Church’s stages ‘The Residence’ in a preserved Brera house for S/S 2027

At the Fondazione Adolfo Pini in Milan, Church’s S/S 2027 collection begins with the slipper. In the first room of the apartment, beside a Gio Ponti fireplace, are light and technical shoes – designed for crossing from room to street, made from soft suede, nappa leather, with thin leather soles and California construction, made inside out, stitched, then turned. The ‘Villa’ series is one of three product families – alongside ‘Townhouse’ and ‘Cottage’ – showcased as part of Church’s presentation, ‘The Residence’, and catering to the warmer months.

Additionally, on the gilt-tooled leather of an old writing bureau sits the ‘Shannon’, one of the house’s icons reinterpreted for the season in a new leather: a green so deep it is nearly black, painted onto undyed crust, by hand, in three or four coats, each left to dry a day, until the colour seems to swirl in the leather like oil. A painter's palette hangs on the wall above.

‘The different families of the collection all have a reference to a domestic way of living,’ said a Church's representative during the presentation. ‘So we felt an apartment, another domestic environment, was particularly fitting [as a showcase].’

‘Villa’ takes the collection towards vacation and softness; ‘Cottage’ sits between town and countryside; ‘Townhouse’ returns to formal construction with sharper leather work.

Inside ‘The Residence’, Church's S/S 2027 show in a Milanese painter's house

The ‘Townhouse’ family features Goodyear-welted shoes with a closed-channel sole stitch and a darkened, hand-finished sole. The ‘Tayport’ derby, in a polished fumé leather, holds a marked depth of colour. The ‘Taunton’ loafer, in Ocean Calf, takes a softer line, while on the ‘Thirsk’ brogue, the wingtip is drawn only in perforation and stitching, with no cuts made into the leather.

The ‘Cottage’ series, in a lighter construction, shapes only the lining and leaves the upper leather free; the welt is laid over it, so the leather runs between welt and sole and the shoe stays supple. It runs to a ‘Chukka’ boot and a ‘Derby’, and an ‘Oxford’ with concealed elastic that is worn laced or slipped on.

‘Villa’ turns to evenings and holidays, drawing from the slipper, as mentioned. A moccasin among the designs carries a hand stitch worked over the edge, resembling rope.

The exhibition space is conceived as a domestic setting, the collection comfortably placed across the rooms of the Fondazione Adolfo Pini, which occupies the piano nobile of a former private house in Milan's Garibaldi district, close to Brera. It was once the home and studio of the painter Renzo Bongiovanni Radice, who worked here until his death in 1970. Its parquet floors, coffered ceilings, family furniture and paintings remain; the apartment was last refurbished at the end of 2025, conservatively – much of what visitors see still is original. A square courtyard opens onto a columned portico, and a staircase rises to the piano nobile, where more than 40 of Bongiovanni Radice’s paintings hang among the family's furniture and ceramics, retained as ‘a living gallery’, as the foundation calls it.

At the centre of the main room, Church’s set out a material library – the leathers and components that a shoe is built from – shown with the makers at work. Church's has made shoes in Northampton, UK, since 1873, and was among the first to set them on separate left and right lasts; its Goodyear-welted shoes, the making of which runs to some 250 operations across about eight weeks, can be unpicked and resoled for years.

Also on display were pieces from the brand’s archive, as part of a project called Church’s Chapters, an attempt to show less-expected parts of its history. Church’s is often understood through men’s classic footwear, and the selection in Milan widened that picture: women’s shoes from 1900, white boots and loafers from the 1970s, advertising material from across decades, and an 1887 red book made from blotting paper, gifted to clients for New Year.

church-footwear.com