A jewellery designer herself, it’s a fitting cycle that today she makes sculptural pieces of wearable art using upcycled pieces of leather under her label So-Le Studio, inspired by those treasured factories that became the starting point for a lifelong obsession.
“I loved the people that were there, just watching all of them working so intensively with their hands, with a lot of concentration. Then I loved what I would see, like new products, blooming every moment. All the materials that were available – the colours, the techniques, the creativity joined with a deep technical knowledge was something that fascinated me since the very beginning,” she says on a Zoom call, wearing a pair of her curved three-dimensional hoop earrings in a beguiling shade of green.
Head-to-toe: how body bling made a comeback, from belly chains to teeth studs
Head-to-toe: how body bling made a comeback, from belly chains to teeth studs
“Being in an environment where I could do what I loved and watch people doing the same, working with their hands all day long. In fact I would forget about time passing. I would forget about the lunch break and everything else,” she says.
Ferragamo started her brand in 2017 after studying architecture and then a masters in jewellery design at Central Saint Martins in London. She opened her first boutique in Milan in late 2022 and has plans to open another in the near future. Her jewellery is stocked by the likes of Browns in London, and online retailers Farfetch and Moda Operandi.
Sustainability is very stimulating – I find it much more stimulating starting from a limited resource, for instance, or a material that’s not perfect and finding creative solutions
You started making jewellery when you were very young. What did you love about it?
What I love in the first place is that it was something that made me so happy and I was in control whether to do it or not to do it. I could decide to start working on a piece of jewellery and I would feel happy. I think that this was linked to working with my hands. It was just the process of creation, starting from something that was not there yet and that thanks to the work of my hands and my mind it would take form and become something new.
How wearable is sculptural fashion off the runway? We ask the designers
How wearable is sculptural fashion off the runway? We ask the designers
For me, this is something that still now makes me emotional every time. This process of creation is really an act of love and I think that this is something that has not changed since I was very little. The role of jewellery itself – even though I was very young – I would see how something very little and simple perhaps could transform your look, but also your mood.
Talk us through your creative process.
I follow a very precise creative process. I’m very disciplined, [but] of course open to possibilities. I always start from a mood board that’s made up of images that I collect that inspire me. I find inspiration from many worlds, currently [it’s] repetitive patterns and geometry. I’m literally obsessed by them, and they can be at any kind of scale and in any kind of environment. In architecture, but also in nature, they can be in a hardware shop or construction sites. I gather together my sources of inspiration.
Then I give myself a brief and I start iterating from this mood, taking one element of inspiration and the many possibilities that it can have into the brief. From the drawings I move on to making a model and then it’s a constant narrative process between model making and drawing. Basically I work really intensively on the prototyping and the iteration until I get to the final prototype where I know I can stop. I feel that harmony has been reached. Then I go to my artisans and together we implement the technique and the way to reproduce it in series.
Would you buy luxury jewellery you’d never even seen online? Thousands do
Would you buy luxury jewellery you’d never even seen online? Thousands do
Was sustainability always intentional for your brand?
I have to say it came completely naturally to me, it was really the only way to do it because it was my reaction to a reality that I encountered. I encountered this abandoned material and I reacted to that. Over time, of course I deepened my sustainable principles, and they became very much linked to upcycling. In fact, I started upcycling other materials.
