Another couturiere who collected modern art was Jeanne Lanvin. One of the favorite designers of the Tirocchi clientele in the 1920s, she collected impressionist and fauvist paintings. The portrait she commissioned from Édouard Vuillard shows her at her worktable and is now in the collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. In the 1920s, Lanvin employed architect Paul Plumet to design her town house, for which she purchased furniture by Armand Rateau and Jean Dunand, now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.(22)

Madeleine Vionnet, endowed with a great sensitivity to geometry, in 1921 hired Italian futurist artist Ernesto Michelle, called Thayaht, to illustrate her designs in the Gazette du Bon Ton. In these works, he employed an American system called "dynamic symmetry," which used geometrical formulas based on the golden mean of the ancient Greeks to produce pleasing proportions for depictions of the natural world and the human figure. Vionnet also employed him to design surface ornament for her simple chemise gowns in the 1920s.(23) Like Lanvin, she patronized modern artists for furniture for her salon, purchasing items from Dunand, Lalique, and Boris Lacroix.(24)

In this period of experimentation, artists in various media and from many European countries designed items of dress. In 1913, the same year that his costumes for Jeux were made in Paquin's workshops, Bakst also collaborated with her to produce dresses for the couture [fig. 101]. Russian émigré painters Sonia and Robert Delaunay were designing "reform" costumes as early as 1914, using the abstract theories of color placement they called "simultaneous Orphism" [figs. 102-103]. In an article in Mercure de France, Apollinaire described Robert Delaunay's "red coat with blue collar, green vest, sky blue shirt and red tie," next to Sonia Delaunay's violet suit with bright "color zones" on the jacket ranging from rose to blue to scarlet.(25) Sonia Delaunay's "simultaneous fashions" in abstract prints and embroideries to her design were displayed at the famous decorative arts exhibition of 1925.

Elsewhere in Europe, Russian constructivists and Italian futurists both tackled apparel from the point of view of ideological reform, seeking "sanity in dress" and designing many variations for both men and women. Madeleine Vionnet produced Thayaht's invention, the tuta, a futurist "overall" for men. The artists of the Wiener Werkstätte also designed clothing, and the fashion department was the most commercially successful of all their varied enterprises. At the same time, all were participating in many other aspects of art and design, including painting, sculpture, book and magazine illustration, theater design, decorative arts, textile design, and even advertising art.

Couturiers traditionally participated in events that showcased the decorative arts. Doucet, Paquin, Poiret, and Delaunay all showed their work at the exhibitions of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs, founded in 1901 for the promotion and display of French decorative art. It was this body that originated the idea for an international exposition to showcase modern French design in all areas of the decorative arts. The eventual result was the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes of 1925.

French design and the superior craftsmanship employed in its realization had always guaranteed access to the world's luxury markets for all of the decorative arts, including the couture. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, revival styles were common in France, and even art nouveau, created in the 1880s in an attempt to develop a French style competitive with the English arts and crafts aesthetic, was suffering from the omnipresence of cheap machine-made copies. Moreover, French artists feared that French design was beginning to be overshadowed by decorative arts from Germany, particularly those produced by the Vereinigten Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk (United Workshops for Art in Handwork) of Munich and the Austrian artists of the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops). Founded in 1897, the Munich Workshops aimed to bring designers and manufacturers together to develop decorative arts of a truly modern German style for industry. Products created by the workshops in what came to be known as Jugendstil were modeled on English arts and crafts principles of simplicity and appropriateness, but their output was based on machine manufacture. Their ensembles of practical, inexpensive furniture showed how interiors could look when all elements were designed with a single aesthetic in mind, even when made industrially.