Giuseppe Zanotti comes from a small town a few miles from Fellini’s Rimini, famous for its great shoe manufacturing tradition. In the early 1980’s Zanotti was a fiery DJ and patronized eclectic and fashionable nightspots. Shortly afterwards his instinctive bent for art, design and fashion led him to attentively follow the prêt-à-porter fashion shows in Milan and Paris. But it was his innate passion for women’s feet and his interest in the craft industry that his native town breathed that spurred him to take the first big step towards this profession. So he set aside his headsets and LPs to devote himself solely to fashion.
In the beginning he started working with small craftsmen as a free-lance designer and shortly afterwards, thanks to his talent and energy, he started working for the leading fashion houses. Nevertheless, in the early 90’s he felt the need to create models and styles without any bounds, and that is when he bought the Vicini shoe factory. He moved his style office into this small factory, added a department for creating jewels, another for heels, and then he hired expert embroiderers. He focused everything on a formula of creativity and craftsmanship of the highest level. Giuseppe saw the shoe factory as something more akin to a fashion house set up to meet the needs of every woman’s foot, and not as an industrial concern that mass produces tedious shoes.
The first collection was presented in New York, where buyers immediately welcomed it to then place their trust in this novice designer and in his jewel shoes. Success and popularity then quickly followed, to be reflected in the company’s growth. After starting with only a handful of employees, it soon had more than 300 expert specialists producing elegant footwear. The first boutique opened in Milan in 2000. Additional boutiques then opened in the major fashion and luxury capitals of New York, Paris, London, Moscow and Dubai, and today there are about 50 points of sale scattered around the world. In the meantime, the love of living and working side-by-side with great fashion designers that he has been cultivating from the very beginning has never waned. Still today he works with brands such as Balmain, Proenza Schouler, Thakoon, Christopher Kane and Delfina Delettrez in a synergy of creativity and challenges that are giving surprising results.
Over the years his spirit has remained the same - naïf and rock ‘n’ roll – while keeping one eye on the past and on the manufacturing tradition and the other on the future and on research. His creations are true to his initial inspirations, where art and music are essential feelings to be turned into style for our feet… feet that Zanotti does not want to cover with models, but rather to adorn out of regard for a woman’s beauty and for the world revolving around her.
(C) www.giuseppezanottidesign.com
