Salvatore Ferragamo was born on 5 June 1898 in Bonito, near Avellino in Campania, the eleventh of fourteen children of a poor farming family. He made his first pair of shoes at nine, for his sisters' confirmation, studied shoemaking in Naples for a year and, at fourteen, opened a small shop in his parents' home.
In 1914 he emigrated to the United States, joining a brother in a Boston shoe factory before moving to Santa Barbara and then Los Angeles. He made boots for Westerns at the Flying A Studios and bespoke shoes for Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, and studied anatomy at the University of Southern California to understand how the foot carries weight. In 1923 he bought the Hollywood Boot Shop, whose clients included Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford and Clara Bow, and became known as the "shoemaker to the stars".
Seeking better control of quality, he returned to Italy in August 1927. Rebuffed in Naples, Rome and several northern cities, he settled in Florence and opened a workshop in Via Mannelli, working directly with local artisans. The business, still dependent on American orders, went bankrupt in 1933, but the decade produced his best-known innovations: the steel shank that let a light shoe support the arch, and the cork wedge heel developed as wartime sanctions made steel scarce. In 1938 he made the "Rainbow" platform sandal of stacked, suede-covered cork for Judy Garland, and the same year he bought Palazzo Spini Feroni on Via de' Tornabuoni, which remains the company's headquarters. Shortages pushed him to experiment with raffia, cellophane and nylon thread, including the "invisible" sandal of 1947.
By the 1950s some 700 artisans were making about 350 pairs a day by hand, for clients including Eva Perón, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and the Maharani of Cooch Behar. He published his autobiography, Shoemaker of Dreams, in 1957, and ran the company until his death on 7 August 1960, aged 62.
His widow Wanda and their six children turned the shoemaker into a full fashion house, adding silk, leather goods and ready-to-wear. The Salvatore Ferragamo Museum opened in the palazzo in 1995, and Luca Guadagnino's documentary Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams followed in 2020.