1913-1998

Roger Vivier was born in Paris in 1913. He studied sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, until an invitation from friends to design a collection of shoes for their shoe factory interrupted his studies. He worked for several other shoe makers.

In 1937, he opened his own shoe concern. He designed for many major shoe manufacturers: Pinet and Bally in France, Miller and Delman in the USA, Rayne and Turner in the U.K. In fact Delman turned down one of his designs, which was afterwards used by Elsa Schiaparelli.

In 1938, he agreed to work exclusively for Delman in the USA but had to go in the army when World war II started in 1939. One year later he was out of the army and off to New York, where he worked with Delman till 1941.

Having studied millinery, vivier opened a hat shop with Suzanne Remi, a well-respected Parisian milliner who was living in New York. In 1945, he went back to shoes and to Delman.

In 1947, he went back to Paris and worked freelance until Christian Dior opened a shoe department in his salon in 1953 and appointed Vivier as designer. Here Vivier designed some of the most important shoes of the period, during his ten year stay with DIOR. One pair of shoes was worn by Queen Elizabeth to her coronation in 1953. They were gold kidskin studded with garnets. In 1961, he made the shoe shown above on the right, a bright green highly polished cabochon with twinkling rhinestones on the surface for film star Ava Gardner.

In 1963, he reopened his own salon in Paris and continues to produce two collections a year of shoes, under his own label. Roger Vivier is the Faberge of footwear. His designs have redefined our notions of the shoe.

In 1966, when futuristic designs were in demand, Vivier made the 'Cristal' boot similar to Courreges Go-go boot.

Vivier's beaded 1967 pump is as fine-tuned as a delicate time-piece. By forcing the heel under the arch, elongating the vamp and turning up the toe, Vivier has achieved a shoe of perfectly balanced proportions.

The most arresting part of a Vivier shoe is usually the heel, named for the shape it mimics - comma, spool, ball, needle, pyramid or escargot. His comma heels are still cast by an aeronautical engineering firm in an ultra-light aluminum alloy developed for jet engines.

The 'Pilgrim' pump became one of fashion's most copied shoes after its first appearance in a collection of Yves St. Laurent. It is still one of the top sellers in the 90's.

Another design still popular in the 90's is the thorn heel.

In 1987 there was a retrospective exhibition of Vivier's art, at the Palais du Louvre, showing all his creative shoe designs. He says: "to be carried by shoes, winged by them, to wear dreams on one's feet, is to begin to give reality to one's dreams."

In the 90's Vivier went back a long way for inspiration. He took the notched sole of the ancient clog sandal and reinterpreted it with a sculptor's sensibility.

Roger Vivier died in 1998, at the age of 90.

However the house of Vivier is still going strong. Diego Della Valle, the Italian shoe mogul behind Tod's and Hogan, acquired the Roger Vivier name in 2002. A new store opened in Paris in early 2004, and Bruno Frisoni is the shoe designer who has been appointed to take the house into the 21st century. He is shown on the right. He worked for Christian Lacroix and Karl Lagerfeld before launching his own collection in 1999 but says that Vivier was always his favourite shoe designer.

click below:

Roger Vivier (Universe of Fashion) by Colombe Pringle

2004