Bags-baguette (Moschino) and orange (Bottega Veneta), charms in the shape of garden vegetables (Loewe) and croissants (Louis Vuitton). 2024 seems to be the year when the maisons have (re)discovered the world of food as the main inspiration for their collections, which for both the winter and summer seasons are overflowing with food-related accessories.
“This is not the first time fashion has been inspired by food,” says Pavol Jaros of Tacchificio Di Molinella, the world's oldest turkey factory. “In our 80 years of work we have seen several waves during which they have focused on the world of food. As early as 50 years ago we made some food-shaped heels, but they were cubes made of dried and carved beech wood, then technically arranged to be able to walk on them. Over the years we've made numerous shapes: carrots, strawberries, tomatoes... We've always tried to work on both the technical and the aesthetic part, to give the illusion of real fruit, also following the designer's requests.”
Demands that can also be very specific, like a precise pineapple shape: “With Andrea Pfister, a designer from Parabiago, we made a pair of heeled sandals in the shape of a pineapple. We were already working with plastic, we were the only ones who were able to do that. We made the heel but the designer made us remake it: the one we made had the leaves with the typical shape of the ones from Costa Rica, while he wanted them to be the same as the ones from Dole, which are from Brazil.”
After the technical part in fact, which is obviously fundamental when it comes to heels, it is the study of aesthetics that requires the most development time. The study of the heel in the shape of a half-peeled tangerine, developed for Canadian designer Gab Bois, required 3 months of testing so that the result would be a perfect trompe l'oeil. In fact, the heel is made of abs plastic using a steel mold and then painted by hand. One pair takes about two hours of painstaking work, and the final effect is truly incredible.
