BORIS LACROIX (1902-1984)

The gifted young Boris Lacroix made a crucial career move when he joined the couture house of Madeleine Vionnet in 1924. His instinct as a designer was for simplicity in the elegant visual and technical resolution of practical problems. A fine opportunity arose to exercise his talents at the end of the decade with an invitation from Vionnet to design much of the furniture for her new Paris home, a 'hôtel particulier' in the Square Antoine-Arnauld. He conceived perfectly proportioned pieces of a structural clarity that paralleled the minimal geometrical forms and lines of the new Modernist architecture.