Introduction
Goga Ashkenazi is a Kazakh businesswoman born Gaukhar Berkalieva in Dzhambul, Kazakh SSR, on 1 February 1980. Educated at Somerville College, Oxford, she built an entrepreneurial career before entering fashion ownership. Her connection with Vionnet began in May 2012 when an Ashkenazi-controlled investment vehicle acquired a majority stake in the revived house.
Barbara and Lucia Croce remained Vionnet’s designers through August 2012. After their departure the in-house team completed Spring/Summer 2013, and by late September Ashkenazi was publicly identified as the house’s new Creative Director. In November 2012 her investment vehicle acquired the remaining shares, giving her full ownership; contemporary reporting also identified her as chair. Her creative leadership consequently joined ownership with direction of a collaborative internal studio.
Ashkenazi led Vionnet until the October 2018 voluntary liquidation of its operating companies. The period included the modern Demi-Couture line, Hussein Chalayan’s specialist role on that line and later ready-to-wear, the acquisition of a large private Vionnet archive, the shift of the main fashion-week presentation from Paris to Milan in 2017 and a growing emphasis on recycled and repurposed materials. The final active seasonal presentation was Spring/Summer 2019 in Milan in September 2018.
Design ethos
Ashkenazi’s creative direction at Vionnet operated through an in-house studio and specialist contributors. Her role set the house vocabulary and overall collection direction, with garment development shared across a team. Draping, asymmetry, geometric construction and fluid eveningwear remained central references, then expanded into a wider wardrobe of tailoring, knitwear and accessories.
Demi-Couture gave the revived house a higher-craft format from 2012. Hussein Chalayan joined as its designer in 2014 and later entered the ready-to-wear team, bringing precise cutting and experimental construction into an already collaborative studio. Ashkenazi retained house-level creative authority throughout that overlap.
During the later years, materials and manufacturing became increasingly prominent in the public identity of the collections. Recycled, repurposed and certified textiles appeared alongside Made-in-Italy production, and the 2018 Marc Quinn project linked this direction to an artist collaboration. The period combined Vionnet’s established fluidity with a gradually stronger environmental emphasis before active operations stopped in 2018.
Disclaimer
Career history
2018
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.
2017
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.
2015
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.
2012
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.
2012
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.
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