A Vivier Shoe Retrospective, Buckles and All PARIS - Roger Vivier, the designer shoe label that has done more than the Pilgrims to make buckles a fashion statement, is the subject of a new retrospective here that opened on Monday night at the Palais de Tokyo. Curated by Olivier Saillard, the director of the Musée Galliera that reopened across the street last week, the show is a shoe spectacular, whimsically tracing the history of the brand from Mr. Vivier's years at Christian Dior in the 1950s through the current incarnation of Roger Vivier, which has been designed by Bruno Frisoni since 2003. The exhibition is described in a wall mounting at the entrance as "nimbly stepping somewhere between seriousness and fantasy," though many viewers will find it landing closer to the side of fantasy, as there are more than 175 examples of fantastic shoes in glass cases throughout the museum. They are organized by design rather than by chronology and placed in displays as if in wings of a museum, including the Department of Egyptian Antiquities, Italian and Spanish Sculptures, Pop Op Art and the Northern Schools. And Mr. Saillard has taken the trouble to give each shoe a playful, made-up title, like "Fragment of a Sculpture of Cleopatra" for a gold flat, or "L'Ascension de la Saint" for a black lace platform adorned with stones and a purple lining. A version of Vivier's most famous buckle-toe design, worn by Catherine Deneuve in "Belle de Jour" in 1967, appears at the end of the exhibition, as do many less familiar examples of the work of Mr. Vivier, who died in 1998 and is credited with inventing the stiletto heel as well as an inverted, comma-shaped heel called the Virgule. In one case is a 1968 thigh-high boot in red fake fur that resembles a Christmas stocking. Another shows a silk satin pump made with coated-cotton leaves made for Christian Dior in 1955. And others show the connection between the work of Mr. Vivier and Mr. Frisoni, like a houndstooth wool pump produced for Dior in 1959 in the same display as a houndstooth printed pony-skin heel made this year by Mr. Frisoni. "Roger Vivier's legacy is just like Dior, like Chanel, like Balenciaga," Mr. Frisoni said. They all bring something to fashion. At the opening, Marco Zanini, named that day as the new couturier at Schiaparelli, escorted Farida Khelfa through the displays, and Rossy de Palma made a big entrance. Inès de la Fressange, who has been the official muse to Mr. Frisoni during his years at Vivier and a favorite model of all of France, said that she generally resisted museum exhibitions of fashion labels because there are now so many that they seem generated for marketing purposes, or in her words, "fake." "There is this confusion that fashion is art," Ms. de la Fressange said. It is artistic, it is creative, but it is handcraft. Having Mr. Saillard as the curator brought a sense of gravitas to the Vivier exhibition, which includes a rarely seen collection culled from major museums as well as from the Paris vintage dealer Didier Ludot. Mr. Saillard, Ms. de la Fressange said, was not afraid to challenge the company's own perception of its brand, and in the end, both she and Mr. Frisoni discovered a sense of lightness they had not seen before. "He is the French star of this moment," Ms. de la Fressange said. You can't open a magazine in France without seeing four pages on Olivier Saillard. He is sweet and brilliant, and he knows fashion as well as ... us.