Out and about in Milan: Santoni, Sergio Rossi, and Giuseppe Zanotti

No one loves footwear more than the Italians. As three first rate collections by leading shoe makers underlined this week. These shoes are made for walking, and ruling and seducing.

Santoni: Forms that matter

A collaboration with Venetian artist Lorenzo Vitturi in a project entitle “Forms and Matter” led to some striking new ideas at Santoni this season. Though not a collaboration, the artist’s graphic emphasis seemed to infuse some great new looks in the collection.

A bold series of columns and hangings that combined Vitturi’s vision and Santoni’s finest leathers, orange shoe sole or leather string with Venetian glass – all added to the allure at the Santoni showspace, around the corner from the Duomo.
 
From the latest version of the bucket bag, made in treated lace to some excellent new airy intreccio slingbacks and boots for gals who want to sizzle. Though the stand-out looks were remarkable new sequinned slingbacks and accompanying bag. Unexpected, exuberant and cool.

In menswear, Santoni also showed a natty new Carlo sneaker, also in suede intreccio.

“Santoni has always been about luxury, but maybe this is even more luxurious,” said Giuseppe Santoni, looking tanned and trim in a caramel Solaro herring bone suit. 
 
“I have had a busy summer, at the office and with a little co-working – on my yacht and making shoes down in the hold!” he joked.
 

Sergio Rossi: Sculptural chic

Talk about a brilliant display and collection at Sergio Rossi, where designer Paul Andrew incorporated carbon fiber to created shoes of rare sculptural grace.

Seen in some fantastic  ostrich skin wedges – made in an undulating form worthy of Antony Gormley. Paul also showed a striking series of glove-shaped metallic shoes that were studded with kisses.  And he riffed on the house’s DNA with a superb slip-on made of studded leather.
 
“Sergio Rossi really was such a genius with the construction of footwear. In this shoe, he developed this form called Contrapunto in the 1950s, where the sole, in-sole and upper are all one piece,” said Andrew, marveling at the design.

Keeping the bravura creation, Paul produced golden leather wedges with biomorphic heels named Sinuous, inspired by a Zaha Hadid statue in the Design District of Miami.
 
All presented inside Sergio Rossi Milan showrooms on Via Pontaccio, before huge gestural abstract paintings by Richard Zinon. In a word, possibly the most inventive shoe collection we have seen in Milan in the past decade.
 

Giuseppe Zanotti: From The Slim to Moreau Paris

No presentation this week was busier than Giuseppe Zanotti, who celebrated the most legendary footwear of the recent past with a video installation of The Slim. Presenting a half-dozen examples of the sex-creature shoe.

Famous for having graced the feet of Samantha Jones as the only thing she wore during a steamy sushi scene in “Sex and the City”. Creating a fittingly viral footwear moment.
 
The Slim was actually born while dining at one of Giuseppe’s favorite seaside spots, Slim, in Cesenatico, Italy. When Zanotti sketched the first design on a tablecloth, turning a discarded fishbone into a precious jewel that sensually drapes across the foot.

“Who would have thought it could have that much impact,” mused the ever-modest Zanotti.

Presented in his Renaissance style palazzo on via Napoleone, the event also featured a cool new co-branding, a capsule collection with Moreau Paris. Using the mini-grid checkerboard monogram of the venerable Moreau Paris – founded in 1882 in the French capital – to make leather sneakers that looked like denim. Talk about range.