Adele,

                                     from my Klimt series, a range based on the portraits of elaborately dressed Austrian society women by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918).  Adele Bloch-Bauer was painted during his “golden phase” and is both realistic and abstract.  Klimt depicts Adele’s dress in a highly stylised and Byzantine manner with exotic symbols, such as the Egyptian eyes set in triangles and the Mycenaean spiral scrolls.  Such elaborate dress demands very elaborate shoes and I have created these to reflect the highly patterned and gilded aspects of the painting. The shape of the shoe is based on those made by the Italian shoemaker Pietro Yantorny (1874-1936), the self-proclaimed "most expensive shoemaker in the world" who created shoes only for the wealthiest women.