Designers Blog: Salvatore Ferragamo

1898-1960

Salvatore Ferragamo was born in 1898 in Italy; he made his first pair of shoes when he was nine for his sisters to wear at their confirmation. He studied shoe making in Naples, after that he immigrated to Boston where one of his brothers worked in a cowboy boot factory. Ferragamo moved to Santa Barbara then Hollywood, in Hollywood Ferragamo became successful, at first he opened a store to repair shoes and made to measure shoes. His shoes became so popular that he began designing shoes for the movies. He was frustrated that his shoes hurt women and went to the University of Southern California to study anatomy. He spent thirteen years in the U.S., he moved back to Italy in 1927 and set up shop in Florence. He opened up a shop concentrating on his designs and creating patents, his operation expanded to 700 people that produced 350 pairs of hand made shoes a day. Ferragamo has always been known as a visionary, his designs range from outlandish to classically elegant.

(Stylesight)

Salvatore Ferragamo's designs are very sexy and feminine; you don't ever see him make a shoe that is clunky or bulky. Ferragamo was known as the shoemaker of dreams, and his Grandson James Ferragamo has taken over the company, but still has kept the same look and feel of Ferragamo, but has added a bit of modernism to everything to stay with the times. The company is prideful on the fact that Salvatore is the first to make the wedge shoe, so you see a lot of wedges with a new twist in their line.