The Salvatore Ferragamo Museum in Florence, Italy is a fashion museum dedicated to the life and work of Italian shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo and his eponymous company. The museum contains 10,000 models of shoes created and owned by Ferragamo from the 1920s until his death in 1960. Following Ferragamo’s death the collection was expanded by his widow and children. The museum also includes films, press cuttings, advertising materials, clothes and accessories from the 1950s to the present day.
The Ferragamo family founded the museum in May 1995 to acquaint an international audience with the artistic qualities of Salvatore Ferragamo and the role he played in the history of not only shoes but international fashion as well.
Like most corporate museums, Museo Salvatore Ferragamo and its archives stem from the vision of an entrepreneur, in this case Salvatore Ferragamo’s widow, Wanda, who has headed the company since the founder’s death in 1960, and her six children. In particular, the eldest of their children, Fiamma, who managed the company’s core footwear and leather goods business after her father’s death, stood at this project’s helm on behalf of her family and brought it to life, shaping its strategy with the assistance of historians and archivists.
The idea for the museum initially came about when an exhibition was organised at Palazzo Strozzi on the history of Salvatore Ferragamo. The exhibition went on tour and was hosted by some of the world’s most prestigious museums, such as the Victoria and Albert in London, the County Museum of Los Angeles, the New York Guggenheim, the Sogetsu Kai Foundation in Tokyo, and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Mexico. The temporary exhibition gradually became permanent.
In recognition of the museum’s cultural importance and that of its many initiatives over the years, in 1999, Salvatore Ferragamo received the Guggenheim Impresa e Cultura Award, given annually to companies that best invest in culture to constructive ends. The museum is located in the historical centre of Florence, in Palazzo Spini Ferroni, which has also been the company’s headquarters since 1938.
Salvatore Ferragamo
The eleventh of fourteen children, Salvatore Ferragamo was born in 1898 in Bonito, a small village 100 kilometres from Naples. Even as a child, Salvatore showed a great passion for shoes: at the age of 11 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Naples and at 13 he opened his own shop in Bonito. When he was 16, he travelled to America to join one of his brothers who was working for a large shoe factory in Boston. Salvatore was fascinated by the modern machinery and production processes but he also saw how they could limit product quality. In the early Twenties he moved to Santa Barbara, California, where he opened a shoemaking and repair shop. California was an exciting place to be at that time with the new film industry booming. Salvatore began designing and making shoes for the movies. Meanwhile, in his ongoing search for shoes with the perfect fit, he studied human anatomy, chemical engineering and mathematics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
When the movie industry moved to Hollywood, Salvatore Ferragamo went with it. In 1923 he opened the ‘Hollywood Boot Shop’, which marked the start of his career as ‘shoemaker to the stars’, as he was defined by the local press.
In 1927 Ferragamo decided to return to his native Italy and chose to settle in Florence, a city known for its many skilled craftsmen. From his Florentine workshop – in which he adapted the assembly line system to his workers’ highly specialised and strictly manual work – Salvatore launched a constant flow of exports to the United States.
Then came the great crisis of 1929, which abruptly brought business with the US market to a standstill and forced the company to close. However, Ferragamo did not lose heart. Instead, he turned his focus to the domestic market. Within a few years, his business was performing so well that in 1936 he rented two workshops and a shop in Palazzo Spini Feroni, via Tornabuoni, Florence. Despite the economic sanctions against Mussolini’s Italy, it was during this time that Ferragamo turned out some of his most popular and widely-imitated creations, like his strong, yet light cork ‘wedges’. In 1938 these successful creations enabled him to pay the first instalment for the purchase of all of Palazzo Spini Feroni, which has been the company’s headquarters ever since. In 1940 he married the young daughter of the local doctor in Bonito, Wanda Miletti, who joined him in Florence and would bear him six children: three sons (Ferruccio, Leonardo and Massimo) and three daughters (Fiamma, Giovanna and Fulvia).
After the war, Salvatore Ferragamo’s shoes came to be known around the world as a symbol of Italy’s return to life, design and production. The years that followed saw many memorable inventions: the stiletto heels with metal reinforcement made famous by Marilyn Monroe, the gold sandals and the invisible sandals with nylon thread uppers (for which Ferragamo won the prestigious ‘Neiman Marcus Award’ in 1947, the fashion world’s equivalent of the Oscar, marking the first time it was bestowed on a shoe designer).
