New vision of the shoe
Highlight is a sculpture by contemporary artist Willie Cole: a 1994 work assembled from shoes and transformed into an unconventional throne.
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Highlight is a sculpture by contemporary artist Willie Cole: a 1994 work assembled from shoes and transformed into an unconventional throne.
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Shoes take center stage in the new Ferragamo Fall-Winter 2026 campaign that explores footwear as an object of fascination, memory and fantasy. Drawing on a long history of cinematic imagery, the campaign places familiar fashion codes in an unexpected, surreal setting, photographed through Johnny Dufort’s distinctive lens.
Highlight is a sculpture by contemporary artist Willie Cole: a 1994 work assembled from shoes and transformed into an unconventional throne. Here, model Anok Yai becomes its modern occupant, creating a striking collision between fashion, art and the everyday. Cole’s practice of taking recognisable objects and distorting them lends the campaign an uncanny quality, echoing the collection’s broader references to Surrealism and Dadaism.
Yai appears alongside Jingyu Huang, Ning Chang, Vittoria Ceretti and Thibaud Charon, each contributing to a cast that gives the campaign a distinctly contemporary energy.
The collection continues its exploration of footwear through a series of reinterpreted silhouettes. A sleek stiletto nods to the graphic elegance of a design first introduced in 1954, while the architectural Opanka sole revisits an innovation developed in 1957. The Varina also returns in a quilted interpretation, bringing texture to one of the house’s recognisable signatures.
Across the collection, craftsmanship is treated less as nostalgia than as a foundation for reinvention. Construction, wearability and innovation remain central, while sharper proportions and more graphic details give established forms a modern edge.
The same approach extends to accessories. The new Cara bag combines supple calf leather with an accordion construction, balancing tactile appeal with a considered, functional shape. The Hug bag is reworked into a new East-West proportion, translating its familiar form horizontally, while a men's messenger introduces a more urban interpretation of polished everyday utility.
In menswear, formal staples are similarly reconsidered through an emphasis on craftsmanship. Together, the pieces suggest a wardrobe built around enduring objects rather than fleeting trends — where familiar codes can be reshaped, exaggerated and seen anew.
