In Germany and Austria, Poiret encountered the new modern styles on their own ground. He purchased textiles. He went to every decorative arts exhibition possible, meeting Hermann Muthesius, the Prussian architect and critic; designer Bruno Paul; and Gustav Klimt. He wandered the streets looking at new buildings and visited every recently completed interior to which he could gain admittance. He was especially struck by the products of the Wiener Werkstätte, and on his return to Paris he decided to adopt the Viennese workshop concept and to strive for the freedom and spontaneity he had observed in both French and Eastern European folk art. Poiret rejected the idea of employing highly trained artists or craftsmen. Thinking of the peasants who had made beautiful objects without any formal art education, he decided to experiment with new designs by untrained artists free of what he called "false principles" learned in school.

Poiret sought out young working-class women of artistic talent who could not afford to continue their education, set up a design program for them in his house, and took them to the country; or the zoo; or the Louvre, where they studied Delacroix's composition; or to Notre-Dame de Paris to look at the bright colors of the stained glass windows.(9) They rewarded him with what he considered to be marvelous results, as fresh and spontaneous as nature itself: fields of wheat, daisies, poppies, forests with bounding tigers. All their designs appeared to him to be charming and completely different from any established style, French or foreign. In 1911, aware of the marketing successes of the German and Viennese workshops, which had established boutiques for the sale of their production, he made a collection of textiles and rugs from his protégées' designs for the opening of his own shop, Martine, which was at its height when Anna Tirocchi visited it in the mid-1920s.

In 1909, Poiret became interested in the work of the young French painter Raoul Dufy, whose first efforts at printmaking he had recently seen. Poiret invited Dufy to a dinner party with Poiret's friends poet Max Jacob, decorative artist Louis Süe, and painter Marie Laurençin, there also introducing him to Guillaume Apollinaire. This celebrated poet was then waiting for Pablo Picasso to produce illustrations for his newest volume of verse, Le Bestiaire. Picasso, however, was dragging his feet and had not even begun the work. Apollinaire, who had a printer waiting anxiously for the book, decided to hire Dufy instead.(10)