ITALIAN LUXURY BRAND TOD’S: ATTIRE THAT FITS VERY WELL

Walking the distance or the proverbial mile in someone else’s shoes is a pleasure if they are from the Italian Luxury brand – Tod’s.

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The latest brand collection was showcased at Milan’s Fashion Week for Men. The unveiling at Milan’s Villa Necchi proved to be nostalgia for Haute couture.

“It is important that at the moment there is something with values, importance, quality, that enters the digital world,” says creative director Walter Chiapponi. “I wanted to reinterpret elegance, especially at a time like this where we return to deeper values. So I worked on memory.”

The Tod’s brand explores Italian style by portraying the essentials of Made in Italy. The collection consists of urban, sartorial and sports garments. Great attention has been made to leathers that beautify jackets and accessories. The Fall Winter 2023/24 collection features men’s tailored sportswear including the Pash Jacket,. That once again combines practical design with relaxed masculine elegance. In addition, hand-woven suede jackets keep up with the aviation style of leather bomber jackets. A Loro Piana puffer coat made in cashmere sells for just under €5,000. ($7,279.00 CAD)

Beyond footwear

Glamour is everything. The new line features lace-up ankle boots suited for urban occasions and have shaded leather. Tod’s Bubble Gommino is reintroduced with new combinations for the season. The Tod’s Greca Belt which always features the “T” emblem is elastic and has a leather fastening.

“I tried to remove all the frills and work on essentiality,” says Chiapponi. The jackets have been treated with a chiaroscuro technique borrowed from Italian art. “Everything seems classic but I wanted to show the younger generations what elegance is.”

The Tod’s brand is heavily inspired by the golden age of Hollywood. Some VIPS and celebrities have been attracted to the brand: Gianni Agnelli, Kevin Costner, Richard Gere and Michael Douglas.

Baby Boomer feedback

“The quality is really good so you can’t go wrong with Tod’s,” says energy manager and fashion-conscious consumer Romeo Sperandio. “But the only thing is that now they are such a big international brand that I am afraid they could lose some of their traditional roots.”

“Everywhere, surrounded by beauty,” wrote Fashion consultant Roberto Bechis in a LinkedIn post. Tod’s apparels “is the Italian way to let  personality become a daily matter.”

Semantics

In 1986 Diego Della Valle became CEO of the company and changed the company’s name from Calzaturificio Della Valle to Tod’s. Diego choose the name because he says it it easy to remember and the name is pronounced the same in all languages.

The story goes that while he was leafing through the telephone directory during a trip to Boston, he saw the name “J.P. Tod’s” which he recognized as short and exportable, perfectly suited to the project he then had in mind. And so Tod’s was born, to meet the needs of consumers looking for shoes to wear both during the week with elegant attire, and during the weekend for leisure.

In the beginning

From the humble beginnings of the shoemaker and founder, Filippo Della Valle in 1900, Tod’s has greatly developed.

Much of the company’s current success is mainly due to the influence of grandson Diego, who studied marketing in the US and the American way of life. In the early eighties, he was inspired by a pair of shoes worn by an American pilot and later launched what would become the company’s symbolic product: moccasins with a sole with 133 mini rubber nubs a handcrafted product that required more than one hundred complex processing steps.

Indeed, the small shoemaker company that started over 100 years ago in Le Marche Region has bloomed into an international success.