Sergio Rossi is an Italian
fashion designer and distributor of women's
shoes and
handbags, as well as a limited range of men's shoes. The Sergio Rossi label is owned by the French conglomerate
PPR.
Biography
50’s
The Sergio Rossi brand was created in San Mauro Pascoli, in the Romagna region of Italy, when Sergio Rossi himself inherited from his father the tools and the traditions of a great artisan. However, it was not a story about the transmission of knowledge. Sergio Rossi took this knowledge more than it was given to him. He watched all the gestures, the expertise, and the tricks of the trade that had become automatic movements — something one knows without having ever learnt.
He reproduced them and then enriched them, as though he had been reciting a lesson learnt by heart. Then at the beginning of the 1950s, he went to Milan to study and train. In Milan, he learned how to make the most of his passion for shapes, the very heart of the shoemaker’s know-how, and he went further in his apprenticeship two years later — he was then twenty — with a Master in Bologna.
60’s
At the beginning of the 1960s in Italy the establishment of an artistic and cultural revival began : the cinema with " La Dolce Vita ", the birth of the modern design and the Italian ready-to-wear clothing. At a time when everything was changing, Sergio Rossi crosses the path of Gianni Versace. They both had inherited an expertise that they knew how to transcend it. They both preferred working on volumes to drawing, improving what would later become their signature: the link between body and clothes for the former; the link between body and shoe, conceived as the extension of the leg, for the latter. These common characteristics are not anecdotal, and they partially explain their future collaboration, which contributed to establishing the foundations of a modern Italian luxury.
In 1966, Sergio Rossi started to sell his models to shops in Bologna and spent his winters making sandals he would later sell, in the summer, on the beaches of Rimini. One of these sandals proved decisive. The model was called Opanca. The design was both simple and daring: the sole was gently curved around the foot so as to blend itself with the upper part of the shoe.
In 1968, the whole country was suddenly confronted by an intense social turmoil heralding the armed struggle advocated by the extreme left-wing groups. It was thus in the difficult context of a major political crisis that Sergio Rossi signed his first shoes: a name written in block letters, and a logotype as simple as a child’s drawing, affixed to a black round-tipped shoe.
70’s
Gianni Versace, during the 1970s, asked Sergio Rossi for his collaboration. This partnership was quickly adopted by the booming world of Milanese fashion. He soon became the designers’ favourite. They had noticed his exceptional eye, his acute sense of what was in the air, or rather, of what would be. Sergio Rossi became their privileged partner. In Milan, during the shows, everyone would ask him to select shoes for the models on the catwalks, and he could hardly keep up with the demand. He even had to turn down some of the numerous requests he was presented with. Versace was among those to whom he said yes. The Milanese fashion shows were a priceless showcase. This is how Sergio Rossi quickly made himself known and imposed shoes as the essential accessories of clothes and fashion.
80’s
The 1980s is the period of the expansion for the brand. The first boutique bearing his name is opened in Ancona, soon followed by Turin, Florence, Rome, Brussels, New York, Los Angeles, and London. An average of two boutiques are opened each year between 1980 and 1999. At the same time, the brand became closely linked with some of the leading design houses in the fashion industry, producing shoes for the collections of Dolce & Gabbana (from 1989 to 1999) or Azzedine Alaïa for example.
90’s
Success was there, and gave the brand the means to achieve its ambitions. The numerous advertising campaigns gave a more precise image of women according to Sergio Rossi. This iconic woman fills up the whole space showing the full measure of seduction ; she takes power as much as she gives it. His philosophy was simple: to create nice shapes while others dream of creating nice feet. There lies the secret. To think of a shoe, not as a superimposed ornament, but as the continuation of the body, well-adjusted, comfortable, cosmetic, designed for the movement of a contemporary women.
The various images of the advertising campaigns of the 1990’s were a tribute to Helmut Newton, with whom Sergio Rossi shared his very contemporary vision of women: an image of forcefulness, of control over the body and its power that points to a change of status. Like the artist, the brand also came to use low angle-shots to underline the verticality of the body, insisting on the importance of the heel — at least three inches high — which gives the leg its crucial energy and the female body its new stature.
Thirty years after the creation of the first shoes bearing his name, Sergio Rossi’s success is obvious and measurable, enough to attract the attention of the greatest actors in the theatre of fashion. In 1999, Gucci Group finalized the acquisition of the Sergio Rossi brand. The openings of shops are then going to increase in a prestigious list: London, Tokyo, Paris, etc.
Current
In October 2008 Francesco Russo was appointed Creative Director of the Sergio Rossi brand. In charge of all the collections, Womens and Mens footwear, bags and accessories, Francesco Russo gives his own contemporary interpretation, whilst respecting the Sergio Rossi brand identity. The Fall/Winter 2009/10 collection is the first created by Francesco Russo for Sergio Rossi.
Official website
