Patenting fashion: Salvatore Ferragamo between craftmanship and industry

In the 20th century, a wide array of manufacturing activities related to fashion featured a long-lasting phase of continuous innovations both in production methods and ornamental designs. Among them, the Italian footwear industry stands out as one of the most recurrent entries in the databases of registered patents. Drawing on evidence collected from the American and Italian register of patents, the paper focuses on Salvatore Ferragamo with the aim of understanding the reason why he patented inventions and ornamental models, regarding both whole shoes and parts of them, with increasing regularity and what his attitude as an inventor tells us about product innovation in the footwear industry