Corthay's Hand-Painted Shoes Have Heart & Sole

Men who love shoes love Pierre Corthay. He's charming, with a quiet demeanor that disguises grand obsessions. But set him loose at your feet and his eyes dance, his practiced hands fly, and his gestures--and enthusiasm--expand. Corthay knew from age 16 that he wanted to make shoes: He spent six years in technical school, then worked for John Lobb, Paris, and Olga Berluti; in 1990 he took over a retired boot maker's atelier near the Place Vendôme and launched his own company. The business grew quickly, thanks to good publicity, some windfall commissions (custom shoes for 50 founding members of Bridgehampton's Golf Club, 150 pairs for the Sultan of Brunei), and a partnership with his brother, Christophe. Bespoke service was always the enterprise's raison d'être, but both Corthays also wanted to make ready-to-wear collections in their newly-acquired factory just outside of Paris. While still relatively small, the company was suddenly able to expand: the brothers opened three Pierre Corthay shops in Japan, and began taking custom orders and selling ready-made shoes in a handful of European and American stores. In short, they went global.

On the sunny July day I visited, Corthay's atelier was humming at 8:30 in the morning. Antoine, a recently-hired 22-year-old craftsman, sat near open windows, bent over his task of stretching and trimming leather on wooden lasts. Stephane, a young patiniste, perched in another corner hand-coloring crocodile lace-ups: his hands moved rapidly, whisking each shoe with thin layers of pigment. A preternaturally hip Japanese man--taking a break from his regular job making Chanel couture shoes at nearby Massaro--occupied a table in the front hall, where he was methodically polishing each finished pair. Pierre was in the basement, deep in concentration as he pored over a customer's order and sorted through piles of lustrous, French-tanned skins from Le Puy and Alsace. Bespoke clients usually work directly with Pierre or Christophe, who measure their feet, observe their stance and then personally carve their lasts. Pierre also develops ready-to-wear models, overseeing the many steps between his original designs and standardized production. Perhaps his greatest challenge is keeping the factory staffed with talented craftspeople: machinery has streamlined some of the labor, but an enormous amount of handwork still goes into every pair of ready-to-wear shoes.

Paris is Paris is Paris--but a very small corner of it can be found at Leffot, on Christopher Street in Manhattan's West Village. Run by Steven Taffel, this tiny boutique (ignored by casual shoppers) sends out signals that mysteriously attract shoe-loving men. The store has one long table in its center, where gleaming pairs by Pierre Corthay sit next to shoes and boots from Gaziano & Girling, J.M. Weston and Edward Green, among others. Most of the shoemakers also visit the shop, for trunk shows and private appointments with bespoke clients. Go to Leffot soon, to enjoy the shoes, meet the owner and join the prestigious mailing list. Your feet will thank you.

www.corthay.fr
www.leffot.com

Photograph by Ron Reeves
www.ronreeves.com

Changing Hearts, Minds and Clothes: Coco Chanel

On April 22nd, Anne Fontaine's film Coco Avant Chanel, starring Audrey Tautou, opened in France. US audiences will see it later this year, along with Jan Kounen's Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky with Anna Mouglalis. Since Tautou and Mouglalis are essentially members of the extended Chanel family (representing fragrances No. 5 and Allure) both projects had the company's blessing, not to mention access to current designer-in-residence, Karl Lagerfeld. A third version of the story, by director Danielle Thompson, is also in production. Nearly 40 years after her death--and more than a hundred years since her birth, in 1883--Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel continues to fascinate. She was the right woman in the right place at the right time.

She probably didn't feel that way as a child of the Auvergne, in central France. Her tubercular mother died before Gabrielle was 12; her father dumped her at an orphanage, never to be seen again; and the girl struggled to earn a living and pick up some schooling while working as a seamstress, a school maid, and, briefly, as a cabaret performer. Chanel must have had great strength of will: by all accounts, the charming, if idiosyncratic, young woman who emerged from this painful childhood already showed signs of the talent, ambition and almost haughty self-confidence that would make her famous. Then she discovered men--and their clothes--and her education really began.

