Cartouche

A black high vampire mule on a slim 9cm Louis heel, made as part of a new atelier collection for presentation to private bespoke clients 2025.

The inspiration for the collection was to reference elements of fine bookbindings including techniques and materials. The leather selected was a first grade ‘book’ calf, vegetable tanned in Edinburgh. The necessity for this calf was to have a fine leather that will accept 22ct gold tooling as decoration, as in traditional/antiquarian book binding. The 22ct gold leaf was applied by the highly skilled method employing ‘size’ and temperature and pressure control.
To emphasis the luxury and soft silhouette, this mule has a vamp made of 100% French ‘top hat’ velvet and a round toe. Top line of the vamp has a continuous tooled border featuring cartouche, sashes and stars.
The shoe has a carved beech wood heel covered with the same book leather which matching cartouche tooling. The shape of the heel is a slim , only slightly flared Louis. The soling is British oak bark tanned leather which follows the front of the heel down in a ‘breasted’ construction.