Co-founding a premium footwear house meant owning everything at once — brand, product and market entry. We decided most of it together; the board, the mark and the specs were mine.
Five lines, around four hundred pairs handmade in Como — half the run sold.
Brand, price architecture, sourcing and market entryCo-founded · 2022–23
A house, not a product.
The brief was never one shoe. It was a coherent label — a point of view, a price architecture, a supply chain and a market entry that all hold together.
One coherent language.
Before a single last, a world. I built the board: the name COMVM · Pantofola di Palazzo, a palette drawn from palace interiors, a material story. The board every later decision had to answer to.
- Name
- COMVM
- Line
- Pantofola di Palazzo
- Built
- Board · palette · tone
Taste, with the reasoning attached.
The collection was originally designed for a European royal house — which one stays unnamed. That ruled out a seasonal colour card before anything else: the reference had to be a residence, not a trend. Neuschwanstein holds Byzantine, Moorish and Gothic revival in one building — so the palette came room by room: Orientzimmer, Musikzimmer, Ankleidezimmer.
We rejected article numbers on the same reasoning — they do not do justice to a sensual product. Models carry royal first names instead, in alphabetical order. A is Alexander III: winter, lambskin, a tsarist court.
His consort was Dagmar — the historically correct answer. The model is called Anastasia: it sits where the alphabet needs it and holds better in the mouth. Memorability beat accuracy, deliberately, and it was written down before the first pair was cut.
- Source
- Royal first names, A→Z
- Must be
- Internationally pronounceable
- Must be
- Politically neutral or positive
- Must be
- Emotionally charged, memorable
- Rejected
- Article numbers
Upcycling as an aesthetic.
We built the material identity on repurposed textiles and exotic-embossed leathers — upcycling as a position, never an apology.
Handcrafted in Como.
Every pair made by hand in a Como atelier. The price architecture was mine, set against what the bench actually costs rather than against a wish. And the specs were written at the bench with the maker, not emailed after the fact — which is the difference between a drawing and a shoe. The sheets themselves stay where they belong.
- Atelier
- Como, Italy
- Volume
- ~400 units · 5 lines
- To market
- 6–9 months
- How
- Own tech drawings and specs
- Owned
- Brand · pricing · sourcing
A brand, embossed.
Identity down to the tooling — I drew the signet, and the brass stamp struck it into every piece, carried through to the presentation box. Mark, hardware and packaging, all one language.
- Tooling
- Brass embossing stamp
- Mark
- COMVM, struck in leather
- Packaging
- Presentation box
A point of view you can wear.
Taste and commercial rigour in the same object — a finished collection, in market.
- Lines
- 5
- Units
- ~400
- Made in
- Como, Italy
Upcycling as an aesthetic position — not a compromise.