Cover For Roger Vivier’s La Rose Vivier Pièce Unique, Gherardo Felloni delved into Lesage’s archives. Photo: Roger Vivier
For Roger Vivier’s La Rose Vivier Pièce Unique, Gherardo Felloni delved into Lesage’s archives. Photo: Roger Vivier
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In Roger Vivier’s first collaboration with storied embroidery house Maison Lesage, the rose emerges as both muse and motif in La Rose Vivier Pièce Unique
In the poem Sacred Emily, Gertrude Stein famously wrote: “A rose is a rose is a rose.” Often interpreted as a reminder that a thing is precisely what it is, the line gestures toward essence over embellishment—the truth of something in its purest form. La Rose Vivier Pièce Unique draws from this same well of meaning, extending the narrative first unveiled in Roger Vivier’s autumn-winter 2025-2026 prêt-à-porter collection. The rose—delicate yet unflinching—was revived from the maison’s archive and brought into full bloom.
Here, it becomes at once muse and motif, reimagined through the rarefied artistry of Parisian embroidery house Maison Lesage. What if the essence of a rose could be expanded, refracted and reborn through the hand of an artisan? What if its beauty lay not only in what it is, but in the infinite ways it could be reimagined?
In the hands of Roger Vivier and Lesage, these questions find their answer in a series of Pièce Unique creations that transform the rose from motif to living sculpture. As the first collaboration within the Pièce Unique collection, it marks a bold new chapter in a creative relationship that has unfolded over decades.
In case you missed it: Tatler Singapore presents Roger Vivier’s fall-winter 2025 collection in an exclusive showcase
Above The La Vertueuse gilet and bag
The La Vertueuse gilet and bag
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Founded in Paris in 1937, Roger Vivier is the eponymous house of its visionary founder, one of the 20th century’s most prodigious talents, whose creations adorned the feet of the world’s most celebrated women. Since 2018, Italian designer Gherardo Felloni has helmed the maison as creative director, honouring its storied heritage while infusing the collections with his own joyful sensibility and contemporary design language.
Lesage’s story began in 1924, when Albert and Marie-Louise Lesage took over the Michonet embroidery workshop—founded in 1858 and once a supplier to haute couture’s greats. With innovations such as the vermicelle droit fil, an embroidery technique stitched to follow the fabric’s grain, the maison quickly gained renown for its avant-garde motifs.
In 1949, François Lesage assumed the helm, forging legendary collaborations with couturiers including Cristóbal Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent. For La Rose Vivier Pièce Unique, Felloni delved into Lesage’s archives, unearthing beaded appliqués, intricate textures and antique floral fragments—echoes of a grandeur that once lit Parisian ballrooms. From these treasures emerged eight Efflorescence Jewel bags, each a singular reimagining of the rose through its own materials and techniques. Crafted over 50 to 70 hours apiece, the series is bound by the collection’s signature Flower Strass buckle—variously set with pearls, crystals or beads—and a hand-wrought jewel handle. Yet no two share the same spirit.
La Passionnée
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A tribute to a vintage Vivier design crowned with a satin rose, La Passionnée unfurls in Tosca red, its bead-embroidered petals layered with draped silk mousseline, sculpted to evoke a bloom on the cusp of opening. L’Éphémère distills the beauty of a rose softened by time into pale yellow satin, its surface animated with pongee silk branches shaded in gentle gradients, leaves woven in silver thread, and stems wrapped in silk. Rooster and goose feathers lend a whisper of texture, while citrine pearls and crystals cast a warm, sunlit glow.
Drawn from Lesage’s archives, pearls upon pearls form the blooms of L’Eternelle, five sizes of vintage pearls are sculpted into macramé roses whose tones and textures shift with the light, finished with delicate pearl tassels that ripple along the edges.
A darker mood infuses La Nocturne, where black beadwork roses—each petal shaped by hand— draw on the poetry of antique buttons and 19th-century floral fragments preserved in the Lesage archives. The bag is finished with a fringe of glimmering antique beads. In L’Astrale, metallic silver threads chart the shifting phases of the moon, while small roses—knotted, twisted and curled by hand—unfurl in rhythm like a lunar cycle. A veil of silver beaded fringe shimmers with movement, edged by a raised embroidered cord.
La Vertueuse
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Merging floral softness with art deco geometry, La Vertueuse pairs green velvet with vintage black tube beads embroidered in bold, angular patterns. Sheer silk-tulle cut-outs and an antique bead fringe temper the structure, while gold- beaded roses tipped with black acetate petals lend a defined edge.
In contrast, La Tendre unfolds in coral-pink satin, its surface blossoming with silk mousseline roses, each petal pleated and embroidered, their centres clustered with coral tubes and glass beads. Hand-applied blown-glass coral beads trace a luminous halo along the edges, while a silver braid winds across the surface, binding the flowers together.
On Les Miniatures, delicate silk mousseline roses—no larger than a thumbprint—are scattered across lilac satin, each bloom shaped entirely by hand and paired with embroidered greenery rendered in needle and silk thread.
Above The L’Éphémère gilet
Above The La Vertueuse gilet
The L’Éphémère gilet
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The collection extends beyond bags to include two embroidered gilets, conceived as wearable counterparts to their Efflorescence Jewel bag companions. Each carries the mood, palette and detail of its pair, allowing the rose motif to flow seamlessly from object to silhouette. Requiring over 100 hours of work each, the gilets embody the vision of La Rose Vivier Pièce Unique: couture embroidery translated into the form and movement of wear.
The L’Éphémère gilet translates the softened, time-worn beauty of its namesake bag into a silhouette that shifts with the wearer. Sun‑faded yellow satin forms the base, interrupted by panels of gathered pongee silk where rose branches in gentle yellow gradients climb across the surface. Silver-thread leaves catch the light, while silk-wrapped wire stems trace delicate lines along the body. Along the edges, rooster and goose feathers in white and yellow lend a light, fluttering finish.
The La Vertueuse gilet reimagines its counterpart’s bold geometry for the body. Deep green velvet forms the base, embroidered with angular arrangements of vintage black tube beads across the upper half. Black silk tulle cut-outs interrupt the surface with moments of transparency, while antique black bead fringe sways along the hem. Hand-formed gold-beaded roses in varying sizes, each centred with black acetate petals, add a striking flourish.
Ultimately, La Rose Vivier Pièce Unique is a meeting of minds and hands, where the histories of two maisons converge in creations that blur the boundary between what is and what can be imagined. Through Lesage’s storied techniques and Roger Vivier’s romantic vision, the rose blooms anew—again and again—in forms at once unexpected and unforgettable.
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Nafeesa Saini is the Features Editor at Tatler Singapore, where she shapes long-form stories on culture, business, philanthropy, wellness, and the people driving change in Asia. With a deep interest in storytelling that intersects meaningfully with identity and impact, she has profiled a diverse range of visionaries, from scientific pioneers in AI and health to creative trailblazers and literary minds.
Nafeesa’s writing includes cover stories and profiles that spotlight influential voices, alongside commentary on the trends reshaping our world.
Off the clock, Nafeesa unwinds with fiction, a good thrift hunt, and ‘brainrot’ TikTok scroll—while always keeping one eye on her next cultural getaway, usually to Indonesia.