When Salvatore Ferragamo died in 1960 he had achieved his lifelong dream: he had designed and made the most beautiful shoes in the world. He left it to his family to carry on and fulfil another dream that he had nurtured in his final years: transforming Ferragamo into a great fashion brand.
Fiamma Ferragamo
When Salvatore died in 1960, the founder’s invaluable legacy passed on to his wife and eldest daughter, Fiamma, who had given up her studies to join the company at sixteen. She was the only one of Salvatore’s children to work with him, for one year, under his guidance and experiencing his artful creativity.
Nicknamed “fashion’s teenager” by the press, Fiamma came to represent Ferragamo style around the world in shoes and leather accessories until her death in 1998. She headed the design, production and sale of women’s shoes and men’s and women’s bags, luggage and accessories. Fiamma Ferragamo received the prestigious international Neiman Marcus Award in 1967, exactly 20 years after her father received the same award. She designed a number of celebrated shoe styles, including the Vara with its gros grain bow, created in 1978 and still in production today, along with other accessories that have become icons of Salvatore Ferragamo style, like the W bag with its double Gancino clasp, which she designed for her mother, Wanda.
Fiamma’s talent was recognised with other international awards and important appointments, not only in fashion but in the world of culture and the arts as well. For many years she served as Chairwoman of the Tuscan chapter of the FAI (Italian Environment Fund), and the ideas for the first exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence on the history of Salvatore Ferragamo and for the foundation of Museo Salvatore Ferragamo were mainly hers.
Celebrity
When Salvatore Ferragamo moved to California, bringing with him his passion for shoes and exceptional craftsmanship, his first real work experience was with the movie industry.
Since that distant time, the brand’s relationship with the film world has been ongoing and has continued to inspire Salvatore Ferragamo’s creativity and shape the company’s image.
In the Fifties, Palazzo Spini Feroni was already a must for celebrity actresses visiting Italy, such as Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Greta Garbo, Anna Magnani, Paulette Goddard, Lauren Bacall and Sophia Loren.
Film stars are still loyal to the Ferragamo name today.
The company continues its practice of partnering with major film productions, both by supplying accessories and actively collaborating in the film and working in close contact with costume designers. This was the case in 1996 for Alan Parker’s Evita, starring Madonna, in 1998 for Andy Tennant’s Ever After – A Cinderella Story, starring Drew Barrymore, Anjelica Huston and Jeanne Moreau, in 2008 for Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, starring Nicole Kidman, and in 2013 for Ron Howard’s Rush, with Daniel Brühl and Chris Hemsworth.
Craftsmanship
When Salvatore emigrated to the United States, where the footwear industry was expanding in leaps and bounds, he decided to remain faithful to the Italian handcrafting tradition, while integrating it with certain techniques borrowed from industrial production. Once he had returned to Italy and established himself in Florence, Ferragamo extended the concept of craftsmanship to uppers made with lace, embroidery and straw and heels covered with rhinestones, silver and metal, the result of the local craftsmen’s capable hands, whose work is known around the world for embodying the Italian culture of fine craftsmanship.
When production diversified beyond footwear to a wider range of products, the Ferragamo brand continued to uphold its heritage and preserve certain handcrafting techniques in its manufacturing processes, cultivating an eye to detail and a passion for its work, which have been key factors in its success.
Comfort
While he was in California, Ferragamo attended human anatomy courses at the university, finding the first clue to the problem in the distribution of the body’s weight over the arch of the foot and patenting an internal support made of steel, the ‘shank’. This made Ferragamo shoes both light and strong. This early discovery was followed by research into shoe fits which led to an original shoe fitting system that served to close the gap between industrial production and made-to-measure shoemaking. Salvatore added the measurement of foot width and overall volume to traditional foot measurements.
The concept was further developed in industrial production after Ferragamo’s death, and led to the creation of over 70 different shoe fit/size combinations for women and men each.
Salvatore Ferragamo Museum
The aim of the museum is to document Salvatore Ferragamo’s important creative work in the field of leather goods and in particular footwear, and to demonstrate the relationship that has always existed between the company, art, design and costume.
Expanded in 2006, today the museum occupies the base of the building.
