Salvatore Ferragamo Up-Cycles Its Icons
The Icon-Up capsule collection refashions existing materials to create exciting new versions of signature styles like the Vara and Varina shoes and belts.
As luxury brands and retailers amp up their sustainability efforts, it grows increasingly exciting to see what ideas they come up with. The latest such example is Italian luxury label Salvatore Ferragamo's Icon-Up collection.
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The idea behind the 300-piece capsule collection is this: take recovered products and materials from the brand's stock, and repurpose them on some of the house's most popular styles.
Even the paper and dust-bag packaging have sustainability in mind – being made from pulp and leather waste, and up-cycled materials from Salvatore Ferragamo stock respectively.
The limited-edition collection includes classic shoes like the Vara pumps and ribboned Varina flats that are reimagined by the brand's creative team.
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These pieces are then produced by a mix of skilled local artisans (presumably to reduce the carbon footprint of manufacturing in multiple locations) and young craftsmen from Manovia, the brand's historic in-house prototyping division.
The house's Varina flats are some of the items in the Icon-Up collection.
Some of the key ideas in this Icon-Up collection include up-cycling of the brand's printed silk scarves. A refashioned Tiger print, for example, was selected from an ongoing exhibition of archival pieces at the brand's museum in Florence. That graphic print also extends to the reusable dust bag, which is refashioned using materials from the brand's stock.
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Even the paper boxes that this collection is packaged had its sustainability considered. It's actually a blend of leather and paper, using post-consumer waste pulp and pre-consumer leather waste, that's called Favini Remake paper.
Icon-Up is available now exclusively at Farfetch.com as part of the online retailer's 'Positively Conscious' edit of sustainable fashion. Below, a look at the making of and some of the pieces in this collection.
A printed silk tie from the brand's stock being taken apart.
And applied on classic styles like the Varina (pictured here, from S$1,220) and the Vara (from S$1,320) as a more ornamental detail, replacing the traditional grosgrain ribbon.
The products are packed in a reusable dust-bag, itself up-cycled from existing printed fabrics and materials.
The silk bows are also applied to belts (from S$750) made from up-cycled leather.