Roger Vivier’s archives already offer ample inspiration for the brand’s creative director Gherardo Felloni, but this season was a double-whammy for his Pièce Unique collection of one-off designs.

In collaboration with long-standing house partner Maison Lesage, with which he worked to develop the eight bags and two gilets in the collection this season, he was able to tap the storied embroidery specialist’s back catalog for inspiration, as well as its archive of materials and components, making each precious design all the more unique. “All of these stones don’t exist anymore on the market,” Felloni enthused during a presentation. “For Pièce Unique, they opened the archive and said you can use any quantities that we have.”

Felloni bounced off the leitmotif of his main line for fall, the rose, which Roger Vivier was the first footwear designer to take from a couture hat and put on shoes in the 1940s before making it a recurring motif in his designs. A multitude of complex techniques came into play thanks to Lesage’s expertise and both companies’ archives, with each piece inspired by a specific design from the past and crafted by hand in Italy and France, with Lesage’s artisans embroidering directly onto the bags themselves.

The tiny, folded and pleated silk organza blossoms stitched onto a background of lilac silk were in reference to a hat in the Lesage archive. Hand-beaded, gold-threaded iterations on green velvet for La Vertueuse came from a vintage cape.

On La Passionnée, blossoms were draped and sculpted by hand from silk mousseline or hand-embroidered with tiny beads. L’Ephemere, inspired by a dress in the Lesage archives and developed as both bag and gilet, featured pale colors evoking the fading of time and a combination of silk, muslin and wire embroideries and twists, hand-painted and overlaid with delicate strands of feathers. On La Tendre, hundreds of coral-colored glass beads from the ’60s shivered.

The buckles and handles for each piece were also crafted by hand and set with semiprecious stones including onyx, citrine and amethyst.