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The fashion years of Sonia Delaunay

At the end of July 1925, hosted the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts. For the occasion, the Alexandre-III bridge has been transformed into Rue des Boutiques and is teeming with visitors. The front of number 16 attracts attention, with its large letters with Deco curves which read: “Sonia Delaunay. Simultaneous.” In the window, a colorful array: handbags, scarves, furs and a hat. The one who designed and embroidered them by hand welcomes customers from all over the world at the back of this pop-up store from the last century. She sometimes slips away to help models put on the dresses she has created and accompany them to the fashion show held outside.

Ninety-nine years before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games imagined by Thomas Jolly and ninety-eight years before the privatization of the Pont-Neuf by Pharrell Williams for the Louis Vuitton show, Sonia Delaunay transformed the Alexandre-III bridge on podium. The world then discovered his talents as a stylist. Always ahead of his time, the artist with a thousand faces, to whom the Roger-Viollet and Zlotowski galleries are paying tribute, in Paris, until November 16, will mark in his own way the history of fashion in this vibrant era of Roaring Twenties, which saw the fame of Jeanne Lanvin, Gabrielle Chanel and Madeleine Vionnet explode.

It was by chance that Sonia Delaunay, a young mother and already renowned painter, launched into fashion, a discipline rather frowned upon in the art world. In 1911, she created a cradle blanket, made from several pieces of fabric, for her son Charles. “I composed it for fun, and made it to my taste,” she recalls in the documentary Sonia Delaunay, shots for a monograph (1972), by Patrick Raynaud, with his accent and his “r”s rocks that she brought from Ukraine, where she was born in 1885.

Sonia Delaunay (right) wearing one of her creations, in 1926. ULLSTEIN BILD / ROGER-VIOLLET

This textile patchwork inspired by Ukrainian craft traditions will be a starting point for its so-called “simultaneous” dresses. “I know that each color has its own life”, she says, thereby explaining simultaneism, an invention of the Delaunay couple which explores the interaction of colors. In the program “Quatre temps”, broadcast in 1968 on the first channel, she laughingly tells Jacques Dutronc who questions her: “I made my first dress in 1913, using tailoring samples my husband brought me home. »

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