Angelica Visconti: How Curiosity Reinvented Salvatore Ferragamo

When Salvatore Ferragamo died in 1960, conventional Italian wisdom held that a widow, especially one with six children, should mourn quietly and certainly not run a company. Wanda Miletti Ferragamo ignored every voice telling her it was "not ladylike."

With zero prior business experience, she took on the helm and turned Ferragamo into a global empire, bringing all her daughters into creative roles at a time when most girls were expected only to marry well. Over six decades later, her granddaughter Angelica Visconti carried that same creative spirit to Hong Kong's Business of Design Week 2025, where curiosity remains the family's most powerful heirloom.

Angelica Visconti heads Ferragamo's Heritage Division, curates its museum in Palazzo Spini Feroni in Florence, and orchestrates global exhibitions that turn archival treasures into living stories. But her deepest reverence is reserved for Wanda, who transformed the company after Salvatore's death.

"When Salvatore passed away in 1960, at the time, a lady didn't even dare to work, because everybody would say, 'It's not ladylike,'" Angelica recounts. "She didn't care. She took over the company and made it the big group that it is now." Salvatore was the creative genius, the craftsman, the artist; Wanda, on the contrary, was very practical, caring greatly for the people, for the company, and for the product. She would go on to build the next phase of the company alone, bringing in all her children along the way.

Wanda's wisdom lives on in a collection of weekly letters she wrote to her 23 grandchildren: letters filled with advice on business, family, marriage, politics and life. Those letters have now been published as a book. "It's almost an autobiography, from a granddaughter's point of view," Angelica smiles.

That same spirit of curiosity brought Ferragamo to China. "We've always been a very curious company," Angelica says, recalling the brand's bold foray into the Chinese market decades before most luxury houses dared venture east. "We were one of the first companies to enter the Chinese market, twenty-five, thirty years ago. Ferragamo has always been very curious about new markets, always a pioneer."

She herself became part of that pioneering story in 2003. "I was living in New York, very happily. They called me: 'It would be important for you to go to Shanghai.' I said, 'No way!'" she laughs. The next morning, they would call again: "No, no, Angelica, you must go – it is very important that somebody from the family can stay for some months there."

Angela packed a suitcase overnight and left the next morning, "because if I think about it I would never do it. But I was super curious." She would wind up staying for three years, falling in love with the curious nature of the people and dynamic energy of the city.

Curiosity, for Ferragamo, has always translated into invention. "We are the company that invented the wedge, because during the war you could not use leather, so Salvatore came up with cork, which was very unexpected and curious to use this material," Angelica says. "A lot of curiosity led to many product innovations in our company history."

Today, that curiosity is channeled by 26-year-old creative director Maximilian Davis. "We have a very strong heritage – almost 100 years of history – but our mission is really to go forward," Angelica explains. "Designers visit our archive but they do not copy; they take inspiration and then create new products." Maximilian took Ferragamo's iconic Wanda handbag, originally in brown croc, and played with the shape, adapting it into a slim, modern bag. Another product – a golden 18-carat sandal from the vaults – was adapted into a gorgeous everyday shoe that walked the runway two seasons ago.

At BODW 2025, surrounded by architects, artists and entrepreneurs, Angelica sees the same hunger she feels in Florence and Milan. "We share a lot of curiosity," she explains. "Hong Kong people are very curious and dynamic; they want to learn, want to experiment, want to visit, and in Italy we share the same values. If we have an opportunity to visit, to learn, to share, to meet other people, we are super happy to do it." She has already been inspired by sessions on sustainable architecture, immediately connecting it to fashion's new focus on well-being. "Even in fashion we are now very much concerned about well-being – not only the beauty of the products, but that they have to be perfectly constructed."

Through the Heritage Division, Angelica builds loyalty by offering clients more than product. "It's a language that resonates," she says. "We do very interesting lectures and meetings with key opinion leaders." Just recently, Ferragamo hosted a seminar in Florence, where a fashion psychologist was invited to speak on the meaning of shoes, the meaning of walking, and what a shoe represents. Another popular session delved into the psychology of colour: "If you wear this wonderful orange, what does it mean? What message does it give? Customers love to discover these things."

Exhibitions travel the world and rotate at the museum: retrospectives of Salvatore's ground-breaking shoes, showcases of the brand's legendary silk prints and accessories, and one inspired by Wanda herself, titled Women in Balance, centred on themes of "care for the people, care for the product, care for hospitality." That philosophy now extends to the brand's Portrait Roma and Portrait Milano hotels, including the breath-taking conversion of a long-closed Milan seminary into a five-star sanctuary that marries historical bones with cutting-edge comfort.

To young Hong Kong designers, her advice is unequivocal: "Be curious and travel. Every time you travel you see things with a different eye – new companies, new people, new buildings, new ways of thinking. Not just the theories that schools give you; life teaches a lot." Looking ahead, as AI and sustainability loom, Visconti's optimism hinges on curiosity: "All these innovations are great, but the engine comes from us. It's our curiosity that will fuel them and ask the right questions."

As Italy and Hong Kong trade ideas under BODW's bright lights, Angelica Visconti, carrying forward the fearless practicality of Wanda and the inventive soul of Salvatore, proves that the house of Ferragamo is still, after almost a century, walking curiously into the future.