“He’s striving to continue with Ferragamo’s time-honored sense of the hand.”

One in a Maximilian

As Ferragamo returns to its Hollywood roots with a new Rodeo Drive flagship, creative director Maximilian Davis looks to the house’s storied past while charting a future all his own

By Mark Holgate

By the time you read this, Maximilian Davis, the wunderkind creative director of Ferragamo, will have left his adopted city of Milan for Los Angeles, where he plans to host a dinner tonight in celebration of the Florentine brand’s new boutique on Rodeo Drive. It is something of a homecoming: Salvatore Ferragamo’s very first boutique, anywhere in the world, was in L.A., opening in 1923 as the Hollywood Boot Shop. Signor Ferragamo made shoes for the likes of Gloria Swanson, Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn, and Marilyn Monroe—for whom he created the white stilettos she wore in The Seven Year Itch. However, Ferragamo was far more than the cobbler to the stars. He was a virtuoso, an avant-garde technician, creating wildly innovative graphic, architectural, complexly constructed designs—all of which have served as inspiration for Davis.

Appointed as creative director of Ferragamo at 26—he’s now 31—the British designer was met with some skepticism at first, given both his tender years and relative lack of experience. “I’ve always said it was a risk. A risk for both of us,” he tells me. “Luckily, I was brought into a company that was so welcoming, so excited and ready for a change, and they all supported me in every way that they could.” As his collections have gone on to prove, they both made the right move.