When Rita de Acosta Lydig divorced her first husband, the settlement she received was the equivalent of seventy-three million dollars in today’s money. And where does a beautiful young divorcée go to spend such riches? To Paris, of course! The year was 1900, and spend she did.
Meanwhile, a young Neapolitan was dreaming of making his fortune, as he toiled in an Italian pasta factory twelve hours a day. After some initial training, and two years in London where he studied shoe tree production and last making, Pierre Yantorny opened his first Parisian shoe shop. What happened next is the stuff of dreams.
In short order, Mr. Yantorny gained noteriety for the perfection of his footwear’s fit. Being an ambitious man, he moved his atelier to the famed Place Vendôme, where he spent the next six months creating the unthinkable – a pair of shoes that were both waterproof and stain resistant. His secret? They were completely covered in hummingbird feathers!
“The masterpiece I want to submit to the public view is the feathered shoe made with Japanese bird feathers each measuring about one and a half millimeters. It took six months to complete a pair. I have not done it for selling it, only as an artistic object and to show how far I could push the boundaries of shoemaking.”
Pierre Yantorny, 1908.
The eccentric Mr. Yantorny was on his way to becoming one of the first celebrity shoe designers in the world. But placing an order required prospective customers to first meet his standards.
“He went into designing and making shoes because he had a passion for them. He had his own ideas about making them, and he didn’t make them for everyone. If Yantorny decided to make you a pair he would make a cast of your feet in plaster, at the same time measuring every inch of both feet.
He would observe them (your feet) walking barefoot to ascertain just where the weight was placed and he would feel them, holding and balancing them in his hands. He would ask you to contract them and make them limp and then put you through a series of toe-spreadings.
If he finally decided to make you your shoes, you could count on the first pair being delivered in about two years. If he liked you very much . . . you might hope to get them in a year, or, if a miracle occurred, in six months.“
Mercedes de Acosta – Here Lies the Heart, 1960
If Yantorny agreed to accept your order, he required a minimum purchase of ten pair of shoes or boots, as well as accompanying shoe trees, coordinating stockings (six sets per pair of shoes), a shoe trunk, buckles and other accessories. The deposit alone was $1,000 (the equivalent of $31,000 today).
When challenged about these conditions, Yantorny stood firm. He insisted that a thousand dollars was an absurdly low figure, given his need to save himself from the crowds of people besiegeing his store. “A shoe,” he explained, “should be when it leaves my atelier, a work of art, and should I not be satisfied and the foot of my client not be transformed into the perfection of shape, I have to throw the shoes away and start afresh and this must be repeated until I am satisfied with the result.”
Vogue, October 1, 1920
Enter Rita de Acosta Lydig, who was not a patient woman. Waiting her turn was out of the question, and she soon jumped the line with a deposit of $5,000 and a promise of more to come. In addition to her seemingly unlimited fortune, Mrs. Lydig was a collector of antique textiles. She supplied much of the lace eventually used on her shoes, as well as 11th and 12th century velvets. Not surprisingly, the results of her and Yantorny’s collaberations were breathtaking.
It’s not known definitively how many pair of shoes were created for Mrs. Lydig, although Cecil Beaton provides a clue in his book, “The Glass of Fashion”. He writes:
Although she walked very short distances, Mrs. Lydig possessed at least three hundred pairs of shoes, shoes that have never been seen before or since. They were made by Yantorny . . . A strange individual with an extraordinary gift for making incredibly light footgear that was moulded like the most sensitive sculpture.
Cecil Beaton – The Glass of Fashion, 1954
Not even Imeldo Marcos herself could rival the powerful combination of inspiration, genius, money, and extravagant textiles that characterized the partnership between Yantorny and Rita Lydig. Little wonder that when she commissioned a portrait by Giovanni Boldini, a pair of Mr. Yantorny’s lovely shoes were purposely visible on Lydia’s feet.
Sadly, Mrs. Lydig succumbed to illness just shy of her fiftieth birthday. Upon her death, her sister donated two trunks of Yantorny shoes to the Brooklyn Museum. They remain some of the best examples of Pierre Yantorny’s work, and ensure that memories of he and Rita Lydig’s extravagant creations will endure forever.
