ORBISSHOEMAKERS & BOOTMAKERS IN FLORENCE 11 shops in the atlas.Illustration
Shoemakers & Bootmakers in Florence
11 stores · curated ORBIS register
Aquazzura brings Edgardo Osorio's Florence footwear label into the selection, with heels intended for celebrations among its designs. D.A.T.E. offers Italian-made sneakers through a Florentine label founded in 2005 by four friends whose initials supplied its name. Il Micio provides bespoke shoemaking through Hidetaka Fukaya's atelier, combining individual last-making with custom fitting and hand construction.
Edgardo Osorio’s Aquazzura makes glamorous shoes in Florence with wearability built into the construction. Palazzo Corsini, the pineapple emblem and celebration-ready heels give the house its identity, while production remains associated with Italy.
Best for Celebration heels.
<p>Edgardo Osorio founded Aquazzura in Florence in 2011, at twenty-five, with a footwear education already behind him — the Colombian-born designer had passed through Salvatore Ferragamo and Sigerson Morrison before deciding the market was missing an obvious thing: a shoe as glamorous as a red-carpet sandal that a woman could actually walk in. The pineapple stamped on the sole became the emblem of that promise.</p><p>The house headquarters occupy Palazzo Corsini on the Arno — a sixteenth-century address for a twenty-first-century atelier — and production stays in Italian workshops. The signatures are now canon: the Wild Thing's fringed ankle, the Sexy Thing's sculpted cage, strappy silhouettes engineered so the arch is supported where it photographs bare. Royals and red carpets adopted them at speed.</p><p>Aquazzura's real achievement is positional: it broke into footwear's most crowded tier — the Florentine-made luxury sandal — against houses with a century's head start, on comfort engineering alone. The lesson is very Florentine: seduction is a construction problem, and construction is solvable.</p>
Florence sneaker label founded in 2005 by four friends - Damiano Innocenti, Alessandro Zanobini, Tommaso Santoni and Emiliano Paci - whose initials form the name; shoes are handmade in Italy, with monobrand stores in Florence, Rome and Milan.
Best for Italian sneakers
D.A.T.E. was founded in Florence in 2005 by four friends - Damiano Innocenti, Alessandro Zanobini, Tommaso Santoni and Emiliano Paci - whose first initials spell out the brand's name. The group met in London while dissatisfied with their existing careers and decided to design their own sneaker line, drawing on early-1970s British style for their debut collection. That first season sold fewer than 700 pairs, which pushed the founders to take manufacturing in-house rather than abandon the project, using leather and fabric from established Italian tanneries and weavers. Every pair is handmade in Italy, and the brand has since introduced recurring models such as the Hill Low, Fuga, Court and Sonica lines. D.A.T.E. now operates monobrand stores in Florence, Rome and Milan and is distributed through more than 900 points of sale worldwide, with a particularly strong presence in Japan.
Ferragamo began as Salvatore Ferragamo's Florence footwear company in 1927. Its range expanded into leather goods and ready-to-wear, followed by silk and accessories. Palazzo Spini Feroni houses the company's historic Florence presence, while the museum in its basement is a separate visitor attraction.
Best for Ferragamo footwear and leather goods with Florence design history
Salvatore Ferragamo established his Florence company in 1927, concentrating on women's footwear. The business subsequently expanded into leather goods and ready-to-wear before silk and accessories followed as distinct parts of the range. Shoes remain an entry point into a house whose offer now extends well beyond its original speciality.
Palazzo Spini Feroni connects that history with a specific Florentine building. Ferragamo opened a footwear workshop there in 1938, and the palace became the company's headquarters and the setting of its first Florence store. The museum occupies the medieval basement, providing a separate way to encounter the founder's work and the company's archive.
A shop visit and a museum visit serve different purposes. One is for comparing the current collections; the other depends on the museum's exhibition programme and admission arrangements. The group's timeline dates the museum's inauguration to 1995, long after the workshop arrived in the palace. Planning for both can give more context to a footwear purchase, but a museum ticket should not be confused with access to a working production workshop.
