Education
That first shoe collection, with each pair hand-cut and finished, was praised by critics as sexy and unpredictable.
That first shoe collection, with each pair hand-cut and finished, was praised by critics as sexy and unpredictable.
She began her career in the 1960s as a model for Parisian Haute Couture Houses of Nina Ricci, Jean Patou, and André Courrèges. At the time models had to provide their own shoes to match the clothes designers assigned them for their runway shows and photo shoots. Frizon disliked the available shoes from other designers, and in 1969 elected to create her own and opened her first boutique in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris.
Frizon was an immediate success.
Building on the traditions of Beth Levine and foreshadowing the later designs of Manolo Blahnik, Frizon shoes were showy and extravagant, and her name joined the ranks of the haute couture boutiques. At the height of her success in the 1980s her reputation was similar to that of Blahnik today.
Frizon often used expensive and everyday materials together in unusual combinations: lizard and snake, suede and satin, canvas and crocodile. Brigitte Bardot was a regular at the boutique, famous for her love of Frizon"s high-heeled Russian boots.
In Shoes – Fashion and Fantasy Colin McDowell wrote "If shoes can be said to have a personality, none have more so than the products of Maud Frizon"s imagination. original and innovative shoes that to footwear what Dom Perignon is to champagne".
Although Frizon released shoes under her brands Maud Frizon and Mission Maud, she also designed footwear for Azzedine Alaia, Missoni and Sonia Rykiel among others The firm remains headquartered in Paris, with boutiques in Paris, New York, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.