Fritza,

                     from my Klimt series, a range of shoes inspired by the Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) portraits of elaborately dressed Austrian society women. The wife of the Austrian mechanical engineer Alois Riedler, Fritza embodies the wealth and status of a growing Viennese middle class.  The shoes reflect her luxurious white ruffled dress decorated with satin bows and are edged with gold and white beads.  Klimt possibly derived the semicircular mosaic shape behind her head from a Velázquez painting.  This mosaic pattern has been adapted and used to decorate toe of the shoe. The deep red on the sides of the shoes which are impressed with small squares emulate the wall behind Fritza. 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.