Luxury-sneaker label launched by the Della Valle family's Marche footwear business in the 1980s, part of what became Tod's Group; its early-1990s 'Interactive' sneaker, combining dress-shoe detailing with a sport-shoe sole, remains its signature design.
Best for Interactive luxury sneakers.
Hogan grew out of the Della Valle family's shoemaking business in Italy's Marche region, whose founder Filippo Della Valle started making shoes from a basement workshop in the 1920s. Hogan was launched in the 1980s alongside the Fay outerwear brand as the family diversified beyond its original footwear operation, and both later became part of Tod's Group, now also home to the Tod's and Roger Vivier labels. Hogan's defining product is the 'Interactive' sneaker, introduced in the early 1990s, which combined sport-shoe construction — a flexible rubber sole and sneaker silhouette — with the detailing and materials of dress footwear, including its raised 'H' side logo. That hybrid approach to what the group calls the 'luxury sneaker' became one of the more imitated design templates in upmarket casual footwear through the 1990s and 2000s.
Florence bespoke shoemaking atelier of Japanese master Hidetaka Fukaya, combining hand-made Italian construction with precise last-making and custom fitting.
Best for Hidetaka Fukaya's bespoke Florence shoemaking
Florence bespoke shoemaker founded in late 2013 by Mario Bemer, brother and longtime right-hand man of the late Stefano Bemer, after Mario left the reconstituted Stefano Bemer company following Stefano's 2012 death.
Best for Bespoke shoes, Florentine
Mario Bemer is the younger brother of Stefano Bemer, who began the family's shoemaking work in 1983 in Greve in Chianti, starting from shoe repair before building a reputation as one of his generation's most respected bespoke makers. Mario worked at his brother's side for years, including on the brand's ready-to-wear division, effectively serving as Stefano's right-hand man. Stefano Bemer died on July 27, 2012, at age 48. Several months later, the Stefano Bemer company was bought by the Florentine family behind the leather goods house Scuola del Cuoio, and Mario initially stayed on with the reorganized business. By late 2013, however, he had left to start his own company under his own name, setting up a traditional bespoke workshop in central Florence. There he works alongside bootmaker Seiji Miyagawa, a craftsman with his own long-standing connection to Stefano's circle. Mario has described his work as an attempt to honor his brother's exacting standards for quality and creativity rather than simply continuing the earlier brand under a new name.
New Kid specialises in children’s footwear, including first shoes and school styles from European makers. Proper fitting and growth allowance are central, giving the Florence shop a clear service advantage.
Roberto Ugolini opened his bespoke shoemaking workshop on Via dei Michelozzi in Florence's Oltrarno district, opposite the Basilica di Santo Spirito, in 1995 at age 28, continuing a family shoemaking tradition spanning four generations.
Best for Bespoke patina, Florentine
Roberto Ugolini is a bespoke shoemaker whose ground-level workshop sits on Via dei Michelozzi in Florence's Oltrarno district, directly facing the Basilica di Santo Spirito. He opened the business in 1995 at age 28, but the craft runs deeper in his family: his great-grandfather, grandfather and father were all shoemakers before him, and he learned the trade within that Florentine artisan lineage rather than through a formal design school. Each pair is entirely handmade, with roughly thirty hours of work going into construction once a bespoke last has been developed for a client — a process that, including the customer's first pair, takes around half a year, with a documented discount on subsequent pairs made from the same last. The workshop has built an international clientele over three decades, with press coverage specifically noting a strong following among Japanese customers, alongside general recognition as one of Florence's most established bespoke shoemakers. Ugolini's business is representative of the broader Oltrarno artisan quarter, a concentration of small ateliers south of the Arno historically associated with leatherwork, shoemaking and other hand crafts, distinct from Florence's larger fashion-house retail presence on the north bank.
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