Roger Vivier
Image:Roger Vivier.jpg|Shoes by Roger Vivier for Christian Dior|thumb
Roger Henri Vivier was a French fashion designer who specialized in shoes. He is best known for creating the modern day stiletto heel and for placing a chrome-plated buckle on an elegant black pump, which became a must-have fashion statement for many celebrities and stars in the 50s and 60s. His namesake label is Roger Vivier (brand).
Early life and education
Orphaned at the age of nine, Vivier studied sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and his compositions exhibited the concern for form and texture characteristic of a sculptor.Career
Vivier has been called the "Fragonard of the shoe" and his shoes "the Fabergé of Footwear" by numbers of critics. He designed extravagant, richly decorated shoes that he described as sculptures.An apprenticeship manufacturing shoes introduced him to shoe design and production and soon after graduating he was designing shoes for a number of European and US companies, including Bally and Delman. After opening his own house in Paris in 1937, he continued to produce designs for Delman, his designs of the time very sculptural and creative interpretations of the era's platform soles, which often included the wedge heels that had been introduced by Ferragamo in 1937. The first couturier to use Vivier footwear was Schiaparelli in 1937, who included a pair of Chinese-influenced Vivier platforms that Delman had rejected. During the Second World War, while exiled in New York, he made hats. In 1954, after he had returned to France he created what we now think of as the modern stiletto heel. Stiletto heels, the very thin high heel, were invented in the late 19th century, as numerous fetish drawings attest, but Vivier is known for reviving and developing this opulent style by using a thin rod of steel.
Ava Gardner, Gloria Guinness and The Beatles were all Vivier customers, and he designed shoes for Queen Elizabeth II for her Coronation in 1953.
Vivier designed shoes for the house of Christian Dior from 1953 to 1963. In addition to the stiletto heel, he also experimented with other shapes, including the comma. He used silk, pearls, beads, lace, appliqué and jewels to create unique decorations for his shoes.
In the 1960s, Vivier also designed silk-satin knee-high boots outlined in jewels, and thigh-high evening boots in a black elastic knit with beads. Perhaps his best known boot design of the decade was the low-heeled, thigh-high, black crocodile boot he produced for Saint Laurent (designer)|Yves Saint Laurent]'s fall 1963 collection, paired with a Space Age-looking, all-black Saint Laurent ensemble of tights, suede jerkin, short ciré jacket, and helmet-like visored cap and hood. Also presented in other colors and materials in the collection, these boots were a variation of a pair Vivier had designed for a Rudolph Nureyev performance of Swan Lake. He continued to produce thigh-high and higher boots and other footwear for Saint Laurent, Dior, Ungaro, Simonetta, and a number of others through the end of the decade.
In 1967, he reintroduced the platform shoe in two collections for Saint Laurent, launching a trend that would expand and become characteristic of the early 1970s.