Nicky Sowter trained as pattern cutter at the London College of Fashion, where she learned to create clothes by draping fabric on a mannequin, just as Madame Vionnet (French couturier) had done in the early part of the twentieth century. Nicky worked as a pattern cutter and toiliste for many years before becoming a lecturer in fashion.

 

Whilst working at the University of Bath, where one of the subjects studied is Fashion, she realised the importance of the study of clothing to inspire and teach future generations of designers.

 

She was able to handle the two Vionnet dresses which had belonged to Lady Foley and were on display in the Bath Museum of Fashion. She researched the life of Lady Foley and her choice of Vionnet dresses, which led to her basing her Master’s degree on Vionnet’s concept of creating harmony between a woman’s clothes and her body.

 

Madame Vionnet, 1876-1975, came from a humble background and lost her mother early on. At the age of eleven she became an apprentice seamstress and was working for eleven hours a day for a pittance. She married young and had a child who died at the age of one.

 

She then left her husband and moved to England where she could make a new start. After working as a laundress at the Royal Holloway hospital for the insane in Surrey, she moved to London where she found work in the couture industry.

 

She returned to Paris in 1900 to work for the Callot sisters. She was finally able to open her own couture house in the Rue de Rivoli in 1912.

 

After the end of WW1 she opened her Grand Salon in the Avenue de Montaigne. By 1936 she had 1,200 employees, whom she treated very well, by providing in-house child-care facilities and paid holidays, so she was way ahead of her time in that respect.

 

Dresses were shown by mannequins every morning and clients could come back in the afternoon to order and be measured. The difference between her dresses and those of other contemporary couturiers was that hers were cut on the bias, which gave them a degree of elasticity, which in turn meant that they enhanced the natural contours of her clients, whereas Chanel’s straight-cut clothes eliminated them.

 

She made clothes that emphasised her clients’ best features and disguised their faults. She invented the half-scale wooden mannequin which was used for the toile (a test replica of a dress but made of a cheap fabric).

 

Her garments were later recognised as works of art and can be seen today at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Bowes Museum in County Durham and in the Bath Museum of Fashion.