STYLE ETC. Rialto ankle
STYLE ETC. Rialto ankle boots in Cognac, left, and unpainted Rialto brogues in alligator skin sole, with four types to choose from, including the labour-intensive Norwegian and the Goodyear, made with a doublestitch knotting technique. Finally, the head of the shoe department in Los Angeles asked: “Would you like a belt made to match your shoes?” The clock started. In six months an Oscar-winning actress will look under her table at the Polo Lounge and say, “Those are great shoes.” Louis Vuitton has been in the shoe business for only 20 years. To augment its shoe production, the company bought a small family shoe workshop in 2001, four years into Marc Jacobs’s tenure as creative director. It is in Fiesso d’Artico, 30 kilometres outside Venice, in Italy’s Veneto region, which is known for shoemaking. Michael Burke, chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, explains the reason for the very French company locating its production facilities here. “Veneto is the cradle of shoemaking manufacture and skills,” he says. “In Veneto we have found everything we need: prototype engineers, designers, craftsmanship knowledge and creativity. This is the worldwide headquarters for shoes.” The first Vuitton shoe collections were small, mainly shoes for runway shows and capsule collections of classic men’s loafers and women’s pumps. In 2009, four years before Nicolas Ghesquière would replace Jacobs, this larger, 14,000sq m, state-of- the-art facility was built nearby, and the company had a new – and steep –mandate: shoes are to be as important as Vuitton’s storied trunks, first made in 1858. After Justin chose an ostrich-skin wing tip, the order came here, where both made-to-measure and ready-to-wear shoes are crafted. The facility, a grey concrete box, looks far more like a modern art museum than a shoemaking factory. Indeed, right outside the entry is Jean- Jacques Ory’s 2m-tall, white-lacquered high heel with an insole depicting Botticelli’s Venus. Inside – past a gallery with a wall of Warhol’s shoe illustrations and an installation spotlighting fantastical, furniture-like high-heeled creations from Ghesquière; across the centre courtyard with a reflecting pool and sunglassed French designers speaking Italian while smoking Marlboro Lights; and down a hallway past the women’s department – sits a man in one corner of a large factory floor. While the rest of the hangar-like space is more automated, with workers and machines making ready-to-wear shoes, sneakers and moccasins, this calm corner, with a workbench and exotic skins, is dedicated to made-to-measure. The man’s name is Roberto Bottoni, and he’s painting a white alligator boot a colour of red somewhere between blood and pinot noir. Slowly, deliberately, Bottoni paints the scales. Holding the left shoe, he coats the instep, up and down the scales. The fiftysomething shoemaker, who’s worked here since the facility opened, sets it down, then grabs the right. He drags the stubby, square brush up over the toe cap and back down again. He’s creating the burnished patina effect for which the company is now known. He studies the shoe. He seems to be working to get the shoes to look exactly the same, even though guys who wear custom shoes enjoy the snob appeal of the colours being slightly off – sign of a human, bespoke hand. Bottoni sets it down on his table, crowded with hammers and picks and shanks with faded green handles and scuffed blades. He turns on his stool to face the sewing machine. He stitches together the upper of what will be a patent-leather monkstrap. He sets that down. Then he turns to a wing tip sitting upside down. He starts stitching. A few minutes later, he turns to another machine, which makes a thicker stitch with a needle that punctures the layers of leather. This is what Bottoni does from 8am to 5pm each weekday, looking out onto a pair of one-metre-tall concrete lace-up loafers – I Left My Shoes in Guilin, a work by the Taiwanese artist Ken-Tsai – except for a mandated hour-long lunch served for free in the employee cafeteria. He’s a oneman assembly line. Each pair of made-to-order shoes comes from Bottoni, with some assistance from his midtwenties apprentice, Pierpaolo – in New Balance sneakers and a nail projecting through his earlobe, a contrast to Bottoni’s Crocs and lab coat. But the optics are clear: to keep this know-how going in Veneto, the next generation has to be trained. Behind Pierpaolo, robots are creating monogrammed canvas sneakers. We walk back towards the entrance and into a mock store. I am told the store experience should be bespoke as well. Shoe managers are brought here from Louis Vuitton boutiques all over the world. For four days they practise how to sell, how to fit, how to lace the shoes, how to arrange the paper in the shoe box. And perhaps how to recognise a VIP customer – VIC, in Vuitton parlance, “very important client” – in Beverly Hills and ask, “Care to purchase a pair of custommade wing tips?” Oh, and they practise how to smile. louisvuitton.com ♦ JENS MORTENSEN 38 DEPARTURES-INTERNATIONAL.COM
