Silvano Lattanzi

Silvano Lattanzi grew up in Sant'Elpidio a Mare, in Italy's Marche region, where his parents worked in a shoe factory; he followed them into the trade at age 11 and left school three years later. At 21 he founded his own company, Zintala, before training further in the workshops of some of the last master shoemakers of London, Paris and Milan, absorbing the technical and stylistic grounding for handmade, made-to-measure shoes. His first collections, shown in 1975, broke with the era's black-and-brown convention, introducing antiqued reds, blues, yellows and greens mixed like an impressionist painting -- a provocation in menswear at the time. Clients from sport, film and theatre became early followers, and home fittings for this circle led to the house's 'Alto su misura' (high made-to-measure) service. In 1992 the company opened its first retail shop on Via Bocca di Leone, close to Rome's Via Condotti shopping street. In 2001, Silvano's son Paolo and daughter Roberta formally joined the business, taking on its international development.