Ferragamo Designer Massimiliano Giornetti Exits

[IndigoHomme]

Add another fashion house to the growing list of those changing designers: Massimiliano Giornetti is leaving Salvatore Ferragamo.

The group’s in-house team is expected to continue designing the brand. The disclosure was made on Thursday after the close of trading in Milan, where the company is publicly listed.

Giornetti joined the Florence-based firm in 2000 to head up the design and development of the brand’s men’s wear. After a women’s collection for fall 2010, he was promoted to overall creative director of the brand in 2011.

He started his career in women’s wear with the Rome-based haute couture designer Anton Giulio Grande. He is a graduate of Florence’s Polimoda fashion school and took classes at London’s College of Fashion. Before Giornetti’s promotion to creative director, Ferragamo had gone through a few women’s wear designers — Cristina Ortiz, Graeme Black and Nathalie Gervais.

So sad...

WWD → http://bit.ly/25nFrza

 

[perhydrol]

To me it's not sad at all, at least they can get someone truly talented.

 

[Phuel]

^^^ The label will be publicly listed-- I seriously doubt they are looking for someone talented, just able to shift stock with gimmicks. Another label aiming for departments-store appeal, it seems.

I liked him, and hope he finds a role that will appreciate his brand of sleekness.

 

[perhydrol]

To me Ferragamo has been doing this kind of department-store appeal, thanks to that guy. He couldn't find one aesthetic, one image for this brand so he was copying other designers. Ferragamo was always one season (at least) behind others. His work was chic, but it wasn't original at all.

 

[george5]

I've never been a huge fan nor went crazy over his designs but I liked this sort of "private aristocrat enjoying a pleasant lifestyle" vibe that Ferragamo had; I mean, It's clear that They never wanted to appeal to the masses or make big a Fashion statement every season but sell quality clothes for a restrained clientele like Hermès and Loro Piana do. It's for people who indeed live that life and not wannabe-new-rich. Maybe He could join a Design team, his eye for luxe fabrics and sleek lines are too good to waste.

 

[TheoG]

I've never been a huge fan nor went crazy over his designs but I liked this sort of "private aristocrat enjoying a pleasant lifestyle" vibe that Ferragamo had; I mean, It's clear that They never wanted to appeal to the masses or make big a Fashion statement every season but sell quality clothes for a restrained clientele like Hermès and Loro Piana do. It's for people who indeed live that life and not wannabe-new-rich.

And that's exactly what I got out of Ferragamo and liked enjoyed it. It was quite clear, he knew his market and women was designing for. Sad to see him leaving although it was reported he's been there for 16 years? Had no idea its been that long (in terms of fashion of course).

 

[RedSmokeRise]

Sad, I really loved his work.

 

[anlabe32]

Sad, I liked Ferragamo. It was such a classy, luxurious brand.

I could see Frida Gianini or Stefano Pilati for Ferragamo, or do you think the latter is waiting for a bigger offer?

 

[Lola701]

Sad news as he made Ferragamo exciting again. I can totally see him at Berluti.

It's quite surreal to believe that Pilati and Giannini are still unemployed.

 

[orchidee]

^Now that you mention it, I could actually imagine either one of them at Ferragamo.

I can't say I've paid much attention to his work recently, but he really did put Ferragamo back on the map. His first few collections for womenswear were actually some of my favorites. Just another casualty of the present state of fashion, I guess.

 

[fashionista-ta]

I thought Frida was very successful designing accessories.

 

[Lola701]

I thought Frida was very successful designing accessories.

I actually think that she was a good designer. She just wasn't good for Gucci.
She can reinvent herself like Philo and Facchinetti did.

 

[fashionista-ta]

I felt she didn't take the female form into consideration, similar to Hedi ... she did not impress me at Gucci with her womenswear. I find both Phoebe and Alessandra far more talented. Maybe Frida just hasn't had the right showcase for her talent

 

[Nymphaea]

What Happens Next for Massimiliano Giornetti and Salvatore Ferragamo?

