450,000 Pounds For Vionnet To Stay In UK

In order to keep the 11-dress Madeleine Vionnet collection, the British cabinet will try to raise 450,000 pounds.

During the credit crunch, the British cabinet, headed by Culture Minister Barbara Follett, started raising 450,000 pounds to keep 11 dresses by fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet.

- Madeleine Vionnet is not well-known in the UK and is underrepresented in our public collections. As well as being beautiful objects with great public appeal, these dresses form a highly important research collection for students of fashion and social history – said Pamela Robertson, a member of the reviewing committee.

The dresses in question were designed by Vionnet between 1929 and 1938. Their current owner has expressed wished for them to be sent to the 'Musee des Arts Decoratifs' in Paris. Vionnet is most famous for her Greek style dresses, while she introduced the fashion world to a special technique of cutting fabrics, which enabled it to gently cling to the body and move along with it, avoiding static corsets. She is thought to be one of the most influential designers of the 20 th century and her influence is evident in collections by Halston, John Galliano, Comme des Garçons, Azzedine Alai and Issey Miyake.

The cabinet has managed to put a bar on the collection`s export and promissed to match the price by April 22.