For a fashion designer, being based in Florence definitely facilitates research; you simply have to hop on over to the Uffizi Gallery and you’re done. That was just what Paul Andrew, Salvatore Ferragamo’s creative director, did for Pre-Fall, the color palette of which referenced a few sumptuous Bronzino paintings that are part of the museum’s permanent collection. Their rich hues of paprika, dark green, and deep blue tinged the women’s offering with a smooth vibrancy that also reverberated through the men’s.
While Andrew didn’t look far for inspiration, Guillaume Meilland, menswear design director, went more exotic, fascinated by British expat Paul Bowles’s sartorial eccentricity, which he referred to in the tailored ease of many of the propositions he envisioned. Yet both sets of references were balanced by a deep dive into the Ferragamo archives. “We’re engaging with some of the iconic elements of the house’s history and making them modern,” said Andrew. While sourcing editorials and fashion shows from the ’80s, he found images of an oversize coat that provided the template for most of the new proportions and roomy volumes he worked on, as in a generous double-cashmere wrapped overcoat belted with a sash, or in a boxy, enveloping caban with a long matching scarf in soft plaid mohair.
Ferragamo’s coed approach has proved so far rather consistent; Andrew and Meilland have a like-mindedness and a creative compatibility that seems genuine. Take, for example, one of the best looks of the collection, which was rich in great-looking outerwear. The starting point was a classic tailored car coat in houndstooth wool, which for men was proposed in a fresh new length, short and rather boxy, lightweight and unlined, worn with flannel tracksuit pants for elegant, linear comfort. For women, the coat was elongated and cinched at the waist, its checkered pattern slightly shrunken; patchwork suede sleeves and a removable hooded nylon collar were added as stylish yet functional details. It looked smart worn with slouchy knee-high boots that hybridized a cowboy boot and a biker boot.
Here was obviously where Andrew’s expertise in shoe design came to the fore; taking inspiration from the archival wooden lasts Salvatore Ferragamo used as prototypes for his studies on new shoe shapes, Andrew worked on an ankle boot wooden clog in soft leather, decorated with the updated Gancini buckle. “Clogs are both sophisticated in their shape and humble in the material,” said Andrew. Well, if they’re proposed in brightly colored ostrich leather, not quite.
