Panel (Dress or Furnishing Fabric)

Poiret's Atelier Martine, established in 1912, was strongly influenced from the very beginning by the Wiener Werkstätte. Both Poiret and Dufy found Werkstätte patterns appealing. Poiret purchased fabrics during his visit to Vienna in 1911 and later incorporated fabrics designed by Peche in some of his garments. This fabric's flat, flksy, and relatively undetailed floral pattern, shown in silhouette against a sharply contrasting ground, reflects a type popular in Vienna over the years. Poiret had seen this naive folk art quality in Vienna fabrics and encouraged the young untrained girls in his new school to capture it.