1927 The Return to Italy

In 1927, after more than a decade in the US, the great Italian designer Salvatore Ferragamo took an ocean liner back to his native land. Published on the 90th anniversary of his homecoming, this book takes Ferragamo's voyage as its guiding thread, offering a broad cultural overview of the 1920s--a decade now recognized as a crucible of experimentation--through artworks, advertising, clothing and fabric, as well as prototypes of the shoes that Ferragamo created in the 1920s.

Ferragamo's homecoming coincided with a moment at which the word "return" was especially meaningful in Italy, denoting a return to order in the arts; a return to professional skill; and to Italy's great cultural traditions. Developed across chapters, almost like a coming-of-age story, the book focuses precisely on this trend in the culture of the period, encompassing all of the cultural and social facets that distinguished Italy's rebirth after the Great War, on the eve of the Mussolini regime.