Salvatore Ferragamo
Salvatore Ferragamo (born June 5, 1898 in Bonito near Avellino , † August 7, 1960 in Florence ) was an Italian shoe designer and namesake of today's company of the same name. He began his career in California in the 1920s, designing Hollywood productions.
Life
Salvatore Ferragamo was the 11th of 14 children. At the age of nine he made his first pair of shoes for his sister to wear to her confirmation . Then Ferragamo saw his calling in the shoemaker's profession and was later trained in this craft in Naples. He then opened his first shop there, but emigrated to Boston in 1914 , where his brother worked in a shoe factory. Salvatore persuaded him to go to Santa Barbara with him and then to Hollywood .
In the context of the film industry, Ferragamo opened a boutique for custom-made products and shoe repairs in the early 1920s . His work and his growing reputation enabled him to furnish movie greats and celebrities, such as: B. Marlene Dietrich , Greta Garbo , Cary Grant , Anna Magnani , Mary Pickford or Gloria Swanson . His shoes also appeared in the silent film productions of the great directors Cecil B. DeMille and D. W. Griffith . In the 1950s he designed Audrey Hepburn's ballerina shoes . Among his most famous creations were the pumps for Marilyn Monroe with eleven centimeters high heels in Some Like It Hot or the Rainbow shoes with rainbow-colored soles and heels, which Judy Garland wore to the premiere of her film The Wizard of Oz in 1939 .
After thirteen years in the United States, Ferragamo returned to Italy in 1927 to settle near Florence . In 1933 he had to file for bankruptcy due to mismanagement . However, the company was able to recover and expanded gradually until it employed 700 people in the 1950s to produce 350 pairs of handmade shoes a day.
Ferragamo had a reputation as a visionary all his life. After his death in 1960, the company was taken over by his daughter Fiamma Ferragamo, who also works as a shoe designer. In addition to shoes, the company now also sells luxury bags, watches, perfumes and accessories. There are branches in the metropolises of many countries.
In 1995 the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo opened in Florence in the Palazzo Spini Feroni to exhibit Ferragamo's artistic work.
Innovations
Ferragamo's shoes not only stand out because of their design. Ferragamo has repeatedly influenced shoe fashion through significant innovations, in its time and in some cases until today.
Ferragamo wanted to create not only extravagant, but also comfortable footwear. To this end, he enrolled in an anatomy course at the University of Southern California . The result was a steel spring to support the arch between the sole and heel. This feather marked a decisive change. Until then, shoes with high heels needed a toe cap as a “brake” so that the foot wouldn't slide down. Toe-free shoes could only be built with flat heels. It was Ferragamo's pen that made it possible to create toe-free shoes with high heels. This was the hour of birth of the classic women's sandals . The spring also serves its purpose in shoes with toe caps. Since the foot no longer slips into the toe, there is less pressure on the toes and the foot as a whole, and the shoes become more comfortable. These were also the reasons why Ferragamo henceforth took over his pen in all of his shoe creations. Other designers followed him.
How great Ferragamo's influence was at times can be seen from the wedge heel . The wedge heel was created by him in 1936. Just two years later had 3 / 4 of all women's shoes in the United States a wedge heel.
His "invisible" sandals were also very innovative, albeit less successful. After experimenting with straps made of cellophane and gold thread during the war, he started using bundles of thin nylon threads from 1947 onwards . From a certain point of view it seems as if the shoe has no upper leather (upper part). Other designers have also taken up the idea of the "invisible" sandals or pumps again and again, mostly in the form that acrylic or another transparent plastic was used for the upper part, possibly also the sole and heel, instead of leather .
Lasts and models
Last of movie stars
Last for Audrey Hepburn and Ava Gardner
Shoe Rainbow for Judy Garland , 1938
Wedge shoe, 1942
Sandals, after 1947
Women's shoes, 1955-1960; Museo Salvatore Ferragamo
Ferragamo also experimented with countless materials: brocade , fish skin, armchair covers with tapestry embroidery , hummingbird feathers , tree bark . At the time of the Second World War , when leather was in short supply in Italy, he created shoes from materials such as parcel cord, cork or raffia . When Ferragamo died, he left 350 patents.
He left behind six children and his wife Wanda († October 19, 2018), who took over the management of the company after his death.
Quote
"Beauty knows no bounds, there is no saturation point in design, and the amount of materials a shoemaker can use to beautify his creations is infinite."
Exhibitions
- 1988: Salvatore Ferragamo . The Art of the Shoes. 1927-1990. Curated by Stefania Ricci. Victoria & Albert Museum , London. (Catalog, ISBN 978-88-7038-136-8 )
- 1992: Salvatore Ferragamo . The Art of the Shoes. 1898-1960. Los Angeles County Museum of Art , Los Angeles
- 2013: Il calzolaio prodigioso . Fiabe e leggende di scarpe e calzolai. Curated by Stefania Ricci. Museo Ferragamo, Florence.
- Some artists have made works especially for the retrospective . The music to accompany the exhibition was composed by the Oscar-winning composer Luis Bacalov . The American cartoonist Frank Espinosa has drawn a graphic novel based on Ferragamo's biography.
- 2018: 1927. The Return to Italy. Ferragamo and 20th-Century Visual Culture. Curated by Carlo Sisi. Museo Ferragamo, Florence.
Movie
- 2020: Salvatore- Shoemaker of Dreams , documentary by Luca Guadagnino
literature
- Linda O'Keeffee: Shoes - A tribute to sandals, loafers, high heels . Könemann, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-89508-467-0
- François Baudot (Ed.): Salvatore Ferragamo . Assulines, Paris 2004, ISBN 978-2-84323-223-7
- Mercedes Iturbe: Walking Dreams. Salvatore Ferragamo, 1898-1960 . Editorial RM, 2006, ISBN 978-84-934426-3-7
- Wanda Ferragamo: Salvatore Ferragamo. Evolving Legend 1928-2008 . Skira, Milan 2009, ISBN 978-88-6130-616-5
Autobiography
- Salvatore Ferragamo: Shoemaker of Dreams. The Autobiography of Salvatore Ferragamo . New York: Crown Publ. 1972.
- In 2019, Luca Guadagnino shot the documentary Salvatore Ferragamo: The Shoemaker of Dreams based on this book .
Web links
- Official site of Salvatore Ferragamo
- Thea Hawlin: How Salvatore Ferragamo Heeled Hollywood's Greatest Stars
- Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, Florence
Individual evidence
- ↑ Short biography Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, Florence, accessed on March 29, 2019
- ↑ Figure
- ↑ Romina Spina: Ferragamo created his first shoes when he was nine years old . In: NZZ , November 19, 2013; accessed on March 29, 2019
- ↑ Alfons Kaiser: Two lives for shoes obituary, faz-net, accessed on August 20, 2020
- ↑ Ferragamo: return to Italy domus, accessed on March 29, 2019
- ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9467994/ IMDb
- ↑ IMDb
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ferragamo, Salvatore |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian shoe designer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 5, 1898 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bonito near Naples |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 7, 1960 |
| Place of death | Florence |