The writers of the exposition's summary offered a brief definition of the "moderne" style. Its principal characteristic, according to them, was the abstraction inspired by Charles Rennie Mackintosh's earlier Glasgow school and by the Viennese and German workshop movements, which had seemed so revolutionary in 1900. By 1920, abstraction was a commonplace, even in floral patterns. Designers had "revived, with a modern accent, the garland, the knot, the rose, the attributes of doves, fans, and cupids, dear to the designers of the eighteenth century."Some had recently adopted the "disassociation of volumes and lines of cubism," creating a "kaleidoscope of lines and colors, richer in decorative possibilities than realistic subjects."The exposition included designs based on cubist concern with the exotic and the "primitive." The summary's authors praised Rodier especially for their textiles based on the art of Cambodia, Vietnam, Guinea, and the Congo. Objects from these cultures had been on view at the Exposition of Marseille in 1922, which presented the indigenous products of the French colonies. Rodier was also the firm that produced fabrics in the brightest, strongest colors, inspiring the authors to marvel that "a dress from their designers is almost a painting."(24) Anna Tirocchi purchased at least two Rodier textiles that reflect this trend [fig. 164].

Exhibitors of textiles included the four largest French firms: Bianchini, Férier, represented by Dufy's works; Soieries F. Ducharne; Coudurier-Fructus-Descher, which displayed lamé shawls and textiles with complicated brocading in gold and silver combined with printing; and Rodier, whose handwoven cottons, rayons, and woolens displayed designs inspired by everything from Hungarian and North African embroideries to the art of the Far East. Many lesser known firms also exhibited, such as Algoud et Joannon, l'Alliance Textile, J. Barret, Blech Frères, Henri Chanée, and Brunet, Meunie et Compagnie.

Some of the new design developments in evidence at the Exposition were credited by its committee to technological advances at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The dyeing of fabrics in the piece was a major step forward. Earlier, the yarns for textiles had to be dyed before the piece was woven (yarn dyeing), because the technology of vat dyeing lagged behind that of machine weaving: the fifty- or sixty-yard pieces that came off the Jacquard loom were too voluminous to fit into the available vats. By the mid-nineteenth century, larger vats were available and the cloth could be dyed after weaving, making possible brilliant color effects previously unobtainable. Not only did piece dyeing allow the production of the saturated colors preferred by artists such as Dufy, but it also enabled manufacturers to add more twist to their yarns during spinning. Bette Kirke, in her work on couturiere Madeleine Vionnet, explains how this came about. "When dyed after twisting,...yarns tended to untwist. With the development of larger vats, cloth could be piece dyed and the amount of twist of the yarn was no longer limited. It was possible then to twist up to 3,000 turns per meter...The suppleness obtained would replace the previous stiff character of silks."(25) The result was crepe with much more elasticity, or crepe de Chine, whose delicate hand resulted from the alternation of weft threads highly twisted in different directions, allowing the construction of the beautiful bias-cut styles of the 1930s.