Ferragamo’s new Renaissance

In partnership with Ferragamo

Reconnecting the storied luxury brand to Florence’s tradition of beauty and innovation, Ferragamo’s F/W 2023 campaign, in collaboration with Gallerie degli Uffizi and under the creative directorship of Maximilian Davis, imagines the house’s extended community as timeless protagonists of masterpiece paintings from the Italian Renaissance. There’s a new Ferragamo handbag to match too.

Florence and the making of Ferragamo 

The story of Ferragamo is not simply, as its founder once put it, ‘the story of the small, barefoot, unlettered boy who became the shoemaker to the stars’. It is also the story of constant rebirth and evolution. 

Born in the village of Bonito, the 11th child of 14, Salvatore Ferragamo, who had been making beautiful footwear since the age of 12, was reborn in the States as a young Italian artisan who understood the desires of Hollywood. This was Ferragamo’s first renaissance – a transformation achieved through an audacious pairing of Italian heritage with daring talent.

Though raised in the Avellino region near Naples, Salvatore was under the spell of Florence, aka the ‘Jewel of the Renaissance’, his creative spirit imbued with the spirit of that place and time, blessed with an innate understanding of its power and resonance. 

So when Salvatore decided to return to Italy, there was only one place that would do: Florence. A new Ferragamo renaissance had begun.

The Italian Renaissance was a time of intense creativity and new ideas, celebrating the marriage of art and artisanal excellence. A similar mood of innovation and reinvention was evidenced at Palazzo Spini Feroni, the Florentine home Salvatore gave to Ferragamo in 1927. 

Dating back to the 13th century, the palazzo – still Ferragamo’s headquarters today – seemed emblematic of the Florentine bottega, the workshop or studio of the master artists and craftsmen where dialogue and the exchange of ideas and knowledge allowed Renaissance thinkers, intellectuals and artists to develop local philosophy and skills into a global phenomenon. 

A creative community fed the founder’s imagination and helped spread word of his Florence-infused collections. Salvatore’s circle included not only his fellow craftsmen, but also his extraordinary clientele: Audrey Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Sophia Loren, Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe and Eva Perón. Years later, Madonna would wear Ferragamo when she played Perón in Alan Parker’s Evita movie.

Maximilian Davis’ Ferragamo Fall Winter 23 

Centuries later, Ferragamo has partnered with the Uffizi to accompany creative director Maximilian Davis’ vision for the brand, using some of the museum’s most famous artworks of the 15th and 16th centuries to act as settings for his work. 

By placing muses, friends and members of his diverse creative community in sharp tailoring and exquisite suiting, with richly textured fabrics, bold materials and colours, the ‘Hug’ bag and Ferragamo’s archive-inspired gold sandals in the context of works by Bellini, Veronese and Botticelli, Davis has created a dialogue between past and present, values of tradition and of progress, past eras and future generations. Both the spirit of the Renaissance and the world of 21st-century luxury are thrown into alternate relief by virtue of a place and time juxtaposition.

‘The Renaissance is hardwired into Florence, and Florence is hardwired into Ferragamo,’ says Davis. ‘At this time of a new beginning at the house, it made perfect sense to reclaim the cradle of the Renaissance as our spiritual home, and to harness the deep, artistic spirit of this city to showcase the new collection.’

Just as founder Salvatore collaborated with an artistic community, Davis invited a group of creatives to feature in the pictures including the campaign photographer Tyler Mitchell. The New Renaissance campaign narrates creativity in the making, with a cast of characters portraying models, musicians and creators that inhabit the artwork-based mise en scene, animating them in a contemporary way.

Davis is constructing Ferragamo’s future through the skilled hands of its artisans, the study and evolution of its heritage, the harnessing of new creative talents, and the establishment of his own community. The campaign is a symbol of rebirth, and celebration of the collective effort.

Welcome to Ferragamo’s new Renaissance.

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