Vionnet
REVIEW
COMPLETE COLLECTION
PARIS, January 26, 2010
By
Even those who are paid to track the recent spate of designer comings and goings and brand relaunches might have to think twice before naming the designer currently at Vionnet—and the current status of the house. The man in question is Rodolpho Paglialunga, an unknown with long experience at Prada, and the label is now owned by the Italian entrepreneur Matteo Marzotto. That puts it a few steps removed from its Parisienne founder, Madeleine Vionnet, the genius inventor of the bias cut, to whom an amazing exhibition has just been devoted at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.To judge from the pre-fall collection—the current team's third outing, after Resort and Spring—the ambition to clean the slate and write a new, distinct identity for Vionnet is still some distance from being realized. Perhaps understandably, there seems to be some carryover from Paglialunga's last place of work and a tendency toward overly complicated shapes that tie and wrap—all shown with gray flannel thigh-length spats meant to be worn inside knee-high boots. That's a lot of conceptualism for one piece of footwear. More attractive and certainly easier to wear was the sportier side of the offering: simple city separates featuring hand-drawn fifties and sixties grid patterns.
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