceded a deliberate shift to an anonymous in-house design team.

Vionnet appointed Marc Audibet Artistic Advisor on 22 May 2007. His remit was to modernise the house’s fashion offer, and he designed one ready-to-wear season before leaving in January 2008.

Sophia Kokosalaki left Vionnet on 22 May 2007 after two completed collections. Her departure ended the first named creative-director phase of the modern revival and immediately opened the house to a new advisory structure under Marc Audibet.

Vionnet appointed Sophia Kokosalaki Creative Director in July 2006 with a mandate to build contemporary ready-to-wear from the house archive. Her appointment produced the first completed fashion revival after the 1939 closure and established a modern design authorship for the returning house.

Arnaud de Lummen became chief executive of the family-controlled Vionnet restart in 2005 and prepared a full return to fashion. His tenure led directly to the appointment of Sophia Kokosalaki and the first completed modern ready-to-wear revival in 2006.

Maurizio Pecoraro was approached in late 2002 and publicly engaged to revive Vionnet. The proposed reopening was delayed and the initiative ended without restoring the house to the fashion-week calendar, making it a significant but incomplete stage in the modern revival.

The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague presented Vionnet, Keizerin van de Mode from March to June 1999. The exhibition extended the international museum afterlife of the house while the commercial Vionnet name remained outside a sustained seasonal fashion cycle.

The Musée des tissus in Lyon presented Madeleine Vionnet: les années d’innovation, 1919–1939 from November 1994 to March 1995. The exhibition concentrated on the mature interwar years and the technical vocabulary that had made the house central to modern dress construction.

The Centre de la Vieille Charité in Marseille presented Madeleine Vionnet: l’art de la Couture, 1876–1975 from June to September 1991. The dedicated retrospective consolidated the institutional reassessment of Vionnet’s couture legacy during the long interval before a sustained fashion relaunch.

The de Lummen family acquired control of the Vionnet name and business rights around 1987–1988. The purchase reactivated the commercial identity of the dormant house and established the ownership base from which later perfume activity, accessories and fashion-revival attempts developed.

The Museum at FIT presented Three Women: Kawakubo, Vionnet, McCardell from February to April 1987. The exhibition examined Vionnet alongside two other designers through construction and concepts of dress, reinforcing her place in twentieth-century fashion history before the commercial revival of the name.

The Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris acquired a separate Madeleine Vionnet fonds from photographer Thérèse Bonney in 1978, later adding further drawings. The collection preserved a distinct strand of the house’s history, including the notebook corpus used to trace interwar seasons.

Madeleine Vionnet donated a major body of garments, patterns, photographs and company material to the Union française des arts du costume in 1952. The gift established a principal public repository for the house’s couture legacy and later supported museum study of Vionnet’s construction.

Vionnet closed its original couture operation in June 1939, with the association formally dissolved on 29 June. Final-season garment activity continued later in 1939, but the Avenue Montaigne maison ceased as an operating couture house.

After an April 1939 half-season collection, Madeleine Vionnet announced her retirement from the house she had founded in 1912. The decision preceded the June dissolution and accompanied an unsuccessful succession plan centred on chief designer Marcelle Chaumont.

By 1939 Marcelle Chaumont was Vionnet’s chief designer and a principal atelier collaborator. When Madeleine Vionnet announced her retirement, Chaumont was initially expected to continue the house, although the succession did not proceed and her exact starting date at Vionnet remains uncertain.

By the end of 1930 Armand Trouyet had developed Protection Artistique des Industries Saisonnières from an initiative proposed the previous year. Closely tied to Vionnet’s management, PAIS extended anti-piracy action across couture and related luxury trades through collective enforcement and industry coordination.

Vionnet work appeared at the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris, where the official exhibition report reproduced a Vionnet evening dress. The appearance placed the house within the wider decorative-arts culture surrounding its Avenue Montaigne expansion.

Boris Jean Lacroix served as Vionnet’s artistic director from 1924 to 1937. His remit extended across graphics, interiors, visual identity and perfume design, giving the house a coherent decorative language alongside Madeleine Vionnet’s couture practice.

From late 1923 Vionnet expanded controlled international reproduction through Charles & Ray in New York and other authorised commercial partners. The change broadened access to house designs while preserving Vionnet’s insistence on approved reproduction and identifiable authorship.

Vionnet moved from Rue de Rivoli to 50 avenue Montaigne in 1923. The larger premises brought salons, specialised ateliers and expanded production into a house capable of supporting Vionnet’s growing international business and increasingly complex construction.

Théophile Bader entered Vionnet & Co. in June 1922 as the house expanded its financial base, joining Madeleine Vionnet, May Lillaz and Émile Akar in the company structure. Edouard Martínez de la Hoz replaced Akar as a shareholder in January 1923, carrying the maison into its Avenue Montaigne expansion.

Vionnet created Eva Boex in 1921 as a lower-priced authorised replica structure for house designs. It gave the maison a controlled route for reproducing Vionnet work while maintaining a clear distinction between authorised copies and piracy.

Vionnet formalised a broad approach to protecting its designs in 1921 through three-view model registration, numbered authentication, signed and fingerprinted labels, legal action and collective industry organisation. The measures placed authorship and controlled reproduction inside the daily operation of the couture house.

Thayaht, the public name of Ernesto Michahelles, worked with Vionnet from around 1919 or 1920 and is securely associated with the house by 1922. His illustrations and graphic work helped articulate Vionnet’s visual identity across fashion publishing and house imagery through the mid-1920s.

Vionnet resumed activity after its wartime interruption in 1918, with commercial momentum accelerating in 1919. This return opened the period in which whole-garment bias construction, geometric pattern cutting and fluid draping became central to the house’s international identity.

The First World War interrupted normal operation of Vionnet’s Rue de Rivoli couture house in 1914. Madeleine Vionnet continued some garment-making activity during the war years, while the commercial maison remained suspended until the post-war return.

Madeleine Vionnet established her independent couture house at 222 rue de Rivoli in Paris in 1912. The maison began as a women’s couture business under her own name and became the institutional base for the construction ideas that defined her mature work.