Roger Vivier’s Gherardo Felloni Bags Paris Landmarks
CITY SIGHTS: For the past three seasons, Roger Vivier’s creative director Gherardo Felloni had looked to the opulence of nature for his Pièce Unique collection of one-off bags and vests. This time, he sought his inspiration in the city, in the historic monuments of Paris and their graphic lines and architectural details.
“Paris is the city that opened its heart to me and many designers, it’s a city that inspires,” Felloni told WWD. “Roger Vivier was a son of Paris.” He continued, “It was interesting to try to move from this organic, alive texture to try to explore this really human and more square, rational, graphic aesthetic.”
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Using techniques akin to those of fine jewelry making, the pieces were no less opulent and handwork intensive than their predecessors. They were not intended to be literal interpretations of the monuments concerned. “If you take it home, you don’t necessarily see the monument, you see the texture and the feeling,” Felloni said.
His mood board, which took pride of place in his office at the label’s headquarters, drew parallels between Paris monuments and Vivier’s archival designs, very avant-garde in their time. “He was probably one of the most relevant designers who used embroideries on shoes for the first time, he used pearls, golden stitching…,” he explained.
His subject matter for the seven bags and three vests in the collection included the glass domes of the Grand Palais, the marble of the Louvre, the verdigris of the column in Place Vend?me, the gilded and red velvet interior of the Opéra Garnier and the embossed ceiling and arched shape of the Arc de Triomphe.
The starting point for the designs was the house’s Efflorescence Jewel Handle bag with its rigid encrusted handle, whereas previous iterations were based on the Viv’ Choc model. Each was embroidered with thousands of different stones, pearls and crystals by hand by several craftspeople and using a number of different techniques.
Théatral, inspired by the Paris Opéra house, starts with a gold satin base, embroidered with a foundation layer of rhinestones and beads. A second layer of embroidery, done using 24-carat gold thread, evokes the scroll and foliage details of the theater’s interior. Natural coral embellishments nod to the plush interior.
The metallic frameworks of designs evoking the gates to the Tuileries gardens or the Grand Palais were created flat then formed using wooden molds, and set with thousands of individual stones. Inside, each features a removable hand-embroidered satin pouch.
L’Emblème, inspired by the Eiffel Tower, takes the view from underneath the structure looking up as its graphic standpoint, with multiple embroidered layers giving a three-dimensional effect with a net of smoked topaz beads on the surface, while the central buckle features red tiger’s eye stones and rhinestones in smoked amber, evoking rust. In total, 18,500 beads and crystals were used to craft the piece.
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