Berluti’s attractive Sky Running trail-style sneaker—with specially produced Vibram sole, amplified stitched leather mudguards, and mixed suede leather and mesh uppers, all in multiple tonal colorways—was just one shoe amongst many at this Berluti presentation. However it was the only all-new sneaker. And with the house soonish due to outfit the 800 plus French athletes and other representatives at the Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, you didn’t need a gold medal in sleuthing to surmise it might become a very well-seen sneaker indeed. Berluti’s Harold Israel was impressively immune to questioning on the matter.
That was not the only tantalizing footwear innovation. A new series named Berluti Editions debuted with a revival of the Rapiecé Reprisé (patched darned) collection originally made by the house founder’s family scion Olga Berluti in 1985. As she said in a quote provided by the house: “In the past, in the 16th and 17th centuries, men never wore new clothes. Fabrics had to be strong enough to last a lifetime. For the marquis or the peasant, a man’s suit would feature alterations or mending as acts of bravery. Certain elegant Englishmen, artists, or eccentrics have perpetuated this custom. In the 1960s, Andy Warhol asked me: ‘I’d like the right foot of my loafer patched.’ It has to show! It must be Andy Warhol!”
The stitched patched shoes and bags on display were beautiful nods to the house heritage, all deployed in fancily named and richly burnished colors. The genius innovation shared by Israel was that Berluti was not only selling pairs of these shoes, it was selling trios: by offering one unstitched shoe with a stitched pair, he said, customers could mix and match their shoes from day to day. This was an eccentric, highly Berluti move.
The presentation opened with a room of classic house shoe styles—the Alessandro, the Andy, et al—in the colorways of the season. After staring into a pair of pale plum toned Oxfords, it was hard not to conclude that the patina work done on the house’s Venezia leather in its workshops to make them would make Rothko insecure. But while the emphasis this season was very much on the footwear (including a new grained square toe style), there was still room for the selection of looks you can see here. Berluti, you feel, has conceded that its footwear and bags are so magnificent that the clothes can only act as their accessories. These included some cutely slubby jeans in a new-for-Berluti Japanese denim, an amazing oxblood mink-lined perfecto, a leather “corduroy” trucker jacket and, naturally, a cashmere gilet.