It is divided into seven rooms: the first two rooms are dedicated to the history of the Ferragamo house and its creativity: over 14,000 models are exhibited in biennial exhibitions – in rotation – preserved in the museum archive. The other rooms of the museum are instead intended for temporary exhibitions such as the tribute paid to Marilyn Monroe in 2012-2013 for the fifty years since her death: the Florentine designer created “decollete” models with stiletto heels for her, of many colors and materials.
To celebrate the 80th anniversary of the fashion house, an exhibition was organized on footwear created by Ferragamo, selected on the basis of the color criterion which has always aroused a great fascination for the designer.
History Of The Museum
The Ferragamo family founded the museum in May 1995 to acquaint an international audience with the artistic qualities of Salvatore Ferragamo and the role he played in the history of not only shoes but international fashion as well.
Like most corporate museums, Museo Salvatore Ferragamo and its archives stem from the vision of an entrepreneur, in this case Salvatore Ferragamo’s widow, Wanda, who has headed the company since the founder’s death in 1960, and her six children. In particular, the eldest of their children, Fiamma, who managed the company’s core footwear and leather goods business after her father’s death, stood at this project’s helm on behalf of her family and brought it to life, shaping its strategy with the assistance of historians and archivists.
The idea for the museum initially came about when an exhibition was organised at Palazzo Strozzi on the history of Salvatore Ferragamo. The exhibition went on tour and was hosted by some of the world’s most prestigious museums, such as the Victoria and Albert in London, the County Museum of Los Angeles, the New York Guggenheim, the Sogetsu Kai Foundation in Tokyo, and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Mexico. The temporary exhibition gradually became permanent.
In recognition of the museum’s cultural importance and that of its many initiatives over the years, in 1999, Salvatore Ferragamo received the Guggenheim Impresa e Cultura Award, given annually to companies that best invest in culture to constructive ends. The museum is located in the historical centre of Florence, in Palazzo Spini Ferroni, which has also been the company’s headquarters since 1938.
The Building
In 1846, the City of Florence bought the palace and, from 1860 to 1870, when Florence was the capital of Italy, Palazzo Spini Feroni became the seat of the City Council. It returned to private ownership in 1881 when it was sold to a bank, the Cassa di Risparmio, and Salvatore Ferragamo purchased the palace in 1938, making it the headquarters of his company and the location of his workshop.
The building’s restoration was completed in 2000 and its rooms now proudly showcase masterpieces of seventeenth and eighteenth century Florentine art, including frescoes by Bernardino Poccetti in the chapel of the palace.
The underground floor, where the museum is situated, reveals the building’s Medieval roots. Over the centuries it has been used for many different purposes and in the early twentieth century it housed one of the city’s most famous antiques galleries.
The permanent collection
Several shoe styles reveal Salvatore Ferragamo’s relationships with artists of his day, such as the futurist painter, Lucio Venna who created sketches for advertisements and the famous label on Ferragamo shoes. Others document his continuous search for the perfect fit and the special shoe constructions he invented, as well as the unusual materials he used, from the famous cork ‘wedge’ patented in 1936 and immediately imitated all over the world, to uppers made out of raffia, cellophane and the transparent paper used for chocolates during World War II. The collection also includes shoes that were famous because they were made for Hollywood stars like Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo and Audrey Hepburn.
The footwear collection, used by the museum, documents Salvatore Ferragamo’s entire span of activity, from his return to Italy in 1927 until 1960, the year of his death, highlighting Salvatore’s technical and artistic ability, who through the choice of colors, the imagination of the models and the experimentation of the materials, he was able to offer a fundamental contribution to the development and affirmation of the “Made in Italy”.
It is made up of models that demonstrate Salvatore Ferragamo’s relationship with the artists of the time, such as the futurist painter Lucio Venna, author of some advertising sketches and the well-known Ferragamo footwear label; others prove the continuous search for the perfect fit and the invention of particular constructions and the use of materials, from the famous cork ” wedge “, patented in 1936 and immediately copied all over the world, to raffia or cellophane uppers, the paper for sweets, adopted during the Second World War period. There are also shoes famous for being created for Hollywood stars, such as Marilyn Monroe,Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn.
The collection is also enriched by the production of footwear following Salvatore Ferragamo’s death up to the present day. Every year, in fact, some representative models of the season become part of the Salvatore Ferragamo archive, from which the museum draws for its exhibitions.
There is also a collection of drawings, wooden forms, documents and photographs connected to the creations of the shoe artist.