Marking Salvatore Ferragamo’s return to Milan’s menswear schedule our Creative Director Paul Andrew embarks upon a playful exploration of the increasingly diverse and fluid and free nature of contemporary masculine identities. 

Paul Andrew explains: “In this first Ferragamo show of the new decade I want to use the language of fashion to ask: what does masculinity look like in 2020? To find answers we began with six ‘alpha’ male archetypes - Businessman, Biker, Racing Driver, Sailor, Soldier and Surfer. Then we fabricated their attire applying traditional Ferragamo artisanship guided by a determinedly non-conformist attitude. The agenda is to retain the aesthetic of uniform while subverting the once-rigid assumptions it enforced. To do this we use luxuriously tactile and fluid materials blend together our six masculine categories. 
Clothes can define you: worn with thought and freedom they can also redefine you by serving as tools for experiment, evolution and transformation. This power held by clothing is something I see is much more relished in womenswear: today I wanted to create clothes and accessories for change in a very masculine context. A man today is not obliged to assume a single, set role: he can be a multitude, and he can change his worn identity any time he wishes. That’s a freedom we want to explore in the 2020s.” 

Shoes 
Following the Ferragamo ‘toe to head’ philosophy, this collection is based upon a foundation of footwear. These include bench made boots whose leather uppers are combined with the fabric of the garment worn above, featuring triple-stacked cuoio leather soles with square Gancini stud accessories. Large profile ‘biker’ and ‘army’ boots feature a high-flex V-lug (inspired by 1949 archival Ferragamo shoe) with a hybrid lace up/Chelsea boot upper. 

Accessories 
The ‘Tornabuoni’ group evolves into a holdall and camera bag. Duffle bags in lightweight upholstery, hand-woven wide weave totes with matching belts and the new square Gancini stud buckle. Leather trimmed sunglasses. 

Clothes 
This collection abounds with sensualised, elevated and rethought masculine ‘uniform’ classics from its six archetype genres: these are then mixed into outfits that defy categorisation - hero pieces for anti-heroes. 

The opening look, for instance, features a peacoat (Sailor) in Scottish herringbone tweed (Businessman) with a double pleat at the front drawn from 1980’s Japanese beachwear and worn over double faced silk wool leggings (Surfer). Elsewhere a leather fire suit (Racing driver) is worn under a rib knit sweater (Sailor) and a surfer’s kangaroo pocketed vest. “Camouflage” print pieces (Military) in oxblood and olive are in fact palm prints (Surfer) which are worn against leather flight jacket (Soldier). Front-fold velcro-belt pants (Surfer), grain calfskin leathers (Biker) are also part of our mix-but-not-match multitude.  

The collection abounds with these swirling cocktails of reference and expression.