Few brands are as attached to the concept of craft as Tod’s whose creative collaboration, The Art of Craftmanship – A Project by Venetian Masters, opened with panache on Friday night.
Scores of luxury labels descended on Venice this week, as the Biennale opened in the lagoon city, but none linked quite as powerfully as Tod’s, which was also the partenaire of the Italian Pavillon, inside the Giardini della Biennale, the nerve-center of the world’s greatest art celebration.
Tod’s feted its commitment to fine art and noble crafts with a stylish dinner on Thursday night inside the recently restored Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Where Andrea Bocelli sang beautifully underneath a remarkable series of paintings by Tintoretto of Old and New Testaments parables. And Tod’s CEO Diego Della Valle and his brother Andrea hosted Italy’s Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano, Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco and actor Adrien Brody among others.
The following day Tod’s Art of Craftmanship – A Project by Venetian Masters opened in the Biennale’s other key location, the Arsenale, a massive redbrick Renaissance shipyard. Where the 10 local artisans – like a glassblower and gold engraver or lamp-maker and the artisan who created the masks for Eyes Wide Shut – proudly displayed their ideas. All inspired by the brand’s iconic studded moccasin, the Gommino.
“Our strategy is to focus on quality, handmade, the skill of artisans and the Italian lifestyle. With the idea that it is essential that one takes these gifts in new directions, in this case with these incredible artisans,” explained Della Valle, as he toured the installation.
Like Roberto Beltrami, a glassblower from Murano Island, the center of glass production in the lagoon, who showed a beautiful hand-blown, honey-colored glass Gommino.
“It was technically pretty difficult to shape glass into a correctly shaped Gommino, and to add the glass studs. But that’s what made the project so exciting. We were breaking new ground,” enthused Beltrami.
Close by wood artisan Sebastiano Lunardelli combined strips of Tod’s leather, rice paper and Canaletto walnut wood to develop an elegant five-sided lamp in the shape of a Bricco, the wood columns to which gondolas are moored.
While screen printing artist Gianpaolo Fallani staged a live presentation of his technique, developing posters of the tools used to make the moccasin, in Andy Warhol worthy colors of chartreuse, aqua, hot pink and violet.
Few artisans were more enthusiastic than Sergio Boldrin, maskmaker for Eyes Wide Shut, who presented eight intriguing masks embellished with semi-finished inserts and leather in signature warm Tod’s colors.
The luxury marque even referenced the gondola, thanks to Piero Dri and Saverio Pastor, two remarkable artisans who specialize in making Forcolas – the vertical fulcrum for a gondolier’s oar. The pair happily carving life inside the Arsenale, as Dri displayed a Forcola carved as an arm with a stylized hand; and Pastor shaped his wooden trophy into a needle that rests in the Forcola arm.
Elsewhere fine artist Lucio Bubacco twisted glass tubing into a surreal sculpture suggesting a female artisan, needle in hand, sewing together a leather Gommino on a work-table. Though the largest works were by artists Federico Marangoni with a red neon coil placed in front of the event’s facade, riffing on a spool of thread; and a giant aluminum sculpture of a Gommino completed with neon studs that hung above the heads of the exhibition’s hundreds of guests, who arrived by water taxi.
Tod’s will eventually move these unique craft pieces to a museum in its headquarters in Le Marche, to be “a message to all our staff of what it is possible to create,” explained Della Valle.
“I believe that for the new generation to be an artisan is a very noble decision. It is not a second level choice. We have thousands and thousands of skilled crafts people who work for us, and we are very proud of them. That’s the message here,” he stressed, standing beside a dazzling Gommino delicately finished in gold leaf, dreamed up by gold beaters Marino Menegazzo and Mario Berta.
Rounding out the Venetian moment, Tod’s launched a limited-edition collection dedicated to Venice: the iconic Gommino and the T Timeless shopping bag at the Biennale 2024. Cool handcrafted masterpieces made in colors that were tributes to Venice – in Titian red or in the deep blue evoking the lagoon. The collection became available on April 19, exclusively at the new Venice boutique on Calle XXII Marzo and on tods.com.
A beautiful Annunciation by Titian was the centerpiece at Thursday’s gala supper in the Scuola San Rocco, where the famed tenor Bocelli won enthusiastic applause for a performance that included Nessun Dorma and La Donna Mobile.
“Everyone loves Andrea Bocelli. Especially in this incredibly beautiful building that many people and many tourists do not know. I saw it last night for the first time in my life! It’s another occasion for presenting the fantastic jewels of our Italian culture,” enthused Della Valle, who oversees a group that includes Hogan, Roger Vivier, Fay and couture marque Schiaparelli which also staged a Venetian Heritage supper in Venice this week.
Few cultural events anywhere attract as much attention as the Biennale. Its last edition attracted over 800,000 visitors, despite happening in the wake of the Covid pandemic. Thousands of art lovers piled into Venice for the Biennale’s opening week, driving hotel prices skyward.
It’s been a busy springtime for Della Valle, who in February inked a deal with private equity firm L Catterton that valued his group at some four billion euros. But this weekend Della Valle, the doge of Italian luxury, was concentrated in Venice and artistic creativity. Following from previously funding the restoration of the Coliseum in Rome and La Scala opera house in Milan.
“We live under this fantastic umbrella Made in Italy, which is a guarantee of quality. The minimum that a company like ours can do is to support our culture,” concluded Doge Della Valle.
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