Chanel was pretty, but she didn't have the funds, or figure, for the Belle Epoque's heavily-corseted fashions. Menswear was a revelation, and may well have been the key that unlocked her innovative talent. To paraphrase an old peasant expression (often attributed to Picasso), Beggars borrow, but geniuses steal--and Chanel stole like a magpie from the wardrobes of successive boyfriends. First out of the gate was the horse-mad Étienne Balsan, who introduced her to the beau monde and indulged her taste for hacking jackets and jodhpurs. The polo player Arthur "Boy" Capel loaned Chanel money to start an atelier and open her first stores, in Paris and Deauville; he introduced her to bespoke tailoring; and his closet provided jersey sweaters, which she scissored from neck to hem, finished with ribbon and wore with such aplomb she sold dozens. Chanel had a "Russian period," including affairs with Igor Stravinsky and Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich (who lavished her with sable coats and heavy gold chains) followed by an "English period" spent with the dashing, sports-loving Duke of Westminster. Massively rich, he enfolded Chanel in a heady lifestyle combining British practicality and worldly luxury. By the mid-twenties, she was already a celebrated couture designer with a well-honed eye, always seeking inspiration: she copied the navy blazers, brass buttons and striped tops of Westminster's yachting crew; she lifted traditional argyle and fair isle patterns from his country wardrobe; and, from the man himself, she snagged things like his polo coat, which she belted around her small frame and wore to a chilly day at the racetrack. He, in turn, gave her extravagant presents, from ropes of pearls to her own textile factory, where she pushed the staff to create the same soft, pretty tweeds she's still known for to this day.

Chanel loved men and their clothes, but she also had a distinctly feminine side. As a milliner, she'd liked ribbons and bows; she loved flowers, too, especially roses and gardenias. In 1920, she asked chemist Ernest Beaux to partner with her in a new business venture. He produced a heady, synthetic-laced floral fragrance packing the wallop of an iron fist inside a velvet glove; she packaged it in a stark, glass flacon inspired by bottles she'd seen in men's toiletry kits; and the result, No. 5, still needs no introduction some 89 years later. Perhaps Chanel could divine which symbols had the most potency: she added camellias to her repertoire after Garbo's 1936 film, Camille, helped repopularize these 19th-century favorites, and they soon outstripped roses and gardenias to become the flower most associated with her designs. Perhaps she was just true to her own tastes, and women responded. In any case, as the '30s progressed, her collections became more romantic. Evening clothes were especially pretty: there were lace dresses and boleros, clouds of tulle, and charming touches like pailletted veils and jaunty little hats. One of her last pre-war collections, shown just before France entered the fray, was inspired by Watteau's paintings and featured fitted suits with touches of lacy white froth at the neck and sleeves. Karl Lagerfeld may well have revisited this part of the archives while designing Fall 2009's ready-to-wear collection. He also dipped into those eternal tweeds, repackaged the classic shoulder bag inside a plexiglass carry-all and sent it all down the runway with nods to the past, the present and the future. The basic vocabulary, however, still belongs to that formidable woman who saw options where other people saw only clothes: Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel.

www.chanel.com

I Can See Clearly Now

The global mania for brand names has been so mercilessly lampooned, even casual auditors of Fashion 101 recognize this much: manufacturers can slap as many designer logos on their products as the market will bear, but that doesn't make such items well-designed. Mass purveyors of lower-priced accessories like eyeglasses are often the most serious offenders, because they pay prestigious companies high licensing fees for the right to make and sell goods festooned with meaningless labels. However, when smart, creative and dedicated designers are involved, as is the case with the relatively small European firms represented here, the results (with or without famous names attached) can be inspiring.

