Belle Vivier in Motion

At a certain point, fashion icons risk settling into habit. It happens to the best of them. Certain signature pieces get referenced and occasionally revived, but rarely are they pushed or even circulated.

In celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Belle Vivier, Roger Vivier’s Spring-Summer 2026 collection does the opposite. Under Gherardo Felloni, the house’s most recognizable silhouette sheds any sense of preciousness. The square buckle, the disciplined heel, the clean, almost severe line of the pump are, of course, still there. But at the very least, they’re treated as texture to work through.

The campaign, led by Marie Colomb with Iman Perez and Yasmine Fraioli, reinforces that shift. Set within the house’s salons and gardens, it avoids the usual stiffness of anniversary storytelling. Absent your usual worn-out narrative structure, the tableau puts forward three women moving through space, not just performing for it. The energy, light, but not incidental. It suggests icons that feel, err, more lived-in, if you will.

At the center of it all remains the revered Belle Vivier pump, recognizable by its squared buckle and architectural heel, but now dressed with a certain deliberateness. Embroidery becomes the collection’s most persuasive argument here. Not decorative in the obvious sense, but really dense, almost obsessive as a matter of fact. Floral motifs crawl across satin and leather like they have something to prove.

The evening iterations are particularly sharp with just the right amount of sentimentality. Jewel-like embellishments cluster along the toe, catching light in a way that borders on theatrical. They recall the house’s mid-century bravado, in effect, when shoes were engineered to be seen.

Then there’s the wedge sandal, arguably the collection’s most pragmatic—and therefore most revealing—piece. Rendered in lacquered patent leather and saturated color, it takes the Belle Vivier buckle, that polite square of authority, and drops it into something more casual and kinetic. Likewise, the Belle Viviersling, with its color-blocked variations, slices through its typical profile with clean, graphic segments (might we argue that it feels consciously and tastefully underworked?).

The bags, meanwhile, operate on a different frequency. The Belle Vivier clutch emerges as the quiet centerpiece of the collection. In cream and lilac, it is almost austere, relying on proportion and finish rather than embellishment. But in its woven leather iterations, it loosens again, introducing texture and a subtle irregularity that gives it life.

When it began, the Belle Vivier sought out a method of dressing and moving through space, and this most recent release channels that. Structured, yes, but never stiff. Interestingly, Felloni’s great trick is resisting the urge to declare this evolution too loudly. Instead, he lets it surface in fragments. A buckle recontextualized, a stitch pushed further than necessary, forms that move just enough to feel unfamiliar.

This article originally appeared in Robb Report Philippines’ Muse Issue, July 2026.