When British designer Maximilian Davis presented his debut collection for Florentine house Ferragamo in Milan in September 2022 (among our Milan Fashion Week S/S 2023 highlights), eyes were as much on the feet as the collection’s looks – after all, house founder Salvatore Ferragamo made his trade as a shoemaker, outfitting the starlets of Hollywood’s golden age in the 1920s. After returning to Florence in 1927 to found the eponymous brand, he would continue to provide footwear for film’s leading ladies, from Marilyn Monroe to Judy Garland. The latter provided perhaps the house’s most memorable shoe: a vertiginous rainbow-coloured wedge heel created for the actress in the late 1930s and reissued in various iterations in the years since.
Davis paid homage to the house’s Hollywood history in the collection’s looks – a sparkling red look was designed to evoke a scarlet crystal pump made for Monroe in 1960’s Let’s Make Love – conjuring an insouciant glamour synonymous with the home of filmmaking. ‘I wanted to pay tribute to Salvatore’s start by bringing in the culture of Hollywood – but new Hollywood,’ Davis said at the time. ‘Its ease and sensuality; its sunset and sunrise.’
