Paul Andrew For Salvatore Ferragamo

Putting a shoe designer in charge of womens wear is a pretty controversial move for a fashion house. Well, it would be, unless that house is Ferragamo.

- Jess Wood

Salvatore Ferragamo is the godfather of modern shoe design, and his innovations – the metal shank that led to the modern stiletto heel, the wedge, the use of materials like cork – are studied by budding shoe creators the world over. His archive fills an entire museum in Florence, and his celebrity clientele (from Carmen Miranda to Marilyn Monroe) are a chapter in Hollywood fashion history. So Paul Andrew’s appointment as creative director for womens wear in the autumn of 2017 after only a year as design director of women’s shoes made perfect sense. Berkshire-born Andrew wanted to be an architect, but decided on footwear – attracted by a certain similarity in construction challenges, but with rather more glamour than a career working with concrete. He learned about pushing the creative envelope during time at Alexander McQueen’s studio, then hit New York, where he developed his commercial savvy producing shoes for designers Donna Karan, Narciso Rodriguez and Calvin Klein. He launched his own label in 2012 and landed the dream job at Ferragamo in 2016. Then, the dream got dreamier: ‘When the company asked me if I’d be interested in doing everything, I was honoured but daunted,’ he says. ‘But then I realised I had a real vision for what the Ferragamo woman should be. It was about dressing her from toe to head.’ In his first two seasons at the helm, he’s earned critical acclaim for his cool new update on classic tailoring – not to mention his continuing evolution of the signature house accessories. Here, he tells us about growing up among the royal furniture at Windsor and his novel new car-spray heel coating…

Your dad was an upholsterer at Windsor Castle – that’s interesting!