Viva Vivier

For six decades Parisian shoemaker Roger Vivier has been devising ways to keep women's feet off the ground. Trained as a sculptor, he began confecting "dreams to wear on one's feet" in the 1930s, collaborating along the way with Schiaparelli, Dior, and Saint Laurent. Farah Diba, while she was queen of Iran, danced on the ruins of Persepolis in Vivier slippers sparkling with spun gold, Queen Elizabeth was coronated in his platform sandals ("probably the sexiest thing she ever wore," Vivier says), and, in a music film clip, Bardot straddled a Harley with her legs sheathed in black thigh-high boots—a Vivier innovation. Also coined by Vivier: the flying-buttress-like "shock heel" and the improbably balanced "comma heel," developed with an aeronautics engineer. Now Vivier, 85, has returned with a collection of reprised classics and fanciful new models, including the "thorn heel"—fashioned to resemble a prickly rose stem and intended, the designer notes, "to bring out the femme fatale" in every woman who wears it.

AMY FINE COLLINS