In partnership with Roger Vivier

 

Some icons are born overnight. Others earn their title through decades of cultural imprint, glamour, and reinvention. Roger Vivier’s Belle Vivier belongs to the latter – an enduring emblem of elegance, tracing its lineage from aristocratic embellishment to cinematic centrepiece.

First unveiled in 1965, the Belle Vivier was initially designed by Monsieur Roger Vivier himself for Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian collection. The pump featured a bold chrome-plated buckle – a nod to the ornate footwear of 18th-century nobility, where buckles were less fasteners, more jewellery for the feet. Vivier reimagined the form: geometrically modern, its straight lines nodding to masculinity, softened by curves that echoed the feminine. A silhouette of balance. A statement of intent.

It didn’t take long for the Belle Vivier to be embraced by fashion’s inner sanctum. Jackie Kennedy. Audrey Hepburn. Sophia Loren. But it was Catherine Deneuve’s turn as Séverine in Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour that transformed the shoe into a legend. Worn with opaque tights, the Belle Vivier was both demure and provocative – a visual talisman of freedom. In honour of Deneuve, Vivier renamed the shoe. And thus, the Belle Vivier was born.

Creative Director Gherardo Felloni, who joined the Maison in 2018, brings a theatrical, almost surreal touch to the Vivier universe – crafting short films like The Vivier Express (a short film fusing psychological mystery with old-Hollywood glamour, its heroine navigating train carriages like scenes from a dream) and expanding the House’s offering to include handbags, hats, and bijoux. His designs have found fans in Michelle Yeoh, Laura Dern, Hunter Schafer, and royalty alike.

This season, that adaptability finds new form in Roger Vivier’s La Vie Parisienne Autumn 2025 campaign – a poetic exploration of what it means to be Parisian today. Shot inside a hôtel particulier and along hushed city streets, the campaign pays tribute to women who move between worlds: actresses Zoé Adjani and Léa Rostain, and model Louise de Blegiers, each embodying the quiet audacity that defines the Vivier muse.

In the collection, the Belle Vivier is reborn again – this time in wine-dark burgundy, or a cream slingback accented with a shock of green at the buckle. A woven leather variation nods to the tactility of Parisian café rattan. Around it, the collection dances between silhouettes: featherlight sneakers, silver and green Mary Janes, brooch-clasped bags, embroidered belts and crystal-pinned barrettes. Pieces made not to decorate, but to punctuate.

This tension – between past and present, tradition and play – defines Felloni’s vision for the House. In recent years, he has reframed the Vivier universe through a surrealist lens, presenting collections not merely as fashion but as theatre. There is a kind of symbolism in this – the Belle Vivier as both prop and protagonist. A reminder that fashion, when imbued with history, becomes more than object. It shapes perception, invites performance, and elevates the everyday.