Suspense seems to have taken the place of adrenaline in lockdown life. Not only is the news cycle relentless, but it delivers daily cliffhangers on both national and global fronts. It all can seem overwhelming. Working together with the director Luca Guadagnino, Salvatore Ferregamo creative director Paul Andrew created a short film and still imagery that addresses the heightened state of the world but in more human and relatable dimensions.
The film is informed by Andrew’s binge-watching of Alfred Hitchcock films, noted for their underlying tension and overt glamour. Though the designer was influenced by the 1950s aesthetic of Hitchcock heroines like Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren, his designs are not defined by the stiffness or hauteur typical of fashion at that time. Andrew instead adds a breath of fresh air to his spring collection through his use of perforated leather, and ease of movement via drapery.
The Guadagnino film follows five characters who intersect, as they navigate urban streets and verdant gardens, each guided by an internal compass. The camera doesn’t linger on their clothes but offers us quick glimpses and details that stoke desire. And this approach to capturing the collection perhaps mirrors fashion’s role in our lives now. The total look has little relevance in the Zoomscape; special pieces feel more in step with dressing today.
As the film is released to all, after premiering in Milan at Ferragamo’s spring show, Andrew shares its backstory.
Vogue: Is this your first foray into film?
Paul Andrew: As for film with a capital F? Absolutely.
Can you speak to the contrasting of nature and architecture in the film and in the collection?
I designed this collection back in March and April when we were all confined to our homes. Apart from working out, cooking many new recipes, and binging on Hitchcock movies, I spent a lot of time staring out the window and watching change unfold. Florence is typically a very bustling city full of locals and tourists from all over the world; it’s rich in human life unfolding against the canvas that is this beautiful and ancient place. Without those people the atmosphere felt increasingly strange and surreal. Very quickly nature began to reassert itself. Wildflowers bloomed between paving stones on the street outside my window, and all the little parks and patches of green exploded with life just as that human life slowed down. It was beautiful but unsettling. That feeling was something Luca and I discussed exploring in the film. As for the collection, some of my lockdown sketches of those ubarn Florence wildflowers were used as decorations. More fundamentally, the emergency of 2020 has intensified our instinct to place sustainability at the heart of our creative and manufacturing process.
How did Hitchcock specifically influence the film and the collection?
I love Hitchcock for many reasons; the storytelling, the style, the suspense, and I especially love his use of color in his later movies. [Hitchcock] saw the potential of Technicolor to create visual points of attention that can be both alarming and alluring. Absolutely his work inflected Luca’s film, and the collection plays a part in that: The Technicolor pieces pop on screen just like in the opening scene of Marnie. Also mid-century classicism, which is quite conservative but also very expressive—and through the behaviors of Hitchcock characters sometimes potentially transgressive—is an aesthetic I riffed on while keeping my international 2021 audience firmly at the forefront of my mind.
How does suspense speak to the present day?
Suspense is a heightening of awareness, and I think all of us have been through and are in now a period of heightened awareness. This is a time in which everything feels amplified and extreme, but we can take ownership of that through our own attitude and actions. Hitchcock was the first master of turning suspense, the fear of something dreadful, into an experience people found delicious. When the world feels beyond our control it’s more important than ever that we have a healthy and positive perspective through which to see it.
Some of your treatments seemed to reference Italian design of the 1950s, is that so?
I was a 1990s kid so that period’s purity and minimalism in fashion is always bubbling around in my work, it was formative, as were my years in New York. During my time with Ferragamo, however, I’ve learned to recognize the purity and precision that can be expressed by richer and more decorative aesthetics. Once you’ve got used to Florence’s abundance of almost excessive beauty in art, architecture, and design you start to become attuned to the agency and expertise of the maker. So I’ve got a much wider eye these days because I appreciate the logic and coherence that are a precondition to design however it is articulated, and in design history the mid-century period in Italy, whether it was in furniture, fashion, architecture, or art was a period of abundant creativity and innovation. So yes, that was part of the mosaic for sure, as was Hitchcock, as were those wildflowers outside my window, and Salvatore Ferragamo’s archive, which is an inspiration I turn to almost daily.
Can you talk about some of the spring shoe and heel designs?
Asking me to specify is like asking a parent to choose a favorite child! But with apologies to all the other labors of love in this collection I’d nominate the rebooted F-heel. It’s based on this incredible design Salvatore Ferragamo dreamed up when looking at the prow of the steamer that took him back home to Italy from the U.S., where he’d become famous for making shoes for Hollywood stars and film productions in the 1920s. The design is nearly 100 years old but it still looks futuristic, like a trick. It’s a shoe in which the foot appears to hover over empty space, and to be honest all we have done is refine and upgraded it to be appropriate to the demands of today. Its genius belongs to Salvatore entirely. His time in Hollywood was the starting point of my thinking that led me to ask Luca to work on this project.
In your view, are the characters in the film yearning for connections, avoiding, or just missing them?
I love the fact that you see that built-in choice, which is exactly the kind of versatile ambiguity that we were looking to generate. That conclusion is up to every viewer to make, or not, and I think your answer is a reflection of your own state and attitude. For me though, I think they were yearning for connections to cherish!
The sound of footsteps sticks with me more than the soundtrack itself. What’s its symbolism?
Well it goes back to solitude and the heightening part that shattered quietness can play in triggering suspense. Also footsteps are the fundamental percussion that signal a human presence. And then of course there is the important role in creating them that is played by something very close to my heart: shoes!