Ferragamo-Yamamoto set up shoe dream-team
26/03/2009
Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto has created a new footwear collection in collaboration with Italian high-end brand Salvatore Ferragamo.
The collection, which is for autumn-winter 2009-2010, consists of eight shoe styles for women. The shoes include a lace-up and a sneaker style, which Yamamoto based on Ferragamo´s iconic Vara design.
James Ferragamo, the director of the women´s leathergoods department at the Italian brand (and grandson of founder, Salvatore Ferragamo), commented: “The partnership with Yohji Yamamoto has been a great source of creative inspiration for us. We are extremely proud to be sharing our technical and design background with an artist who has innovated the aesthetic canons of fashion today. When Yohji Yamamoto visited our company, he was struck by the complexity of the craftsmanship, with up to 150 individual steps, that goes into the making of a Ferragamo shoe. He has chosen our expertise for this project and he works in direct contact with our designer and product design department. By working as a team, we have been able to both express and respect the personalities of the two brands.”
For his part, Yohji Yamamoto said: “The first Ferragamo model I was interested in was the signature model, Vara. The shoes are so simple but fit perfectly to everyone’s feet. I was also interested in their femininity, which is so far from my creations.”
He revealed that he spent time during his first visit to the Ferragamo headquarters in Florence that he had gone through Salvatore Ferragamo´s own archives and found “various experimentations which hold true even today”.
Mr Yamamoto went on to say: “Shoes are the most difficult accessories to design, maybe even more so than clothes. There is no cheating allowed because all the aspects of design are demanded in each pair of shoes.”
The Salvatore Ferragamo for Yohji Yamamoto capsule-collection will be available starting July at Yohji Yamamoto boutiques and select Ferragamo stores around the world.
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