No consideration of the effects of Art Deco style would be complete without a look at Jeanne Lanvin (1867-1946). She started out marrying and having a daughter, and then as a single mother, took to millinery and dressmaking to make her mark. She opened her couture house by selling mother and daughter outfits. Her “robes de style” developed in the 1910s, a waisted, full-skirted dress with panniers (a basket-like structure popular in the 18th century) on each hip. By the 1920s, she chose to devise chemise-style silhouettes typical of the flapper era. This influential woman soon created a fashion empire, and her brand, The House of Lanvin, is Paris’s oldest continuing couture business. Lanvin gave her approval to the avant-garde revamping of France’s post-World War I art industry, encouraging the eclectic design that developed at this time. This eclecticism appeared in her own designs, particularly in surface details and ornament that could range from Aztec embroidery to Breton folk art. Lanvin created “dinner pyjamas” that allowed her clients to wear trousers for casual dress. You can read about the development of Lanvin blue in one of two biographies of the couturier’s life in the Art Department;one of the books also chronicles her house’s later development, and the work of such creative successors as Claude Montana.