Interview

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Inès de la Fressange is French chic personified. The 51-year-old beauty was muse to both Mugler and Lagerfeld, a role model of a model whose appeal was as much about personality as cheekbones. How do you top being muse to the nation’s top designers? Only by becoming the face of France, as de la Fressange did when she was chosen as Marianne, the symbol of the country, in 1989. That was then, but de la Fressange is still in the now. It’s no surprise that Tod’s chairman and CEO, Diego Della Valle, tapped her, along with creative director Bruno Frisoni, to reinvent Roger Vivier, the legendary French footwear label. Under her guidance, Vivier has gone from an iconic name of the past to a wildly-expanding hot commodity. It doesn’t hurt that de la Fressange thinks fashion is best served with wine over lunch insatead of as a sales pitch. Sitting down in Vivier’s Paris offices with Colette’s creative director, Sarah, the fashion icon recalls the days when she actually couldn’t get a modeling job.

SARAH: How did you get on board at Roger Vivier?

INÈS DE LA FRESSANGE: Well, that’s why I really love [Diego] Della Valle, because he’s crazy. Instead of going out to find a top business school graduate, for whom it would have taken five years to see the difference between a ballet shoe and a book, he asked me to revive the label. It’s a bit like Balenciaga. Brands like Vivier are pillars—they are monuments of fashion; they are names we don’t forget. But the general public doesn’t necessarily know that and therefore we had to get the name re-known.