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The comfort

“I constructed my revolutionary lasts which, by supporting the arch, make the foot act like an inverted pendulum”
(Shoemaker of Dreams. The autobiography of Salvatore Ferragamo, London 1957)

ver since starting out, Salvatore Ferragamo had been obsessed with a problem that for centuries had afflicted those who made shoes by hand and that also seemed critical in the industrial production of the period: to make shoes not only beautiful but comfortable too. This was why Ferragamo went to the States, in the hope of finding a solution. While he was in California, he attended human anatomy courses at the local university, and then found the first clue to the problem in distributing body weight over the arch of the foot.

The patented an internal support made of steel, the shank, that shoemakers usually made of thick cardboard or leather. This enabled Ferragamo shoes to become lightweight but strong. This early discovery was followed up by a series of studies of shoe fits that led to his devising of an original system of fitting that also closed the gap between industrial production and made-to-measure shoemaking. The concept was further developed following Ferragamo’s death, when artisan production took on its current form, reaching a daily output of 82 pairs of women’s shoes and 52 pairs of men’s (per model), in sizes ranging from 4 to 12 for women and 5 to 13 for men and with breadth of sole values from the narrowest to the widest.
This concept of comfort in footwear subsequently became a key value, standing for functionality and wellbeing, in other product categories too.