MILAN — Gianvito Rossi’s list of fine intentions for the brand new 12 months is brief and pretty straightforward. “To maintain doing what I like, that is gorgeous shoes, and have customers experience the brand in a way that matches the standard of the product,” he said in an interview held at his newly revamped flagship store here.

The primary unit launched by the brand, the 1,400-square-foot location opened in 2008 within the historic Nineteenth-century Palazzo Bagatti Valsecchi in town’s golden shopping triangle with an interior concept developed in partnership with Milan-based architect Patricia Urquiola, with whom Rossi teamed again for the refurbishing.

In sync with Rossi’s approach to his designs, the revamp was more about an evolution of the previous space relatively than marking a recent, disruptive aesthetic. The signature muted shade of powder pink — nodding to the colour of his shoes’ interior sole — was still the hue of preference, combined with champagne and earth tones and gold details. The shop design mixes essential lines with sinuous surfaces, starting from the round onyx tables and metal shelves to velvet sofas and leather armchairs.

Rossi said the goal was to supply a welcoming and warm environment through modernity, “which may sometimes be too hard or cold.”

The restyle was the newest in a streak of projects aimed toward enhancing the corporate’s retail presence. It followed the opening of a shop-in-shop at Harrods’ last month and a series of stores within the Middle East and China earlier this 12 months.

The brand unveiled units at Dubai Mall and Place Vendôme mall in Doha, which will probably be soon joined by openings in Riyadh and in Turkey in early 2023. In China, the launch at SKP Beijing was followed by locations in Chongqing and Chengdu this 12 months.

Pinpointed as pivotal for the corporate’s growth, Middle East and Asia still come only second and third within the rating of best-performing markets for the brand. In line with Rossi, the U.S. — where the shoe brand opened its first stand-alone store in 2015 — still holds the lead.

Along with the aforementioned locations, Gianvito Rossi has stores in Rome, Paris, Monte Carlo, London, Recent York, Miami, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul.

The designer underscored that controlling locations directly enables the brand to display the entire product assortment and ensure one of the best customer experience. Yet Rossi stressed that there are not any plans in cutting the wholesale presence, made up of “solid collaborations and historic ties.” International stockists of the brand include Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, Bergdorf Goodman and Net-a-porter, to call a couple of.

Overall, sales generated from Gianvito Rossi’s direct channels — including online — are expected to grow 50 percent in 2022 in comparison with last 12 months.

In 2021, the corporate’s total sales were up 30.5 percent to 73.7 million euros in comparison with 2020, when it generated 56.4 million euros, in line with sources. The brand projects it’s going to register an identical double-digit growth in 2022, too, reaching pre-pandemic sales levels — Gianvito Rossi was said to have totaled around 95 million euros in 2019. Asked about recent rumors that wanted the corporate coming up on the market, Rossi waved away the speculations, underscoring that interest by suitors has all the time been there.

Commenting on the corporate’s annual performance as a substitute, he noted that “the return to social life after the pandemic propelled the interest [in the brand] as there’s a wish of dressing in a more special way, more sophisticated and female.”

This shift matches the designer’s approach, which is rooted in putting on the service of girls. “I wish to offer shoes that enhance them, their individuality and make them more confident, relatively than having women grow to be ambassadors of 1 brand or the opposite,” Rossi said. He also addressed the change of paradigm occurred in fashion within the recent past, noting that “today there’s not a dogma, an absolute trend that everybody must follow and uniform to it,” and customers can embrace freedom and play by their very own rulebook.

Rossi’s designs hinge on less-is-more style with a heightened attention on proportions that elongate the silhouette and quality. Slightly than introducing recent models that might tap into seasonal trends, he prefers to update his creations by tweaking materials or step by step expanding his tight color palette, subsequently conferring continuity and longevity to his line.

Bestsellers include the Gianvito stiletto pump, the Vamp Open Toe bootie, the Plexi collection and the Portofino sandal, whose easy yet graphic design has been revisited in the brand new Bijoux style.

“It’s all about maximum simplicity that demands the utmost care and precision in proportions and details,” said Rossi, stressing that quality is pivotal in such an aesthetic.

The designer, who launched his namesake brand in 2006 after spending years studying shoemaking under his father Sergio Rossi, noted the market has evolved to understand true craftsmanship too, as this represents an actual point of difference in an ever-competitive segment.

Even when a few of its most iconic styles get knockoffs — “which can be a flattering thing since it means you probably did something interesting, in spite of everything,” he said with a smile. Rossi underscored that shoes “are a difficult product to repeat…they require many techniques, an enormous work of research and fine-tuning.”

For one, each pump requires 60 steps, starting with the meticulous choice of the raw materials, with each bit of leather cut individually to avoid imperfections before being assembled. All Gianvito Rossi shoes are handcrafted in Italy, with the production and development plant positioned in San Mauro Pascoli, a town renowned for its longstanding footwear tradition.

The designer’s priority is securing that such a legacy is preserved and that the brand’s know-how is passed all the way down to younger generations. To this end, 18 months ago, Rossi launched an in-house academy, enrolling a handful of retired expert craftsmen of his company to coach skilled figures in the sphere.

Through the years, the corporate has put its craftsmanship at use of other brands, too, via special collaborations, including a one-off capsule collection developed with Etro and debuted on the red carpet of Venice Film Festival in 2020.

Earlier this 12 months, Gianvito Rossi teamed with French eco-luxury beauty label La Bouche Rouge on two exclusive lipstick hues and refillable cases in dusty pink and silver leather repurposed from offcuts of the footwear brand’s everlasting collection of leather shoes.

While Rossi said the thought is to proceed to explore recent tie-ups, especially with partners hailing from other industries, the collaboration with La Bouche Rouge was particularly fitting because the parties involved shared a green approach and a spotlight in reducing their environmental footprint.

To this end, last 12 months Gianvito Rossi unveiled a sustainability roadmap that built on its eco-friendly plan established in 2019 in tandem with the University of Bologna, labeled because the oldest university on this planet.

The corporate implemented a platform that uses quantitative measurements and data evaluation to scale back the environmental and social impact, starting from measuring its energy consumption and waste management to assessing its entire supply chain, including raw materials and processes.

“Sometimes there’s more storytelling than facts behind sustainability, while we desired to have a strategy enabling us to always measure our impact,” Rossi said.

The brand also pledged to evaluate all its suppliers and distributors by 2025, aiming to realize carbon neutrality by compensating all Scope 3 GHG emissions throughout its pipeline.