NOWNESS

Inès de la Fressange x Roger Vivier

The French Icon Breathes New Life Into the Seminal Brand

Roger Vivier Paris store, 2011

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Imbued with a pale rosy hue and decorated with Poliakoff and Picasso paintings, Roger Vivier’s Paris shop, pictured right, is the very embodiment of the late French shoemaker’s edict: “All that is beautiful can be mixed.” The boutique’s careful curation is overseen by creative director Inès de la Fressange and serves as a blueprint for the brand’s global outposts, nodding to Vivier’s original shop design; one wall is adorned with 20,000 silver leaves to echo the aluminum wallpaper used in the designer’s historic site on Rue Royale. “He would mix things up––18th century, modern art, Roman sculpture––all so diverse yet miraculously working together,” says De la Fressange, who scours the Paris markets for the furniture, paintings, and African works of which Vivier was so fond. Charged with reinvigorating the iconic brand behind the stiletto and the Pilgrim pump, De la Fressange was appointed to her post seven years ago; the success of the match was evident from the beginning. “One month after the opening [of the Paris shop], a very elegant old man arrived,” she reminisces. “Announcing himself to be the former secretary of Monsieur Vivier, he said, ‘I must congratulate you; he would have loved this place.’”

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