Wanda Miletti Ferragamo, wife and widow of shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo, died on Friday afternoon in Fiesole, near Florence.
The couple's children Giovanna, Ferruccio, Leonardo and Massimo, announced their mother had passed away at 96, remembering her in a note as "an example of rectitude and great passion for life".
Widely considered by many fashion designers in Italy and abroad as the quintessential fashion matriarch, Signora Wanda was born in Bonito, outside Naples, like her husband Salvatore Ferragamo.
Salvatore first studied shoemaking in Naples, then emigrated to the States in 1914, moving to California where he opened a repair and made-to-measure shoe shop that became popular with Hollywood stars. After studying anatomy at the University of Southern California to understand how to design and make comfortable shoes, he went back to Italy where he established his business.
Salvatore met Wanda when he returned to Bonito to pay a visit to the town in 1940. In a chapter of Salvatore Ferragamo's autobiography, Shoemaker of Dreams, the author remembers how he instantly fell in love with her.
A few weeks later, on 9th November, they were married in Naples, even though her father disapproved of the match because Salvatore was 25 years older than Wanda. In Shoemaker of Dreams, the description of the marriage only takes up a few paragraphs: after the wedding, the couple went to Sorrento for a brief honeymoon; that day the Allies bombed Naples and all their guests ended up spending the night in the city's shelters.
The couple moved back to Fiesole and had two children, but the first years of marriage were disrupted by the war. Ferragamo, who didn't like politics and hadn't taken any position, was accused of being an American spy by the Germans and a spy for the Germans by the Allies; partisans accused he had collaborated with the Germans and had Fascist sympathies (he had made shoes for Eva Braun before the war, for Mussolini, for his wife Rachele and for his lover Claretta Petacci), while the Republicans accused him of having Monarchist sympathies (he had made shoes for the Queen of Italy; while he lived in the States Ferragamo had adopted a very simple rule – he would make shoes for whoever asked and whoever was in power, Democrats or Republicans; when he went back to Italy he followed the same principle but it ended up playing against him during and after the war).
The family returned to their normal lives at the end of the conflict: the workshop in Palazzo Feroni-Spini was restored (bought in the '30s, the palazzo later on became the Ferragamo Museum) and by 1947 the company was exporting shoes again to Europe and the United States. Ferragamo could once again boast famous celebrities among his clients, including Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren.
Salvatore died prematurely in 1960 at 62, but by then he had already developed a well-established company and patented some of his designs and unique features including platform shoes, the "Invisible Sandal" made with a nylon monofilament, and the "Kimo" a shoe comprising a sandal and a sock in coloured leather. Wanda, who was left at 39 with 6 children, took charge of the company, turned into an entrepreneur and continued to build on his vision together with her 16-year-old daughter Fiamma, who seemed to have inherited her father's talent for designing shoes.
Fiamma later on designed the iconic Vara pump, characterised by a grosgrain ribbon and a metal buckle; her sister Fulvia worked instead as creative director of men's and women's silk accessories, producing another popular Ferragamo item, the silk scarf, made in Como. Fiamma died in 1998 and Fulvia in April this year.
Listed on the Milan Stock Exchange in 2011, the Salvatore Ferragamo group went through ups and downs and in recent months had to dismiss rumours about a possible sale (in July 2018, the group appointed Micaela Le Divelec Lemmi as new CEO and investments were announced to relaunch the brand).
Wanda received many awards during her life: named a Knight of Industry by the Italian Republic in 1987, she received the Fashion Group Award in 1991, the "Mary Ann Magnin Award" in San Francisco in 1992 and, in 2004, she was named a Cavaliere di Gran Croce by the Italian government.
Described by the people close to her as kind and generous, Wanda Ferragamo managed to balance family and work throughout her life: since 2006 she was a honorary president of the company, regularly attended the brand's shows in Milan and visited the offices up until a few weeks ago. Signora Wanda is survived by four of her six children, Giovanna, Ferruccio, Massimo and Leonardo.
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