Despite all the celebratory awards and shows of unity and well wishing, the fashion world is certainly not the Garden of Eden, with designers going about holding hands and smiling at one another in perpetual friendship. Personalities are strong and competition fierce. So it raised eyebrows when Paul Andrew and Guillaume Meilland, two designers coming from different areas of expertise, were both appointed with the mighty task of reigniting the engine of the historical house of Salvatore Ferragamo, Andrew as women’s creative director and Meilland as design director for menswear. Skeptics were out in force, the fashion Cassandras predicting a disastrous marriage. They were wrong. Andrew and Meilland are apparently working together rather well. The outcome of this fruitful collaboration was noticed in their first coed show for Fall 2018, which was quite promising, although it would have benefited from a tighter edit. But it definitely set the tone for a cohesive aesthetic and a much more focused and lucid vocabulary.
“Back in October, when I was appointed women’s CD, one of the first ideas that I had was that we should really get together and work closely,” explained Andrew during a Resort appointment. “I’d been already working on Ferragamo’s shoe collections at that point, and I felt that in the company we were speaking too many different languages. I wanted to establish an aesthetic for the label, so you understood that that man belonged to that woman, whether they were brother and sister or dating or married or whatever it was; it had to be the same feeling.” Meilland chimed in: “We share the same references, we have a similar background and come from the same generation. And also I’m French and Paul’s British, so we both bring an outsider’s perspective to the Italian label. We work together in a very organic, natural way. There’s always a boy and a girl during the fittings; the same pieces are tried on on both of them.”
For Resort, the designers worked on an easy luxury feel. Hence tailoring for both men and women was softened and deconstructed, losing any formality; silhouettes were comfortable yet linear, with trousers cropped to showcase updated versions of the signature women’s Vara and men’s Tramezza shoes. “The shoes really dictate a lot at Ferragamo; here they have their own special voice,” said Andrew.
The design duo also reclaimed ownership of a set of codes inherent to the label’s vocabulary—“pillars,” as Meilland described them—starting from impeccable execution standards and elevated fabrications (“insanely gorgeous materials,” as per Andrew’s description). Knitwear was offered in the most luxurious yarns and inventive shapes; shirting and shirtdressing was also highlighted. Archival prints were translated in a quite glamorous trapeze number in plissé silk, assembled from two foulards emblazoned with vivacious patterns. Yet it is obviously leather that takes pride of place here; for women, it was buttery soft and light as a feather, as in a slim wrap coat in bone plonge or a pair of wide-leg, pleated-front black shorts worn with a halter top in patchworked eel skin. Men were treated to elongated plonge overcoats in a rich cognac hue, or to sporty, reversible suede blousons.
One new development: The label’s signature Gancini motif (often seen on belt buckles and as shoe details) was translated into a monogram logo woven on canvas jacquard. “It’s kind of amazing that we never had that before,” Andrew said. “When I started working here, I was looking for some logo that didn’t exist, so I kind of developed it from scratch, and it has taken me that long and a lot of work to achieve what I wanted, because it’s a very technical and expensive process, to create the motif making sure that it was a recognizable Gancini and not something that belongs to someone else!” Andrew and Meilland really pushed the Gancini logo in the Resort collection, turning out an allover Gancini-ed trapeze trench framed in black leather for the women’s line, and for the men, taking a more sotto voce approach, lining sporty blousons or city coats. “It’s great,” emphasized Meilland. “It looks as if it had always existed.”