La famille Lafont has been in the optical business since 1923, when Louis Lafont first opened his Parisian shop near the Madeleine. Louis was a merchant offering spectacles typically made of precious metal, genuine horn or tortoiseshell, all very much in fashion at the time: examples are still on display (and, in some cases, available for sale or custom order), in the original, museum-like store. In 1979, grandson Philippe Lafont decided to take control of all products sold under the family name. He turned to his wife for her design skills, developed a facility where the brand could manufacture its own eyewear and, in the process, transformed Lafont from a retail concern into a vertical operation. Even today, each frame--executed in modern, lightweight metals or acetate--is entirely made in France, down to the tiniest screw. More recently, the family-oriented company (represented by Matthieu Lafont, Philippe's son) has delved into its heritage of four generations, and started reissuing vintage styles: Concierge (top, in photo), tweaks the original schoolboy frame by layering classic tortoiseshell lamina over a backing of bright blue.

FACEàFACE, another French brand, was launched in 1995 by Pascal Jaulent and Nadine Roth. The parent company's name, Architectures, more than hints at the high standards to which these designers hold themselves--balancing form and function, exploring the interplay of shape and material and finding well-designed solutions to real-life problems. The SABBA 3 in lagoon blue (center, in photo) is a good example: so smooth, it's a pleasure to hold; so luscious-looking, it gives the term eye candy new meaning; and, when perched on a face, perfectly balanced as well as utterly devastating.

Frost is a German company whose background, by odd coincidence, shares elements of Lafont's recent history and FACEàFACE's architectural aesthetic. In 1994, Páris Frost couldn't find spectacles he liked, so he asked his wife, jeweler Marion Frost, to design some frames. Local response to this personalized eyewear was so positive, the couple decided to produce limited editions under the name TATTO-O. They sold them to retailers, marketed them at trade shows and, as early as 1997, took advantage of a new phenomenon called the Internet to advertise their brand. The company kept expanding: apparently, Marion's basic credo, which was to treat eyeglasses as architecture for the face, held great appeal. By 2002, the enterprise had grown so large, and encompassed so many different collections, the company was renamed Frost. And at this year's Vision Expo in New York, Marion Frost's f-type (bottom, in photo) generated more than its share of buzz. This titanium frame is a balancing act that really shouldn't work, what with its strange juxtaposition of curves, angles and straight lines; its odd color (aqua, almost teal); and the otherworldly feel of its barely-there metal. But it not only works, it succeeds, and accomplishes something rare by appearing slightly retro and disturbingly new at the same time. How apt: eyewear that offers a vision of things to come. That may well be the fashion industry's equivalent of poetic justice.

www.lafont.com
www.faceaface-paris.com
www.pm-frost.de

Photograph by Ron Reeves
www.ronreeves.com

Hot On His Heels

Words alone cannot explain the allure of shoes. Visual aids are a big help (see any Guy Bourdin or Helmut Newton photograph), but what's really required is extensive fieldwork. Trust me. As an ardent student of the subject, I've read endless musings by and about the greatest footwear designers of the last 110 years, from Yantourny (a near-mythical, early-20th-century Parisian shoemaker) to more recent masters like Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin. In many ways, the writer who's come closest to capturing the thrill of beautiful shoes is Mimi Pond in her silly, but witty, little illustrated book, Shoes Never Lie. The problem is that even a demigod like Roger Vivier (generally credited with perfecting stilettos in the mid-1950s) can't talk about shoes without creating the same uncomfortable feeling Freud brings up when talking about sex. Enough talk, we think, let's have some action!

Brian Atwood, a newcomer to footwear's Mount Olympus, seems to grasp this intuitively: he keeps a relatively low profile and lets his designs take center stage. Which is ironic, seeing as the man is a publicist's dream. He's handsome (he modeled in Milan for several years after graduating from F.I.T.), charming and talented (evidenced by the years he worked for Gianni Versace as his main accessories designer). But Atwood is also smart enough to step back and let his luxurious shoes occupy the spotlight. He seems fascinated by the "Cinderella" moment that happens when a woman tries on a pair of his vertiginous heels: suddenly she's taller, she looks thinner and she feels more powerful. At which point, of course, words are just a lot of hot air.

www.brianatwood.com

Photograph by Ron Reeves
www.ronreeves.com