Gondoliering Slipper Versatility

On a steamy July evening in 1962, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, the art world observed, and studied with mind-altering amazement, the sight of Andy Warhol’s show of thirty-two canvases of Campbell’s Soup can portraits. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns had been shaping the pop art movement, but Warhol’s mastery of fine art techniques to depict a rudimental and everyday manufactured object, thus disguising the elements of artmaking processes, would display an essential contradiction in pop art – a practice that ignited the eureka big-bang moment of pop art, and for everything that followed.

Despite the belief Warhol conveyed to the media that artists shouldn’t dress up, he embodied his own irony by curating a signature look that included black rollneck sweaters, Levi 501 jeans, leather jackets, Cuban-heel boots and thick wraparound sunglasses. During The Factory’s initial years on New York’s 47th Street, it became a uniform. Furthermore, he deliberately cultivated this look to enhance his persona’s air of mystery.

In Italy, this was a time of prosperity, self-expression and undeniable glamour, so much so that a troupe of swashbuckling Hollywood stars essentially decamped to Rome; thus, Cinecittà, the film studio quarters, earned the nickname “Hollywood on the Tiber.” But back in the mid-40s, swathes of inhabitants of the “Eternal City” lived in abject squalor as a result of the twin ordeals of occupation by the Nazis and aerial bombardment by the Allies during the Second World War. This is harrowingly depicted by Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist film Rome, Open City (1945).

Still in the throes of postwar rebuilding, the emergence of a coterie of Italian neorealism auteurs, who represented the Golden Age of Italian Cinema, undoubtedly fostered a robust recovery in the city. As early as 1948, the matinee idol of the silver screen and dress Tyrone Power piloted his own plane, “The Geek,” to land in Rome, where he fell in love with Mexican actress Linda Christian. The following year, their wedding at the Church of Santa Francesca Romano, overlooking the Roman Forum, was arguably the most stylish and unhinged wedding spectacle of the century, becoming a yardstick for the capital’s swelling upturn.

Meanwhile, Renato Guttuso, a tantalizing figure in antifascist resistance through the mediums of art, politics and cinema, returned to Rome from a brief exile in Paris. He founded the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, an Italian artistic movement active in Venice, Rome and Milan. Their fundamentals were to encourage and enable artists to be heard, after years of artistic and life repression during the 21 years of fascist rule under Benito Mussolini, who ironically conducted the inauguration of Cinecittà in 1937. Villa Massimo, founded by German entrepreneur and art patron Eduard Arnhold in 1910, continues to this day to be an important German cultural institution in Rome, and it was there that, in 1947, Guttuso found a studio and acutely tuned his art into the wave of social realism. At the beginning of that decade he had joined the underground Communist Party, becoming an MP by the ‘70s, and he was a staunch supporter until his death in Rome in 1987.

However, when Federico Fellini’s inimitable film La Dolce Vita (1960) reversed the narrative of Italian Neorealism cinema from degradation to thrilling opportunity, this shift delineated the embryonic zeitgeist of a new era, which unapologetically enchanted Guttuso, thus exposing a personal dichotomy in his beliefs. Encapsulating the spirit of this heady time of cultural indulgence was Countess Marta Marzotto. Born in Reggio Emilia in northern Italy in 1931, she met Count Umberto Marzotto, heir of the Marzotto textile family, beside a catwalk in Venice and they married in 1954. At the forefront of international high society, with friends spanning from the Kennedys to Giorgio Armani, the Countess, like many Italian upper crust contemporaries, wasn’t averse to trysts outside of the marriage.

For the Countess, there’s one name that’s unlikely to be erased from Italian beau monde, gentry and intelligentsia, and that is Renato Guttuso. In addition to being a hostess and jewellery and fashion designer, the Countess was also an actor and model, but her relationship with Guttuso didn’t stop at only that of a muse. This resulted in many evocative expressionist-style portraits of the Countess, but after his death a series of love letters between the two found themselves in an Italian gossip magazine, thus exposing to the masses their relationship of twenty-plus years.

The Countess had an innate desire for experiences, a trait that extended to her own fashion sense. Bejewelled and outfitted, usually in an array of her own jewellery and caftan designs, there’s one shoe accompaniment that she’s best known for, assisting her relaxed yet slightly eccentric elegance, and that is the largely undetected Friulane, or in Venetian dialect “furlane”, slipper. Guttuso’s tasteful portraits of the Countess were renowned for exposing parts of her derrière while outfitted in boldly hued dresses, but it’s very possible that a furlane slipper did also feature.

