A report from London Chanel Bags
2012 ? – Inès de la Fressange is running late, but its hard to hold it
against her. Firstly, because I'm waiting in the twinkly warmth of an afternoon
tea party at Roger Vivier's Sloane Street boutique; and secondly, because the
reason she's been waylaid is so very understandable. She's been in Topshop.
After stepping off the Eurostar, the former Chanel muse and model – and now the
brand ambassador for luxury shoe label Roger Vivier– just couldn't resist a
little detour to one of our national treasures.“I bought a sequinned jacket a
bit like this one,” she says, in her warm, deep voice, while gesturing with
slim, elegant fingers at the sparkly black blazer she's wearing. It's part of an
outfit that looks more quintessentially Parisian than an onion-seller eating a
croissant under the Eiffel Tower. Chanel Bags
2012 Her long, slim legs (she once likened her figure to a “giant
asparagus”) are encased in straight dark jeans, and teamed with a Breton top and
midnight-blue velvet Vivier flats.At 52, she is strikingly beautiful with olive
skin that's smooth, but not suspiciously so, and sparkly, dark
chocolate-coloured eyes enhanced with smoky make-up. However, it's her manner
that's most engaging: a combination of rapid banter, the odd sultrily-slurred
phrase, animated gestures and conspiratorially raised eyebrows.
Whenever Fressange, who lives on Paris's Left Bank, comes to London she is
“Chanel
Bags 2012” to come to Topshop by her children, 15-year-old Nine, and
10-year-old Violette, but she also believes that, “it's really important to see
what the street fashion is. In the luxury business if you see that something is
sold very cheaply there is no point in trying to do the same kind of thing.”This
kind of research and observation is part of Fressange's role at Roger Vivier.
She explains that when Diego Della Valle, the chairman and CEO of the luxury
leather group Tod's, hired her in 2002, after buying the Roger Vivier label, it
was to take care of “the communication, the strategy, the decoration and all
that”. It was part of a plan which has successfully taken a label that had
fallen from favour into a desirable modern brand, Chanel Bags
2012 with six international shops, an opulent couture collection of shoes
and bags, and famous customers such as Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett. One of
Fressange's first projects was to choose the location for the Paris boutique and
its interior design, and after taking advice from of one of the late Vivier's
friends, she duly crammed it with an eclectic mix of art and antiques. “We
wanted an elegant shop for elegant customers,” Fressange explains, “to go back
to what is real luxury.”The label's credentials certainly made it ripe for a
revival. Vivier was credited with inventing the stiletto in 1954, and provided
glamorous footwear for the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Brigitte Bardot, Liz
Taylor and Fran?oise Hardy. He created heels with a fleur-de-lis motif for Queen
Elizabeth II's coronation (the flats Fressange is wearing today are a homage to
them) Chanel
Bags 2012 and Catherine Deneuve wore the designer's buckled pumps in the
film Belle de Jour. They were designed in 1965 for Yves St Laurent's Mondrian
collection, and the square, chrome buckle has been reinterpreted as the label's
signature motif by designer Bruno Frisoni.Just as Roger Vivier has a
distinguished history, Fressange's own stellar status made her a smart choice to
lend the brand some modern sophistication, coupled with the fact that she knew
the late designer. Her background is absurdly glamorous. She is the daughter of
an Argentinian heiress and a stockbroker with his own plane, while her
couture-clad grandmother drove a gold Rolls-Royce.
After becoming a model, Chanel Bags
2012 her big break was meeting Karl Lagerfeld at the New York shows in the
early Eighties, when he offered her an exclusive contract to be the face of
Chanel. With her coquettish but confident air, Fressange became Lagerfeld's muse
and he said he wouldn't design a collection without her. The fairytale came to
an abrupt end seven years later, however, when the pair fell out, although they
are now back on cordial terms. The row was supposedly because Fressange was
asked to be the face of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic – after
which Lagerfeld labelled her provincial, castigated her in an interview, and
Fressange's contract was ended. More recently she has said that Lagerfeld was
probably put out because she had fallen in love with the man who later became
her husband, art historian Luigi d'Urso, who died suddenly of a heart attack in
2006.After her Chanel days, Fressange designed her own label for almost a
decade, and was awarded the Légion d'Honneur in 2008. In October, she received
another accolade, this time voted for by the readers of Le Figaro, who crowned
her the most chic woman in France in their annual poll Chanel Bags
2012 .
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