SHOES TO DIE FOR

Written by Dr Giorgio Riello, Centre for Global History and Culture

Mention designer shoes to any of today’s fashionistas and they will immediately respond with the names of Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo. But long before any of these were born, there was Salvatore Ferragamo (1898-1960) – one of the 20^th century’s major shoe designers who developed a distinctive set of concepts, practices and principles that set a standard for those who came after.

Born in Bonito in Southern Italy, Salvatore Ferragamo showed an interest in shoemaking early in life. At the age of 16 he migrated to the United States and found work in a Boston footwear factory. There he learned about the mechanised production of boots and shoes. However, the real breakthrough in his career came when he migrated to California together with his brothers and sister. He opened a bespoke shoe shop in Santa Barbara, at that time the centre of the infant film industry. Films and encounters with silver-screen stars were fundamental to Ferragamo’s success. He became the favourite shoemaker of Pola Negri, Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson and Mae West, producing also men’s shoes for his friend and fellow Italian, Rodolfo Valentino. When in 1923 the film industry moved to Hollywood, Ferragamo opened a shop at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas from where he continued producing fancy women’s shoes both for films and for the divas’ everyday wear.

No previous shoemaker... had given so much importance to the association between ‘fame’ and his or her products.

Ferragamo returned to Italy in 1927. However, this early-life American experience was central to the formation of two of the most salient features of the ‘couture shoes’ of the 20^th century. Firstly, Ferragamo combined the highest technical skill of a bespoke shoemaker with ideas of comfort, functionality, and ease of manufacturing commonly associated with the industrial production and the American way of living that he experienced in California. Ferragamo moved away from the idea that an expensive shoe should simply be technically perfect and produced by using the highest quality materials. His shoes showed innovative technical solutions, playfulness with materials, colours and forms, all elements that 20^th century shoe designers came to interpret over and over again. Secondly, in the United States Ferragamo learned the importance of the media, in particular cinema and its stars. No previous shoemaker, or perhaps even couturier, had given so much importance to the association between ‘fame’ and his or her products. His shoes were not worn by the European aristocracy, but by the Hollywood new stardom. Ferragamo came to be known as ‘the shoemaker to the stars’ – a feature that has subsequently allowed a shoemaker such as Manolo Blahnik to become a media personality in his own right.

On his return to Italy, Ferragamo decided to settle down in Florence where a highly skilled workforce was availably and where a long-standing craft tradition produced first-class leather goods. His consumer market, however, remained the United States. The 1929 crisis and some wrong organisational choices meant that he was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1933. In the following five years, however, Ferragamo was able to set up another business and purchase Palazzo Spini Feroni where the Maison Ferragamo is still located. The 1930s’ shoes are perhaps the best known of his production and include some of the most iconic designs of the 20^th century. Ferragamo was a careful observer of all developments in the arts and decorative arts of the period. His shoes include models inspired by the Egyptian discoveries in the 1920s, and the art deco and the Surrealist movements in the 1930s. There is a direct creative connection between Ferragamo and his compatriot, Elsa Schiaparelli. Their inventive, at times even radical, reinterpretation of forms and social habits was mediated through the pages of art and fashion magazines as te two met only after the Second World War.

The lack of raw materials pushed Ferragamo to experiment with... straw, wool, flax and candy wrappers.

Ferragamo’s inventiveness was further encouraged by the economic and political sanctions imposed on Italy in 1936 in retaliation for the invasion of Ethiopia. The lack of raw materials pushed Ferragamo to experiment with cork bottles, yarn bobbins, transparent bakelite, but also poor materials, such as straw, wool, flax and candy wrappers. His pre-war production had also included the famous platform show that he patented in 1937 and that in just over a year became one of the most well known shoes in the world. Patents were central to Ferragamo’s idea of research and development: everything that was produced as a unique piece had to be possible also as a mass-produced product. There are hundreds of these patents at the Archivio di Stato in Rome, including one for the so-called ‘invisible sandal’. Apparently, the inspiration for a sandal with what looks like an invisible upper came from looking at a fisherman on the banks of the river Arno in Florence using transparent fishing line. In 1947, Ferragamo won the Neiman Marcus Prize, the accolade of fashion that he shared with Christian Dior who had just lauched his ‘New Look’.

Ferragamo died in 1960 and his firm has since been directed by his wife and five children. Today it is one of the best known luxury brands in the world, recognisable for its distinctive ‘F’ logo. Since the 1950s, Ferragamo has diversified its production to include sport and casual wear products and from the 1960s has mechanised production without impinging on quality. All of Ferragamo’s shoes are still produced in Italy, making it one of the truest and most original bearers of the ‘Made-in-Italy’ label.