Sunday, June 28, 2009

Two of My Favorite Things

Oh my goodness. Shoes! Flowers! Shoes that look like flowers! This is great. I just discovered a new book called Shoe Fleur, by Michel Tcherevkoff. An accomplished Paris photographer who has done ad campaigns for clients such as Valentino and Maybelline, he fell upon this idea by accident. One day while in his photography studio, he noticed a leaf that had been used in the shoot, and thought that it looked like a shoe! Photographing the leaf, he played with it in Photoshop, and the idea took off.

Every morning he would bring back crates of flowers from the flower market and start manipulating. Each shoe or purse is crafted from just one type of flower or plant- he'd decided early on to not mix elements. Often, the stem or leaf becomes more prominent than the showier flower portion. He twists, knots, ties and weaves the material to achieve the desired look.


Computers and software seem to be incongruous with flowers and fantasy shoes, but it's where it all comes together. Michel is all about fantasy and appreciates the opportunity to create his own kind of "reality".


Shoe-Fleur

The book's introduction is by Diane Von Furstenburg, herself no stranger to the fantasy of fashion!





















1 comment:

Charlene Dupray said...

I also love that the title of the book is a French play on words: "Choufleur" (which is pronounced like shoe-fleur) is the French word for cauliflower.