My Creative Cup of Tea

September 23, 2022

#MCCOTPlacetoVisit {2}

Museo Salvatore Ferragamo

Florence

Italy

As the Tuscan city of Florence is worldwide well-known as the city of the emblematic and powerful Medici Family, since 1927 the latter is also the adoptive City of the Italian Ferragamo Family. It is indeed the city chosen by Italian legendary shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo to set up his flourish business as he came back home from the United States, where he spent more than a decade building a true Fairy tale. Born in Irpinia, in Bonito, hundred kilometers from Naples on 5th June of 1898, in a poor and large (14 children) family of farmers, Salvatore has always be fascinated by shoes. Against his father's will, he wanted to follow his dream and become a shoemaker. To learn the job, at only 11 years old, he moved alone to the big city Naples. At 16, in the footsteps of some of his oldest brothers, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean to move to Boston and then to Santa Barbara on the West Coast to achieve his American Dream. There he opened his first tiny shop and started designing and manufacturing bespoke luxury hand-made shoes. As he wanted to make his way in the industry, he became a student at University of Southern California attending evening classes to study anatomy in order to gain an understanding of the structure of the foot. To nourish his big ambitions and strong of his former collaborations with famous directors of the time D.W Griffith and Cecil B.DeMille, in 1923, he moved to Los Angeles and opened the Hollywood Boot Stop on the Hollywood Boulevard. This bold decision was the right one. His workshop became a popular place frequented by movie stars as Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, Joan Crawford, Charlie Chaplin, Lillian Gish or Rudolph Valentino. An international shoemaker star war born. The little Italian immigrant has made his American Dream come true. In 1927, back home in Italy, he opened his first Italian workshop in Florence in Via Manelli 57. From the capital of the Italian Renaissance, he built a Family empire on the belief that moral values come before financial gain, managed by his beloved wife Wanda Miletti Ferragamo (1921-2018) and their six children (Fiamma, Giovanna, Ferruccio, Fulvia, Leonardo and Massimo) after he passed away in 1960. To celebrate and share the priceless legacy she inherited from her husband, in 1995, Wanda came to the idea of the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo located in Palazzo Spini Feroni, Piazza Santa Trinita 5/R, headquarter of the Maison. In 2015, the latter became the first green Italian Museum with zero CO2 emissions. In 2013, as she was particularly interested in young people and believed they need to be educated to understand the social and economic circumstances in which they live, she established the Fondazione Ferragamo to proudly give back. If her husband was a pioneer and creative genius, a man who revolutionized his time, she was a Great Lady and a brilliant entrepreneur and a good householder. From last May 2022 to next april 2023, you can visit the exhibition Donne in Equilibrio in her honour. The Museo Salvatore Ferragamo is resolutely a place to visit if you have the opportunity to spend some quality time in this beautiful city.