Fashion
Ferragamo 80th Anniversary
Fashion
Salvatore Ferragamo has a history and a heritage that makes its peers seem distinctly two-dimensional by comparison. Firmly rooted in the life of its founder Mr. Salvatore Ferragamo, the brand is one of few whose original designs are as striking, innovative and impressively wearable, today as they were when they were originally produced.
Click here to see pictures from the Ferragamo exhibition and archives
That’s not to say the brand hasn’t come a long way in its eighty years, the anniversary of which it celebrated recently in Shanghai. Ferragamo might instantly make you think of shoes, but if new creative director Cristina Ortiz’s debut A/W 2008 fashion collection is anything to go by, the rest of the wardrobe is not so much stepping out of the shoes’ shadow as taking a running leap.
There’s a distinct element of fairytale to Ferragamo’s story. Born in humble origins in a small village in southern Italy he moved to America to ply his trade as a cobbler in the early Twenties. Before long he’d made his way to Hollywood and opened a small store, ‘The Hollywood Boot Shop’, responsible for dressing the feet of many actresses from the silent picture era. Such was his skill that soon the likes of Mae West, Gloria Swanson and Mary Pickford were requesting he make shoes for them to wear off set too and hence Ferragamo the brand was born.
The success of his shoes lay not only in their cutting edge aesthetics but almost more importantly in the fact that they had a reputation for being the most comfortable in the industry. This was no doubt due to his meticulous understandings of the foot, garnered from his part time studying at the local university of pedary anatomy whilst in California.
Come 1927 he returned to Italy and the following year set up his own brand in Florence. The importation embargos of the Second World War forced the designer to experiment with unusual materials that were readily available, which would then become a trademark feature of the label. Using everything from twine to cork, sweet wrappers to straw, his designs became legendary.
Looking through the archives on display today in the Salvatore Ferragamo museum in Florence, it defies belief how contemporary many of these experimental designs from the Forties through to the Sixties appear; so much so that Ortiz revived some of Ferragamo’s signature shoe designs (albeit with a 12 cm heel) in her A/W 2008 show.
Within eighty years Ferragamo has firmly established itself as one of the leading Italian fashion brands, responsible in the first instance for bringing global recognition to the luxury associated with a ‘Made in Italy’ stamp. Celebrating their 80th anniversary in Shanghai seemed fitting given Ferragamo is a pioneering European fashion brand making inroads into the Chinese market – a move inspired by Salvatore’s own travels through Asia in the Fifties.
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