Word: ferragamo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Ferragamo, necessity was the spur to invention. In the 1930s and '40s, metal and leather, the staples of shoemaking, were scarce in wartime Italy, so he experimented with what came to hand -- straw, raffia, bark, even fishskin. Another local material, cork, launched one of his greatest inventions, the wedge. The precursor of the familiar wedged heel was a shoe with four corks from local wine bottles sewn together to make a heel. Later in the 1940s, he made uppers of cellophane, after noticing how strong and durable the material was when he twisted a bunch of candy wrappers...
While some of Ferragamo's wedged shoes are sedate, others are fantastical, and a few are downright ugly. But even these, like a black-laced shoe with a prow toe shaped like a rhino's horn, work as sculpture if not as footwear. One wedged shoe made in 1938 is a kind of psychedelic homage to the raised Venetian chopines of the 17th century; it could easily have been worn by Elton John in concert...
...Ferragamo's series of delicate "invisible" shoes (1945-47), which used pieces of clear nylon to create the top piece known as the vamp, were inspired by his observation of the taut, translucent lines of fishermen along the Arno River. The swooping heel of these shoes is also nautical, shaped like the keel of an America's Cup yacht. "The toes," he once said, "should always be free to swim...
...Ferragamo, the high heel was the pedestal on which he placed women. "The high heel gives a beautiful shape to the leg," he wrote. The crocodile uppers of a court shoe (a sort of dramatized pump) made for Marilyn Monroe in 1958 shoot back at a 45 degrees angle, resting on 5-in. stiletto heels. It was a pair of Ferragamo high heels that Monroe was wearing in The Seven Year Itch when the warm air from a subway grate famously raised her skirt. Ferragamo's shoes were sexy without being trampish. His come-get-me shoes were elegant...
...Ferragamo was both couturier and courtier. The exhibition features many pictures of the natty shoemaker on bended knee, cradling the foot of one of his glamorous customers, like Sophia Loren, the Duchess of Windsor (who, he said, had perfect feet) and Ava Gardner. He was an artist for hire who worked for the new royalty of the 20th century: movie stars and socialites. Such clients tested his ingenuity. To fulfill the request of an Indian princess, he once fabricated a shoe of hummingbird feathers. But Ferragamo asserted that he was designing shoes not for the personality of the customer...