At a Vogue dinner last month in Milan, Massimiliano Giornetti was among a group of designers locked in debate as to which Italian city is the best to live and work in. Marco de Vincenzo (based in Rome) made a powerful case for the Italian capital, but Giornetti—in his gentlemanly way—was adamant: Florence’s art, culture, food, and beauty, he declared, made it the perfect place for him. “And,” he added, “it’s quiet.”

Yesterday, Giornetti was the source of quite some noise when news broke of his resignation as the creative director of Florence’s greatest family-owned fashion house, Salvatore Ferragamo. Once Ferragamo had announced the move, Giornetti released a statement saying his departure was due to “just cause”—an expressive euphemism often employed in Italy to indicate some transgression or dispute between the two parties. Within Salvatore Ferragamo, however, there is only regret at his departure—the company made sure to thank and praise Giornetti for his contribution to its business.

Rightly so: For while Giornetti, 44, might not have been the loudest noise in the jostling Milanese designer hierarchy (apart from yesterday), he delivered many years of solid-to-strong collections for the company he first joined at age 28. His naturally gentle, self-effacing nature seemed an ideal foil to the strictly hierarchical nature of the family-owned Florentine house for which he worked. After every show, he offered a precise bow to the Ferragamos seated in the front row.

Giornetti’s career at Ferragamo began with the role of assistant in the menswear department in 2000. Four years later he was appointed as chief menswear designer, and then in 2010, following a series of hallo-goodbye appointments in Ferragamo’s womenswear studio, he was handed that responsibility as well. Vogue Runway’s Nicole Phelps concluded her review of that first collection thus: “As she was walking out, a fellow observer remarked, ‘That’s what Ferragamo should look like.’ She was right.” There was praise elsewhere, too, and in 2011 Giornetti was appointed creative director with a brief to oversee aesthetic continuity across all of the Salvatore Ferragamo categories. The last five years have been profitable ones at Ferragamo, and although it has been reported that around 80 percent of its sales comes from the core categories of footwear—of course—and small leather goods, there is no doubt that Giornetti’s collections and image-making contributed to the company’s fortunes.

Always impeccably suited himself, and with a fondness in menswear for a clinically fitted silhouette, Giornetti’s favorite strategy in recent seasons was to present clothes of a fundamentally bourgeois template consistent with the house. These were often seasoned with a splash of subversiveness via either technically impressive, mixed-material trompe-l’oeil fabrications or artistic reference. His most recent menswear collection, for instance, played with the paint-splash pattern with which Andy Warhol unwittingly decorated his Ferragamo “Gris” shoes and abstract pattern derived from the photography of Mario Giacomelli. Before that collection showed, Giornetti told Vogue Runway: “It goes from an extremely pure vision of elegance to the other side: expressing your personality. In a moment where everything looks the same, this is important.”

So what next for Salvatore Ferragamo and Massimiliano Giornetti? The fashion house has already said it will recruit from within. The designer, meantime, is keeping his counsel. Speculation on such matters is rightly verboten at Vogue Runway, but it is notable that of the long list of designers who have left houses recently, the majority were pushed rather than chose to jump. Prior to Giornetti, only Raf Simons (who left Dior to do we’re not quite sure yet) and Alessandro Sartori (who left the shoe-rooted menswear house Berluti to join Ermenegildo Zegna) made the leap themselves.

vogue

 

[Pricciao]

I'm more interested about this.

... of the long list of designers who have left houses recently, the majority were pushed rather than chose to jump. Prior to Giornetti, only Raf Simons (who left Dior to do we’re not quite sure yet) and Alessandro Sartori (who left the shoe-rooted menswear house Berluti to join Ermenegildo Zegna) made the leap themselves.

What source do they have to make this judgement?

 

[dodencebt]

^ Yes, that doesn't seem accurate. From what I know there was a mutual agreement between Balenciaga and Alexander Wang to not renew his contract, for one, and Dundas was definitely not pushed from Pucci but left to do Cavalli.