Italian shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo with a selection of his shoes, Florence, 1953.
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Ferragamo was both couturier and courtier. The exhibition features many pictures of the natty shoemaker on bended knee, cradling the foot of one of his glamorous customers, like Sophia Loren, the Duchess of Windsor (who, he said, had perfect feet) and Ava Gardner. He was an artist for hire who worked for the new royalty of the 20th century: movie stars and socialites. Such clients tested his ingenuity. To fulfill the request of an Indian princess, he once fabricated a shoe of hummingbird feathers. But Ferragamo asserted that he was designing shoes not for the personality of the customer but the personality of the age. James Laver, the influential English fashion theorist, wrote that all significant fashion shares three qualities: utility, status and seductiveness. Ferragamo's shoes satisfy on all counts.