It is undeniable that she wore the slipper in a variety of settings, and with it embodied that La Dolce Vita mood. She wore a flowing caftan, and carried her trademark fan, in 2015 at the highly esteemed European wedding of her granddaughter, Beatrice Borromeo, to Pierre Casiraghi, the grandson of Prince Rainier III and Grace Kelly. On this occasion she opted for a French blue velvet pair that were stylishly embroidered with white gems. They didn’t feature a strap, but she has been known to favour a thin, refined version, often designed in an array of boldly coloured velvet.

Indeed, the Countess holds a highly esteemed position as the tastemaker who epitomises the versatility and popularity of the slipper in European nobility and high fashion, with even Kate Moss expressing a fondness for the shoe. However, the shoe’s origins can be traced to Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a rural region in northeast Italy that borders Austria, Slovenia and the Adriatic Sea, which gave the shoe its name. It was there that, in the mid-nineteenth century, it was crafted by women from humble materials such as old bicycle tyres for the sole and jute bags, or even discarded Venetian velvet curtains, for the upper. They were typically worn by farmers, but even before the Second World War lore has it that, due to their lightweight rubber soles, the nobility of La Serenìssima would discreetly stroll along the Venetian canal walkways and enter undetected the abodes of their secret lovers.

Be that as it may, the gondoliers of Venice certainly adopted the shoe during that period, and its forgiving and gentle sole not only left no trace on the gondola’s varnish but also provided superior grip, a crucial property when propelling and steering the boat in a straight line. Just like Warhol, Guttuso and the Countess, the slipper, unlike its brothers the Albert slipper, espadrilles and the Ballerina shoe, has always carried this contradictory air, a virtue that even today gives it that universal attribution.

In the sphere of handcrafted shoes, the Furlane slipper is still a fairly unknown style to the wider audience. Piedaterre, a historic shoemaker of Furlane slippers, is located in Venice and in 2015 the aristocratic Arrivabene sisters, Viola and Vera, opened a shop in Venice, alongside other prestigious locations across the globe, including Hydra, where I am currently writing this article. However, we must travel to the Fashion Capital of the World, Paris, and then motor down to Monte Carlo, to unearth a special Furlane slipper collaboration between the venerable Parisian brand, Chatelles, and the revolutionary sartorial brand, Alexander Kraft Monte Carlo, now trading from a tastefully decorative yet inclusive flagship store only a stone’s throw away from Casino de Monte-Carlo.

The story of Chatelles began with the ramifications of the financial crash in 2007-2008, which were huge, and everyone has a personal story on how it impacted them. The Frenchman François du Chastel was a young investment banker in London and, at the forefront of developments, the crash undoubtedly forced him to think from a different vantage point. While reevaluating his life’s direction, du Chastel fell in love with a girl. He designed and presented her with a pair of slippers embossed with a romantic line, but the lady fell in love instead with the slippers and ended their relationship! Since that moment, du Chastel has built up a highly successful slipper label in the form of Chatelles – what differentiates them is that they’re customisable for men, women and children. The shoes are slim and flat-bottomed, with a lightweight cotton rubber sole and a neat grosgrain trim. The convex tongue finishes at a delectable height on the foot’s bridge, adding an extra touch of sophistication.

These shoes would be a chic and comfortable choice for attending a smart soirée, especially when paired with the revered AK MC black tie clothing designs. Today’s era has reduced formality, not to diminish the significance of dressing appropriately, but to allow people to be more creative with their attire. One enjoyable aspect of this is seeing people mix and match clothing that they wouldn’t have tried before, yet that manages to work. I wouldn’t place Mr Kraft in the extreme experimental category, but even from adolescence he has had the vision to combine garments that wouldn’t have crossed other well-dressed humans’ minds. Yet Mr Kraft continues to find these smart casual crevices that open up people’s minds to creative yet delightful outfits. In recent times, the Furlane slipper has played a large part in this sartorial enactment. You can see Mr Kraft, who is known to admire the slippers, stopping for coffee at Café de Flore in Paris, often with his beloved dog, Gussie. Perhaps he has returned from a meeting in the Marais, wearing the new blue herringbone alpaca blend Toscana jacket with a navy long-sleeved polo shirt and one of the brand’s enviable white trousers, and for shoes, the new AK MC blue Venetian slippers, without socks. It’s the ultimate outfit for traversing around Paris to different engagements in comfort and style. But, even with a black tie, it’s recommended to wear the slippers sockless; some people choose to wear socks, but that can look a little scruffy.

It really is hard to think of a shoe that transcends so seamlessly from a black tie event to riding a Vespa, and then even when wearing Bermuda shorts and a short-sleeved polo shirt at a poolside drinks party. When you initially consider pairing the slipper with items you may consider to be incongruous with your attire, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how it elevates. Don’t be afraid, especially when you’re wearing one of the handcrafted AK MC x Chatelles Furlane slipper designs