FerragamoCopied

In September 2022, days before newly appointed creative director Maximilian Davis showed his first collection in Milan, the Florentine house announced on Instagram that 'Salvatore Ferragamo becomes FERRAGAMO'. The founder's first name was dropped and his scrawling signature logo replaced by an all-capitals serif wordmark, presented against a deep red background, WWD, Dezeen and The Impression reported.

The designer was Peter Saville, who had made Burberry's new logo and monogram in 2018 under Riccardo Tisci and revamped Calvin Klein's logo with Raf Simons in 2017. WWD noted that Ferragamo's chief executive had worked with Saville before, when he ran Burberry. Davis, born in Manchester and a London College of Fashion graduate, had been appointed in March and put his own label on hold.

Saville said the equity of Florence lies in the culture of the company, which led him to a classic font; the vision is exacting and modern, so the font is reduced and becomes modernist; and the craft that is quintessentially Ferragamo is condensed in the idea of an inscription set in stone. Ferragamo described a modernist take on classical stone inscriptions that inspired Renaissance artists, with the founder's handwriting translated into a serif that is impactful and refined, in tension between classicism and modernity. Teasers of the new collection showed the logo on pieces and tags.

WWD placed the move alongside other houses, from Ermenegildo Zegna to Yves Saint Laurent, that had shed a first name. The Impression predicted some online backlash from loyal fans, as with Saint Laurent and Burberry, but saw the logo as a tool to mark a new era under Davis.

Surface placed the move in a decade long pattern of heritage houses trading ornate logos for blocky, severe type, a trend it traced to Yves Saint Laurent becoming Saint Laurent Paris under Hedi Slimane in 2012, followed by Balenciaga and Celine. It also noted the now standard trifecta of new creative director, new collection and new logo, and that Ferragamo revealed the truncated name just one day before Maximilian Davis's Milan debut. Saville's version at least keeps a serif and a trace of the founder's hand, which makes it a gentler entry in a crowded genre.

The inscriptional capitals are handsome and more distinctive than Burberry's plain sans. But losing the founder's hand, and his first name, removes the most personal thing a shoemaker's house had. Fashion's reset-by-wordmark ritual rarely says more than 'new designer'.