Fashion loves Luca Guadagnino, and he returns the favor. Still, the director/writer/artist stresses that his latest project, Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, is not a film about fashion at all. “It’s about the genius of a man, a young kid, and he is experiencing life in the 20th century,” said Guadagnino on a call. It’s a story of “how great a person can be in really interacting with many things that happen in our lifetime. So I hope the people can get into this movie and not only discover a great creator of shoes, but also a great man.”
Guadagnino has worked with the Ferragamo brand several times over the past years. He made a short film called Walking Stories for the company in 2013 and more recently worked on a collection movie for spring 2021. Shoemaker of Dreams is a thing apart, and involves the Ferragamo family, along with expert commentators, among them Martin Scorcese, Manolo Blahnik, Grace Coddington, and Suzy Menkes. With the cooperation of the Ferragamo Foundation and Museum, Guadagnino and his team had access to a treasure trove of archival materials with which to tell the truly remarkable story—including voice recordings of Ferragamo himself speaking. Michael Stuhlbarg, a Guadagnino favorite and a star of Bones & All, which opens later this month, does the documentary’s narration. To call it a tale of rags to riches is to miss the message of the film, which is about passion, struggle, resilience, love, and family.
There’s no way to Disney-fy Ferragamo’s early, hardscrabble life. Of humble origins, Salvatore was born in Bonito, Italy, the 11th of 14 children, who was given the name of a brother who had died. Even as a boy Ferragamo was attracted by shoes and wanted to apprentice with the local cobbler. It was only after he spent a night creating shoes for his sister Giuseppina to wear to her Communion that his parents relented, and agreed to let him pursue his dream. Two years later, at the tender age of 11, Ferragamo moved by himself to Naples where he became an apprentice. Returning to Bonito, he opened his own shop, leading a team, all of whom were older than himself. In 1915, following in the footsteps of his older brothers, Salvatore sailed to America. In Boston he worked at the Plant Shoe Factory, but his interest was in craft rather than mass manufacturing, so he made his way to Santa Barbara, where he set up shop and was soon creating shoes for the street as well as films. “The West would have been conquered faster if they had boots like these,” the director Cecil B. DeMille said. Actresses like Lillian Gish and Pola Negri became friends and clients.
Ferragamo was as interested in feet as he was in shoes, and in 1916 he took lessons in anatomy in Los Angeles with the aim of creating a perfect fit. “Fashion with comfort, that’s what I gave,” he once said. “I think the foot is an object that he’s attracted to because there is a lot of science that you can apply to it, but at the same time, I think it’s the part of the body that he feels compelled to empower,” adds Guadagnino.
Though he’d file for many patents relating to his field over the years, Ferragamo’s first was for an orthopedic support, which he devised while recuperating from a crushing car crash in which his brother Eliodoro lost his life. Back on his feet, in 1923, Salvatore opened the Hollywood Boot Shop, and continued working with directors and stars, on and off screen. In 1926, the same year that he became an American citizen, Ferragamo returned to Italy and set himself up in business in Florence, where he devised a production system that borrowed from both American and Italian traditions. Despite his talent and innovations, Ferragamo declared bankruptcy in 1933. Down, but not out, he found a way to start again and established Salvatore Ferragamo in 1936, acquiring Palazzo Spini Feroni, which remains the company headquarters today. There, Guadagnino notes, Ferragamo’s “kids [were] making homework on the floor of the same rooms where the artisans were making shoes.”
Shoemaker of Dreams does touch on some of Ferragamo’s most famous shoes designs, such as the wedge of 1937, the much copied caged metal heel, the stacked rainbow platform made during material shortages in the 1940s, and the ruby slippers, but, again, this is not a movie about fashion, it’s about a man following his passion in work and love, and it’s on a family note that the documentary part of the film comes to its first conclusion. “Ferragamo went to Italy to look for a family. He invented himself all the time; he invented the idea of Made in Italy being from Florence—he wasn’t from Florence. And then he decided that he had to have a family and he went to his village and he decided that he was going to marry that girl. And it worked, it worked; they loved each other so dearly. They made six children and then [Wanda] became the woman who ran the company after he passed away. And to end with beautiful home movies in which you see the affectionate life of a family in Italy, I thought it was quite touching,” remarks Guadagnino.
I asked the director, who grew up between Italy and Africa, if he felt any identification with Ferragamo, who also lived between two worlds. “My mom is Algerian and I grew up in Ethiopia, and then in Sicily; I moved a lot throughout my life and I always find myself in the position of the maverick somehow,” he replied. “At the same time, I have a very disciplined sense of self to find ways to do things the way I want and to complete myself through what I do. Not to compare myself to the Master Ferragamo, but I think there are some sort of touching qualities in his way of being that remind me how to approach my own life.”
Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams happens to open just weeks after the company removed Salvatore from the brand name, shortening it to Ferragamo. The film is a fitting tribute to the man behind the shoes. Vita brevis, as they say, ars longa. Guadagnino teamed up with the stop motion artist/animator Pes to create a coda to the autobiographical part of the film. A Dream of Hollywood: Shoe Ballet by Pes is a kaleidoscope of digitized shoes tapping, stepping, and spinning in the manner of Busby Berkley. The film ends on a high in a period in which the world seems to have sunk really low.
“We live in the oppression of the digital, in the oppression of hyper-capitalism, in the oppression of hyper-information,” notes Guadagnino. “I hope the movie showcases how many things you can achieve without your phone and without relying on other people’s opinion. Ferragmo did it.” The takeaway is we all can.
