Maria Sole Ferragamo
(b. 1990, Italy)
Most designs display a masked mystery. They look as if they are heavy pieces made of metal, but when touched they bare their true texture: light, soft leather.
In October 2016, after having graduated from MA in Jewellery Design at Central Saint Martins University, Maria Sole Ferragamo presented her first collection in a pop-up store in London. After the opening of her London studio in 2017, Ferragamo has since relocated her creative studio in Florence, where the production is also based. Behind these fresh jewellery creations, there is a strong commitment to sustainable design that comes to life through the use of the leather remnants of luxury fashion industry. Sole Ferragamo gets her inspiration from optical and kinetic art, architecture and fashion. In her creations, the contrasting colours and patterns generate a visual balance that gives to the pieces different levels of depth as well as the illusion of movement.
Maria Sole Ferragamo’s designs are an assembly of geometric forms and volumes creating wearable and soft architectures in small scale. Sole’s biggest source of inspiration in fashion is the Elizabethan Era for the design of the costumes and for the idea and the perception of regal and strong women. Together with the encounter between traditional and progressive and modern design, versatility is another key feature. In fact many pieces can be worn in different ways and some of them are also reversible, having sides with a different colour. Reversibility was also central when ideating the pieces in special edition for EC Lab (Leila and Bella EC Lab special edition).
Sole Ferragamo was born in 1990 in Florence and she now lives and works between Florence and London. She graduated in Architecture from Politecnico of Milano and she then studied MA in Jewellery Design at Central Saint Martins University where she won first place in the fourth International Design Competition ‘Craft the Leather’. She has held exhibitions in Milan, Rome, New York, Turin and London.
