Dear Shaded Viewers,
I first met Lili Curia’s shoes in the half-light of Dover Street Market Paris, at her salon this summer during Couture Week. There were cream curtains, a tall mirror, and shoes laid out like props waiting for their actors. They felt like the moment in an old film when the camera drops to a woman’s ankle as she steps out of a taxi into the rain. You’ve seen that scene before, but you still lean in.
That feeling comes from the family. Chili Palmer, the woman behind Lili Curia, is a third-generation shoemaker. Her father, a second-generation shoemaker himself, trained at Ars Sutoria in Milan, the school where Italy’s shoemakers learn their trade. Chili grew up surrounded by lasts, leather offcuts and the smell of glue, and she knew how a good shoe was put together long before she thought of making one. Today she works between Florence and London. Her shoes are made in small batches with artisans, from leathers sourced from audited tanneries. What she adds to the family inheritance is imagination.
She didn’t put her own name on the label. Lili Curia is an alter ego, “a cocktail of personalities, aesthetics and moods,” a character you step into the moment you lace up. Keira Knightley, Suki Waterhouse and Princess Julia have already done so.
For Autumn/Winter 2026, Act II, Lili goes back to the theatre. The campaign film, Lili’s Opening Night, shot by Stanley Dunmore, is set in a crumbling playhouse on the eve of an imagined premiere. The camera moves from the boards to the wings and down into the dressing rooms. A blonde star in a corset studies herself in the mirror, and every member of the company wears the collection: the director, the stage manager, the choreographer, the dancers, the makeup artist and the costume assistant.
The star wears the Ines Boot, a knee-high stiletto fastened with a silver utility buckle. The same buckle turns up on the stage manager’s Ellis Boot, a rugged pull-on on a chunky moulded sole built for a real winter. The choreographer’s Odile Mule, a lace-up stiletto with corset-style grosgrain ribbons, shares its silver D-rings with the dancers’ Cecily Sneaker, a black leather sneaker with a softly pleated toe borrowed from ballet. There are polished loafers with molten silver buckles, and every shoe is lined in a yellow so bright it glows under the stage lights.
Silver hardware, buckles, D-rings and lacing run through the whole collection, from the femme fatale heel to the everyday loafer. Lead or crew, everyone in Lili’s company gets a costume worth stepping into.
This is nostalgia without the dust. It’s an old movie, recast for now.
The curtain rises today. Act II launches October 5 at lilicuria.com.
Later,
Diane
