Ferragamo

Salvatore Ferragamo was born in Bonito, near Avellino in Campania, in 1898, the eleventh of fourteen children of a poor farming family. He made his first pair of shoes at nine and emigrated to the United States in 1914, working in a Boston shoe factory before moving west. In California he made boots for Westerns and bespoke shoes for Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, studied anatomy at the University of Southern California, and in 1923 opened the Hollywood Boot Shop, becoming known as the "shoemaker to the stars".

Wanting closer control of quality, he returned to Italy in 1927 and settled in Florence, opening a workshop in Via Mannelli with local artisans. The Great Depression hit a business that depended on American orders, and Ferragamo filed for bankruptcy in 1933. He recovered quickly: in 1938 he bought Palazzo Spini Feroni on Via de' Tornabuoni, which is still the company's headquarters and flagship and houses the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum.

The 1930s and 1940s produced his best-known ideas, many of them answers to shortages. The steel shank let a light shoe support the arch; the cork wedge heel replaced steel made scarce by sanctions; the stacked "Rainbow" platform sandal was made for Judy Garland in 1938; and raffia, cellophane and nylon thread went into designs such as the "invisible" sandal of 1947. By the 1950s some 700 artisans were making about 350 pairs a day by hand for clients including Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.

After his death in 1960, his widow Wanda Ferragamo took over and widened the house into silk scarves, handbags, leather goods, ready-to-wear and fragrance, with their children in the business. The company listed on the Milan stock exchange in 2011; the family has kept a majority, about 65% according to Wikipedia.

Massimiliano Giornetti, who had joined the menswear division in 2000, became the first creative director of the whole label in 2010 and stayed until March 2016; his resort 2013 show in the Louvre's Denon Wing was the first fashion show the museum allowed in its galleries. Paul Andrew, hired in 2016 to lead women's footwear, was creative director from 2019 to 2021.

Maximilian Davis was appointed in March 2022. His debut in September 2022 coincided with the house dropping "Salvatore" from its name and introducing a new logo, and his collections have returned to the founder's Hollywood years and to dance.