The son of an upholsterer to Queen Elizabeth II, Salvatore Ferragamo’s creative director, Paul Andrew, spent his childhood in Berkshire, England, surrounded by exquisite textiles and trims. “Almost everything at Windsor Castle is upholstered — the furniture, the beds, the walls — and watching my dad gave me a real appreciation for craftsmanship,” he says. As a teenager, the designer hung pages torn from fashion magazines on his walls and sought out copies of Vogue Patterns, prompting his grandmother to lend him her sewing machine. Next came the Berkshire College of Art and Design, where the now 40-year-old studied fashion. Yasmin Sewell, then the buying director of the influential London boutique Browns, bought Andrew’s entire Paul Poiret-inspired graduation collection and introduced him to Alexander McQueen, who brought him on as an apprentice in 1999. From there, Andrew designed accessories for Narciso Rodriguez, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan before launching his own line of shoes in 2012. Inspired by the palettes of abstract painters like Robert Motherwell, Pierre Soulages and Conie Vallese, his color-saturated, ’70s-inflected designs caught the attention of the Ferragamo family, who named him head of women’s shoe design in 2016 and its creative director last winter.

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This season, Andrew conceived of men’s and women’s clothes that were at once utilitarian and luxe: hooded anoraks and flight suits stitched in butterscotch or cerulean leather, gray flannel and cashmere pinstripe double-breasted suiting, asymmetrical midi skirts and dresses in the brand’s famous baroque silk scarf material. But, as they were for Ferragamo himself, who founded the 92-year-old Italian house, shoes remain paramount. “They dictate everything else on top,” says Andrew. He designs the footwear of each of his collections first, drawing inspiration from the 15,000 or so vintage heels, sandals and pumps that live in the brand’s archives at Florence’s gothic Palazzo Spini Feroni. Recently, he reimagined a cork wedge covered in vibrant strips of suede that first came out in 1942. “Wonderfully,” says Andrew, who splits his time between Florence, London, Manhattan and New Preston, Conn., “we’re finding that people want to get a little bit dressed up again.”