Threading Ferragamo's Future

The 91-year-old House of Salvatore Ferragamo is in the palms of Paul Andrew’s hands — but the creative director is first and foremost learning to be patient

- Andrea Sim

Paul Andrew is like that overachieving student who makes the rest of his class feel like they should pull up their socks. It also happens that the English designer is in the business of shoes. An alumnus of Calvin Klein, Alexander McQueen and Donna Karan, Andrew first became a household name in fashion in 2012 with his eponymous footwear label, an endeavour that by 2016 earned him the role of design director of women’s footwear at Salvatore Ferragamo. A year later, the Florentine house had Andrew take charge of womenswear in its totality, and just this February, handed the 40-year-old the creative reigns of its entire domain — all these within two and a half years of Andrew’s arrival.

Blink, and you’ll have missed this meteoric rise that’s kept even industry insiders on their toes with Andrew’s ever-growing onus. It’s a leap that calls to mind Alessandro Michele’s trajectory from accessories maestro to head honcho at Gucci. Though while Michele inherited a Frida Giannini-steered ship, Andrew has to deal with another beast entirely, one that, up till recently, quite literally had three heads. A whistle-stop tour of the brand’s early days and recent history will put this in perspective.

For starters, the business founded by its namesake footwear designer Salvatore Ferragamo is longer just about shoes. After his passing in 1960, Salvatore’s wife and six children took over the company and introduced new elements to its lexicon; Ferragamo has put out leather accessories and ready-to-wear since 1965, and menswear since the ’70s. The house, previously wholly under the direction of Massimiliano Giornetti since 2011 (he was in charge of menswear prior), was perfectly polished, at times playful, and always exemplary of the brand’s leather expertise.