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE WHAT DOES “ME” SMELL LIKE? It’s a question LYNN YAEGER – an obsessive about most other matters of style – never pondered. Until now I am the sort of person who will go to the ends of the earth to have her portrait painted on her handbag. I fantasise about having the words Baby Lynnie embroidered on everything from my underpants to my umbrellas. But I have never considered having my very own scent, created for me alone. Maybe this is because of all the senses, smell is, in my case, the least developed. It isn’t that I don’t wear perfume – I do, every day; it’s just that for me scents fall into two categories: disgusting or “I like it”. I am perfectly content with the free bottle the nice people at Chanel give you when you attend their fashion shows. And even though it’s a different scent every season, they all seem fine to me. Still, when Departures suggests that I head to the lower level of Bergdorf Goodman to meet with the three goodlooking Europeans behind the fragrance company Ex Nihilo, a trio keen to formulate one of their trademark demibespoke scents just for me, I agree. It will come with an authentication certificate, have its own ID number, and be packaged in a madly chic foam box! How can I resist? “The very first part is to smell together!” says Benoît Verdier, one of the three founders, which might sound faintly revolting but coming from his patrician lips is sort of enticing. Ex Nihilo, he tells me, launched almost four years ago: “Just three friends with a computer.” Today four of us – Verdier, Sylvie Loday, Olivier Royère and I – sit around a consultation table in front of a plate of macarons, which no one touches. Loday busies herself with a cache of beakers. Actually, there is a fifth entity in the room. Behind us, looking like a cross between the world’s biggest coffeemaker and R2-D2, looms the Osmologue, the cornerstone of the Ex Nihilo experience. If, as the three wise strippers in Gypsy long ago informed us, “you gotta have a gimmick”, then this golden behemoth – a “high-precision dosing machine” – is the company’s trick pony. I must admit, you don’t see an R2-D2 perfume robot every day, at least not in the basement of Bergdorf’s. It’s sniffing time. There are nine basic scents – created in France by seven distinguished noses – and a passel of other notes that can be added during the personalisation process. I think Verdier is going to ask me my favourite smells. The Atlantic off Cherry Grove! The wet wool of an Hermès cashmere muffler on a snowy afternoon! Instead he asks merely, “Do you like men’s fragrances too?” Sure, I say. After all, a hundred years ago, when I was a teenager, I used to sneak my dad’s Jade East, a fluid that was the exact shade of the poisoned apple in Snow White. We sniff together through the nine contenders, and my two favourites are Bois d’Hiver and Cologne 352 – the former was meant, Royère chimes in, to evoke a winter walk in the Swedish woods. (I don’t get closer to woods, winter or summer, than Tompkins Square Park in New York’s East Village, but never mind.) The other is named in honour of the address of the firm’s flagship, just down from Goyard on the Rue St-Honoré. W e play with the top notes, and, sad to say, it turns out my preferred accent is that collegedorm staple – sandalwood. The liquids are dribbled together in just the right proportions. At last, time to fire up R2-D2! The machine works its mixing magic, which includes adding water and alcohol. At this point I could use some water and alcohol myself. I break down and grab a macaron, and the rest of the team follows. The juice is removed from the clutches of the Osmologue and placed into a magnet blender, a machine that whirls Eau de Lynnie into a tiny tornado. The winning combo, Bois d’Hiver and sandalwood, seems to me to be oddly fruity – are there citrus trees in that forest? – and strangely sweet and, even to my ignorant nose, fairly delicious. One more step – the crimper, to affix the spritzer button. And then my favourite part of the whole experience, selecting the bottle-cap colour! I feel like I could deliberate over this decision far longer than I did for my actual perfume. Lavender cap, an homage to Bergdorf Goodman? Royal blue? Or white or black mother-ofpearl? I choose the black, so stylish and snug atop my magic elixir, now nestled in its little foam coffin, safe and sound for a wintry walk through the mean streets of the East Village. ex-nihilo-paris.com ♦ © BAMFORD (2) WINNING HAND New from British lifestyle authority Bamford, this super-light, super-sleek carbon-fibre manicure kit is the perfect travelling companion, comprising seven stainless-steel tools coated with same MGTC finish applied to all the brand’s watches. bamfordlondon.com Illustration by Serge Bloch DEPARTURES-INTERNATIONAL.COM 39
