This week's Thursday Styles features a visit to the newly rejuvenated Salvatore Ferragamo* flagship boutique on Fifth Avenue by Critical Shopper Alexandra Jacobs. The longstanding boutique has just emerged from a timely renovation, and jacobs spends a good deal of column inches recounting the oft-told story of Ferragamo's many innovations (wedges, platforms, engineered stilettos, etc.), celebrity clientele (Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Eva Braun?) and the brand's eventual descent, after its namesake's 1960 death, from fashion leader to comfortable, family owned middle of the road luxury cash cow where grandma got her shoes (Ferragamo is literally where The Shophound's grandma got her shoes).
But then, in the past year, new design leadership has vaulted Ferragamo back into the editorial spotlight, and so a refresh of its main retail showcase was in order. Our shopper finds herself in a store that is also part brand museum, but it is in the dressing room where she discovers that part of the brand's resurgence may be due to combining improved styling with the more forgiving fit of a collection that, in the past, has been aimed at a more conservative customer.
“Small is the only one we have,” he said of the pants, sounding genuinely sorrowful.
That was O.K., as Ferragamo’s clothes are cut with generosity, sometimes even outright forgiveness. Navy sailor slacks had fake buttons on the front, ties up the back and the kind of side slit and roomy seat one might see at Ann Taylor.
It's a strategy some designers might take note of to keep their clothes off the clearance racks.
Critical Shopper: A Transporting Trill of ‘Amore’ By Alexandra Jacobs (NYTimes)
Salvatore Ferragamo 655 Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street, Midtown
*Full Disclosure: The Shophound once spent a couple of years happily working on one of Salvatore Ferragamo's selling floors.