Ferragamo Autumn Winter 2018 marks a new chapter for the historic fashion house. Paul Andrew presents his inaugural collection as women’s creative director, joining Guillaume Meilland as Design Director for Men’s.  

This collection finds motivation in the frayed edges of modern decadence: a party once thought endless in the twilight hours jolting to reality at the first light of dawn. A new construct of dressing emerges: familiar forms are stripped back, loosened and elongated with ease and elevated functionality. Traditional silhouettes are expertly dissolved for a contemporary take on formal codes. Materials are unrivaled: from plush leathers to Italian wool fabrics, to heavy silk twill and soft cottons. Broad strokes of colour were the starting point; merlot reds and mustard yellows mix expertly with parakeet green and deep vatican blue between hints of nude and blush. footwear, the keystone of Ferragamo’s storied history, is the seed of a collection that was purposefully visualized from the ground up. 

The women’s collection channels the refined ease of Ferragamo’s legacy lit up with vigorous freshness. Leather is the fundamental material, in calfskin coats with impossibly soft cashmere lining and pull-on knee-high boots in nabuk and ostrich. Trousers in buttery nappa leather and wool-silk blends are exactingly cropped to pull focus downward to the shoe. knits are designed to complement leather pieces: from cashmere sweater dresses to ponchos. Shirt-dresses are fabricated from the material of silk foulards sourced from the archive. Galvanized block heels molded in three heights — whose metallic glazing was finished in automobile factories — have been sourced from archival 1930s-era Ferragamo styles. Merino shearling knee-high boots are dyed green and red like 70s shag pile carpeting and lined internally with lusciously soft calfskin.

Menswear is an elevated take on the utilitarian: authentic pieces have been restudied and revised with innovative construction. Shirting in silk twill, wool, leather and shearling — featuring hand-stitched finishing by master tailors — forms the anchor of the collection, echoing the womenswear pieces. layering brings fluidity to a winter wardrobe. Cotton bonded rain coats are updated in a relaxed, streamlined silhouette; inside, printed silk lining introduces a sly hint of hidden pattern. An English donkey jacket, lengthened and oversized from the original, is designed in double wool-cashmere with leather shoulders.

The all-new ‘the studio bag’ in crocodile, ostrich, shearling and soft calf is in great company next to petite camera bags and roomy overnighters with printed lining taken from cravat fabrics. The doppio gancini, Ferragamo’s iconic logo, is represented in ornamental hardware: oversized on triple-cuoio soled men’s shoes and at the waist as women’s belts.