The Early Years
In the autobiography “Shoemaker of Dreams,” Salvatore Ferragamo writes that one spring eve in 1907, he came home to find his mother, Mariantonia, in deep distress.
The next day, his sister Giuseppina was to make her First Communion in the village church, with their sister Rosina as her attendant. The service required white shoes, but the impoverished family had none, and no money to buy new ones. Traditionally, in those days, only the eldest daughter of rich families got a new pair of white shoes, which she handed down to her sisters or lent to neighbors until they fell apart.
Luckily for Giuseppina, her nine-year-old brother, Salvatore (the 11th of 14 children), nurtured a passion for shoes and, as a child, spent hours watching Luigi Festa, the local cobbler, make or repair clunky shoes for farmers and their wives.
That night, Ferragamo stayed up until the wee hours, crafting two new pairs of shoes with white cardboard, tacks, glue, lasts and tools borrowed from Festa.
The undertaking not only made his sisters ecstatic and villagers envious, but ended Ferragamo’s ongoing dispute with his father, Antonio, over Salvatore’s wish to become a shoemaker, considered the lowest of low-class trades.
Until that day, Antonio kept repeating, “Oh, Salvatore, get this nonsense out of your head and choose a respectable trade.”
In Bonito, a small rural town near Naples, where Ferragamo was born in 1898, children left school at nine to start a trade or work in the fields.
Some, like Ferragamo’s older siblings, had sailed to the U.S. in search of fortune.
Ferragamo got his way. He straightened nails at Festa’s, headed to Naples at 11 and soon after opened his first shop in Bonito.
At 14, he was a successful shoemaker imparting orders to six assistants and serving signore as far away as Naples.
In 1914, he crossed the ocean to Boston, where he met up with his older brother Alfonso and joined the Queen Quality Shoe Co., where shoes were machine-made.
Related Articles
You May Also Like
Appalled by the low quality of the footwear and firm in his belief that luxe shoes had to be stitched by hand, Ferragamo headed west to Santa Barbara, Calif., to join his three elder brothers, Alfonso (he had moved west only a few days before), Girolamo and Secondino.
They started making boots and shoes for the American Film Co. and the budding film business.
In his book, Ferragamo recounted that during his first stroll in a movie studio, he felt “instantly at home.”
He started making fine-quality cowboy boots and shoes for the film set, but as the word of his craftsmanship spread, he started outfitting the likes of Lottie and Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, Mae McAvoy and Gloria Swanson.
Such high-profile types were known to fly off the handle if Salvatore sent a delivery boy with the shoes — they wanted him to see that they fit well.
Ferragamo’s fascination with the foot led him to study human anatomy at the University of California. Feet, he conceded, spoke to him, and communicated a person’s character.
Using a plumb line, he discovered that when a person is standing, the weight of the body drops vertically on the arches of the feet.
Ferragamo wrote that feet, regardless of the social class of their owners — were covered with corns, bunions and calluses and toes were crooked, which he in part attributed to machine-made shoes.
His obsession became making pretty footwear that was comfortable.
Years later, in a bid to ease the pain of as many bad feet as possible, he applied his expertise to machinery. He discovered new fittings and concocted lasts with different widths.
When his brother Elio was killed in a car accident and Ferragamo fractured his leg and faced possible amputation, he devised and patented a new splint used for traction.
In 1923, Ferragamo moved to Los Angeles, where he opened the Hollywood Boot Shop. He was a part of the budding movie business, traveling in glamorous circles and hobnobbing with new friends John Barrymore, Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks. His shoes appeared in such blockbusters as “The Ten Commandments,” “Viaggio in Italia,” “The King of Kings,” “Bus Stop” and “Some Like It Hot.”
In his book, he wrote that for the world premiere of “Hell’s Angels,” he had made a pair of lavender evening slippers with rhinestone heels for Jean Harlow.
Unfortunately, when his assistant packed them, he spilled a bottle of ink on them.
“Desperately, I hunted through my stock and found a pair I knew could fit and dyed them the right shade,” he wrote. “As they did not have rhinestone heels, I stuck on diamond dust and went in person to her apartment.”
Ferragamo made the mistake of showing her the ruined ones first, which she threw out the window, then smashed bottles of perfume and jars on her dressing table in a temper tantrum.
But when Ferragamo persuaded her to try Plan B, she was happy.
To maintain the flourishing U.S. business while boosting production with machines, Ferragamo decided to assign manufacturing to a factory in Italy and personally follow distribution in the U.S.
So, after 13 years, he returned to Italy to find a factory that could put his plan to work. Doors were slammed in his face from Naples to Milan.
“It’s impossible, it’s crazy,” admonished shoemakers around the peninsula.
In Florence he found a more receptive attitude, and established a workshop/factory there in 1927. The company considers this the official start of the Ferragamo empire.
Ferragamo headed back to the U.S. with 18 pairs of stunning machine-made shoes and sold them to Saks Fifth Avenue and Marshall Field’s.
In 1933, the company was hit by the dollar crisis and went bankrupt. Italy was in a depression, orders were slim and American creditors were at the door.
Ferragamo stayed in Italy and worked his way through the hardships of bankruptcy. And he made shoes, which he dispatched to retailers throughout the country.
But as World War II loomed, top-grade materials became increasingly scarce.
The difficult times brought out Ferragamo’s creativity, inspired by a box of chocolates and a lump of Sardinian cork.
He used the transparent yet sturdy paper of a candy box to make transparent sandals.The cork wedge followed.
“Signor Ferragamo, you don’t mean to tell me you designed that horrible thing,” exclaimed one of his elegant clients upon viewing the new shoe shape.
The innovative creation blazed a trail, and after Duchessa Visconti di Modrone agreed to don a pair for Sunday mass, success was instant.
In 1937, Ferragamo purchased Palazzo Spini-Feroni, still the company headquarters, for the equivalent of $4,300. The frescoed palazzo in the center of Florence became familiar to princesses, duchesses, the social set and celebrities.
Ferragamo even shod Mussolini; Mussolini’s mistress, Claretta Petacci, and Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun.
Ferragamo wrote that when Petacci and Mussolini were killed, he had about 40 pairs of her shoes in his showroom, waiting to be delivered.
In 1940, Ferragamo wed Wanda Miletti.
The war hit him hard; he was accused of being an American spy and his villa was ransacked. Worse still, orders dropped drastically.
After the war, of course, things picked up.
Salvatore Maita, a former Ferragamo employee who joined the firm in 1941 and worked there for 50 years, has only good words about his boss.
“Salvatore was never tired; he was always present and always willing to listen to his assistants,” he said. “I’ll never forget when he won the Neiman Marcus Award in 1947 and he sent all his employees a pack of white sugar from America because it was unavailable here.”
During that trip, Ferragamo met Christian Dior, who used Ferragamo shoes in his shows.
His son Ferruccio Ferragamo remembers his dad as strict yet loving.
“He knew how to keep my liveliness in line, but he was also great at stimulating us,” said Ferruccio. “During our lunch break, he would take me for a walk in the garden to prune flowers and plants. He claimed it added to my sense of aesthetics.”
In 1948, Salvatore Ferragamo opened a store on Park Avenue and his high-profile clients continued to indulge themselves with his creations — the Duchess of Windsor, Audrey Hepburn, Eva Peron, Ava Gardner, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani all were regulars.
And Ferragamo knew their feet better than their lovers did.
By 1957, he had designed more than 20,000 models and held 350 patents.
He never sought to be a fashion revolutionary, but to be creative within trends.
Ferragamo died of cancer in August 1960, but his name and genius live on because, as he put it, “I was born to be a shoemaker. I have always known it.”