Inside Roger Vivier’s Parisian Op-Art Fantasy
Stepping inside a Roger Vivier presentation during Paris Fashion Week is akin to taking a journey to a new world. Creative director Gherardo Felloni typically takes over a glorious Parisian hôtel particulier for the day and fills it to the brim with a highly-thematic collection complete with actors, dancers, immersive displays and iconic guests ranging from legendary French actresses to A-lister supermodels. And so, for fall 2024, the story was no different, and the brand dubbed the black and white affair Vivier Op-tical.
Naomi Campbell, Georgia May Jagger, Jerry Hall, Paris Jackson, Catherine Deneuve,
Kelly Rutherford, Eva Green, Naomie Harris, and more sipped drinks and explored the maze of installations covered in black and white stripes, scattered with shoes in Mondrian-like graphic block prints with square toes, or covered in a sea of glittering, dazzling crystals and sequins. “Optical art is an homage to Roger Vivier and this moment in the late sixties when it completely changed his point of view,” said Felloni over coffee in one of the many rooms set up with drinks and flowers and petit fours. “In the fifties, it was all about embroideries and pointy shoes. Then Vivier became obsessed with these kinds of things like stripes, black and white and zebra. It s a moment that I have never explored with Roger Vivier until today.”
About those zebra stripes: one room had a massive zebra sculpture standing tall, surrounded by shoes; nearby, there was a black and white spinning wheel that revealed a selection of various bags covered in a wonderland of black and white textures. Upstairs, the brand filled rooms with their signature artisans who were working on different aspects of the shoes. “There s no designing without savoir faire,” said Felloni. On the second floor of the presentation, there was a stage full of these artisans, who surprisingly staged a rhythmically slow interpretive ballet dance. “I asked some dancers to be masqueraded as artisans,” he said. Downstairs, guests pointed with delight at the double strap mary jane ballet flats in baby pastel shades.
For the event, Felloni also presented a large selection of jewelry, including black and white flower-shaped earrings, as well as embellished vests and crystal covered hats. It was all very ’60s–an era designers have been drawing from for the fall collections. “Sometimes you have the feeling that it s the right moment, and for me, I felt that this kind of historical moment that women need to be glamorous, but also need to be also practical; it was a little bit like that at the end of the ’60s.” With Deneuve herself in the room, there couldn’t be a more iconic shoe moment as when the actress herself gazed upon the new Belle Vivier designs which she once so famously wore in Belle de Jour (1965).
Kevin Tachman1/10Inès de la Fressange
Kevin Tachman2/10Eva Green