Anok Yai has just claimed one of fashion's most surreal thrones, and it is made entirely of shoes. Ferragamo's Autumn/Winter 2026 campaign, photographed by Johnny Dufort, places the model at the center of a dreamlike world where footwear stops being something people wear and starts becoming something people admire from a distance, the way one might admire a sculpture in a gallery.
That is because the throne itself is a sculpture. Anok Yai is perched atop 'Sole Sitter,' a towering shoe throne by celebrated American artist Willie Cole, originally created in 1994. The piece is one of Cole's most recognizable sculptures, assembled from dozens of discarded women's shoes that he transforms into monuments exploring identity, memory, and cultural history. Seeing it reimagined as a fashion campaign backdrop gives it a second life, one that speaks directly to Ferragamo's own obsession with shoes as objects worth admiring.
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Ferragamo's creative director, Maximilian Davis, sees the pairing as a natural extension of his own creative language. "Willie takes everyday objects, objects that you feel connected to, that you can relate to, and distorts them," he explains. "The chair feels very surreal, but immediate, and with my recent collections referencing Surrealism and Dadaism, the collaboration felt right."
That sense of surrealism runs through the entire campaign. Maximilian Davis returns to one of Ferragamo's most enduring visual signatures: beautiful women surrounded by an impossible number of shoes, a fantasy first imagined during Salvatore Ferragamo's Hollywood years. That familiar idea is given a surreal twist through Dufort's lens, where footwear no longer sits pointlessly in wardrobes but grows into sculpture, architecture and objects of desire.
Craftsmanship Behind the Campaign
Craftsmanship sits at the heart of everything this Ferragamo campaign wants to say. The sleek stiletto revisits a silhouette first introduced by Salvatore Ferragamo in 1954, while the architectural Opanka sole returns as a contemporary interpretation of the innovative construction originally developed in 1957. The beloved Varina ballet flat also reappears, reworked with quilted detailing that nods to its heritage while still feeling current. Each design choice reflects decades of technique passed down and refined, a reminder that Ferragamo's identity has always been rooted in the shoe itself rather than in trend cycles.
Yai is not alone in the frame. She is joined by Ferragamo Global Brand Ambassadors Jingyu Huang and Ning Chang, alongside Vittoria Ceretti and Thibaud Charon, each styled in looks from the Autumn/Winter 2026 collection. Tailored outerwear, sculptural leather separates, fluid dresses and sharply defined silhouettes echo the campaign's dreamlike atmosphere, allowing Ferragamo's craftsmanship to shine through.
Accessories Round Out the Story
Accessories add another layer to the visual narrative. The images also spotlight the new Ferragamo Cara bag in supple calf leather, fastened with Gancini hardware, alongside a new east-west version of the Hug bag. Together with the footwear, these pieces reinforce a luxury shoe campaign built less around trends and more around craft, history, and the strange beauty of turning something ordinary into something worth staring at a little longer.
What makes this Ferragamo campaign resonate is not just the shock of a shoe throne, but the layered thinking behind it. It draws a direct line between an artist who repurposes everyday objects and a fashion house that built its legacy on the shoe as a symbol of glamour and identity. Fashion imagery often chases novelty, but this campaign feels different, grounded instead in memory, technique, and a genuine dialogue between art and craftsmanship.
