A unique project and creation in the world. And not just in the fashion world. Because at the basis of the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum there is the history of the Shoemaker of the Dives but also the culture that pervades his style, the deep roots in Florentine craftsmanship, the knowledge and discovery of many often unpublished materials, his great creativity. It is the history of fashion seen from within and extended to the world, to society, to the artistic currents of the twentieth century from entertainment to cinema. An international spirit that has always characterized the Florentine brand still in the hands of the founder’s family, whose president is Leonardo Ferragamo.
A place waiting to be discovered in Florence, a Museum that every year organizes exhibitions of emotional appeal and high content, with a human journey that teaches a lot about Made in Italy to today’s young people. Starting from via Tornabuoni 2 and then extending onto Piazza Santa Trinita where there is the entrance to the Museum which also leads to a visit to Beatrice’s well, the place of the myth and of Dante’s falling in love. The idea of a Museum was born from the unforgettable Wanda Ferragamo (who passed away in 2018), Salvatore’s wife who, upon his death in 1960, took the helm of the company and raised her six children to each of whom she entrusted a task, and of the eldest daughter Fiamma Ferragamo di Sangiuliano, who for a very short time also supported her father in the footwear business.
Two special women who first reorganized the Salvatore Ferragamo Archive and then began to show the world Salvatore’s genius, starting with the unforgettable retrospective of 1985 at Palazzo Strozzi and then from 24 May 1995 with the opening of the Museum at Palazzo Spini Feroni , a medieval wonder overlooking the Arno and which is still the headquarters of the maison.
The driving force and soul of this enlightened cultural project is the director Stefania Ricci, an intellectual open to the world who has exalted like no one the heritage of the maison that since 1927 Salvatore wanted to transfer from Hollywood to Florence.
“There are men who have the dizzying acceleration of the times of success and life. Salvatore Ferragamo belongs to this category”, wrote Antonio Paolucci when presenting the volume which recounts the crucial stages of the Museum, rewarding Wanda’s idea and Fiamma who entrusted themselves to professor Cristina Aschengreen Piacenti.
In the rooms of the Museum we understand, exhibition after exhibition, how companies are not just business but also a cultural fact. For Salvatore, all the materials used in his work are equally precious, and this is another great lesson for today’s young people, thanks to the mastery of those who work with them. And here over the years are the exhibitions dedicated to the great divas that Salvatore has worn, from Audrey Hepburn to Greta Garbo, passing through Marylin Monroe, and also his links with art and the territory, his lesson in humility and vision, ranging from pure gold cork. A visit to the Museum fills the eyes with beauty and hope for the future, thanks also to the work of the Ferragamo Foundation chaired by Giovanna Gentile Ferragamo.
On the program until November 4th is the retrospective on the 100 years since the opening of the first store in Hollywood, the Hollywood Bootshop, Salvatore Ferragamo 1898-1960, with Salvatore’s story from the first family photos in Bonito, Campania, to the first American successes and then the international triumph: an intertwining of private and public, between star system and family, which reveals Salvatore’s passions such as that for reading scientific, anatomical and esoteric texts present in the home library and revealed by the study of the historian Elvira Valleri.
