“Italy in Hollywood” exhibition is staged at the Salvatore Ferragamo’s museum. Located at the 13th-century Palazzo Spini Feroni in Florence, which also houses the brand’s headquarters, the exhibit will be running from May 24 through March 10, 2019.

Salvatore Ferragamo Stages “Italy in Hollywood” in a New Exhibition

During his time spent in the United States, specifically in Santa Barbara, California from 1915 to 1927, Salvatore Ferragamo had worked with the most famous directors of the moment, such as D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, and opened the Hollywood Boot Shop, Ferragamo’s store on Hollywood Boulevard, where influential stars Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, Charlie Chaplin, Joan Crawford, Lillian Gish and Rudolph Valentino were regulars.

The amalgamation of film, art, culture and especially Ferragamo’s experience and contribution then, inspired the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo in Florence: Italy in Hollywood.

“I seem to see a parallel between the film industry and my own. Just as the motion picture industry has grown and developed from those fledgling days, so too, I hope, has mine.” – Salvatore Ferragamo

Curated by Giuliana Muscio and Stefania Ricci, the exhibition is based on the renowned designer’s biography and explores the main theme of Italian migration to California and the influence the Italian elements and culture had on the state in terms of film production and music.

The exhibition centres around the world of art, artisans and entertainment, the fields in which Ferragamo expressed his creativity, and presents them as if they were the plot of a film. Maurizio Balò designed the exhibition in a way that would make visitors feel as if they are on a film set, inspired from the American film studios of the Twenties.

The exhibition highlights the names and personalities of illustrious and lesser known figures while bearing in mind the Italians’ contribution to music. Also integral to the exhibition is the Two Young Italians in Hollywood project organised by Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival, in which two Los-Angeles based Italian artists, Manfredi Gioacchini and Yuri Ancarani contribute a series of photographs and a video installation focusing on the theme of Italy in Hollywood.

The exhibition ends with a room recreated to mimic the Hollywood Boot Shop that the great Italian artisan opened in 1923 as a tribute to Salvatore Ferragamo himself. A video-installation will stage real life visuals in Hollywood in the roaring Twenties.