Roberto Botticelli is a second generation Italian shoe designer. He believes footwear can make or break an outfit
Roberto Botticelli does not rule out the possibility of him being a descendant of a certain early Renaissance artist with the same last name. “He was the son of a tanner,” says the man behind Roberto Botticelli shoes, justifying his reason to believe.
A look at his label’s official website shows that it seems to draw inspiration from the 15th century painter’s works. Botticelli (the 21st century shoemaker) says he too is an artist, but works on a different medium and recently inducted the third generation of his family (his son) into his business of dressing up feet.
Sitting in the Madinat Jumeirah, with the Burj Al Arab as his backdrop, there are no second thoughts about who makes the best shoes. “Roberto Botticelli for men,” he says, but is exceptionally graceful in admitting that no one beats a certain Manolo Blahnik, when it comes to understanding a woman’s feet.
What of Jimmy Choo? Botticelli puckers his lips and scrunches up his face to reveal disapproval. Jimmy Choo shoes not good? His eyes shut and he shakes his head quickly. “Blahnik is the best,” he says.
In his early sixties, Botticelli has seen his village of Montegranaro grow from a tiny dot on the map of Italy to a prominent shoe-producing centre. “The village accounts for 40 per cent of Europe’s shoes,” he says in Italian as he sips his Earl Grey tea.
Botticelli still operates out of the village, which he says has gone through its phase of rapid development in the 1960s and 1970s, but now offers him the comforts of the modern world and the charm of the old world.
“It’s on the Adriatic,” he says adding that his company supports the Red Star Belgrade and Red Star Zagreb football teams by providing the players with their footwear.
An enthusiastic supporter of the game, Botticelli does not believe in using players to promote his label. “There are good players like Totti [Francesco], who have been pushed as icons of style, but that’s not the way to sell products. A pair of shoes must sell on its own, because of the good quality,” he says.
Two collections a year
Botticelli specialises in men’s shoes and releases two collections a year. Each collection in the Roberto Botticelli line contains 200 new styles for women and 250 for men. He also releases 100 pairs of shoes for men and women as part of his Botticelli Limited line. The partiality towards men is justified he says as “there just aren’t enough options for men when compared to women”.
The unshakeable faith in Roberto Botticelli shoes for men taking top honours is simply because of the design, he says, as it’s modern and dynamic. Botticelli himself believes that the only colour of shoes a man must own is dark brown. “A pair of formal shoes with laces and a pair of moccasins are basic requirements. But in dark brown,” he says.
Though he only travels with two pairs of shoes, Botticelli owns almost 40 pairs, all in dark brown and all Roberto Botticelli. While his role is no longer restricted to manufacturing, Botticelli knows exactly how to make a pair of shoes.
“A good style automatically means good comfort, so if a complicated looking pair of shoes is not comfortable it just means that the designer has not done a good job,” he says.
After completing his university studies in law, Botticelli was “thrown into the factory” by his father and worked his way up learning the various processes of shoe making and following his interest in designing.
Today, he has a team of 400 employees all over the world and this includes a dedicated group of designers, which essentially means Botticelli is jack of all trades and master of the company.
All shoes that are part of his label are hand-made, with each pair passing through 86 stages and the raw materials are primarily sourced from Chennai. “It’s sad this tsunami,” he says clearly upset about the damage caused to a city he has shared a wonderful relationship with for the past 20 years.
Highlighting India as an excellent source of goat leather, he stressed the importance of ensuring that buyers check for leather soles as some labels often pass off an exclusive design but add a rubber sole, which according to him, is a huge compromise on quality.
Big on heels
Botticelli is big on heels for women and refuses to buy the belief that the pointed extensions can be bad for feet. “They’re not supposed to be worn all the time and it all depends on the design,” he says adding that every woman must have a pair with 5 cm heels and two pairs with 10 cm heels.
For Botticelli, shoes maketh not only a man, but also a woman and even if all feet cannot afford a pair of high-end shoes, his message to all consumers is simple. “Don’t neglect shoes as the least important part of your appearance. A great outfit can be completely ruined by bad shoes, but good shoes can make an average outfit much better.”
