Sketches from Museo Salvatore Ferragamo

Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, Florence - Friday, June 3

As we entered the museum of Salvatore Ferragamo, we saw the timeless fashion design.

Hyunji Son, Laura P.

Ferragamo: Shoes for the Stars

Ferragamo Museum, Florence - Friday, June 3rd, 2011

Salvatore Ferragamo demonstrates the link between fashion and cinema.

He followed the movie industry to Hollywood to set up shop and began to design shoes for cinema. His creativity, craftsmanship, and consideration for the human anatomy produced shoes of original design, high quality and incomparable comfort. The following video is amalgamation of photos and audio clips found on the corporate museum website.

Salvatore Ferragamo, the company, has retained a relationship with the film industry by continuing to work closely with costume designers. They have been involved in such productions as Evita, Ever After and Australia.


Foong Ling, Xinran, Ruby

Virtual Identities - How social media affects design...

Virtual Identities, Florence - Thursday, June 2nd, 2011


Great exhibit, definitely a must see!

Although the Virtual Identities exhibit was small, I found that the content and ideas presented were very creative and thought provoking. Not only were new ideas presented, but the ways they were displayed was also very interesting.

Legitimate psychosomatic disorder, or inconveniently timed heat stroke? The Uffizi was pretty hot...

Cute Compact Cars

Hello everyone! This is my first post, FINALLY, I know, but our days have been so hectic and full, but slowly and surely the blog will fill up with all our amazing experiences!

As someone who has never been to Italy, I must say that she's a very welcoming country filled friendly and polite people (not so different from Canada eh?). The easiest way to get a feel of life here in this majestic city, is to take a stroll down the streets. Personally, I was immediately enraptured by the charming buildings with their shuttered windows and grand entrances. But once you've become enamored with the architecture, the next on my list of charming things to see in Italy are the adorable cars and iconic Vespas that line almost every street in this country, making it difficult to miss this cultural phenomenon.

Yes, I know, most of the time, you wouldn't use the words adorable, or cute to describe any sort of vehicle, but in Italy, you can! Here are a selection of cars that are commonly found in Italy of the compact variety. The nearest thing North America has to one of these beauties are the smart car, and sure thing, Italy is full of them! Look out for the white one in a matte finish, since roaming around in Florence for three days, I have already seen this car twice, and finally I snapped up a picture!




The Classic Red Vespa! Such an iconic piece of work, Vespa is Italian for the word Wasp, and was designed around the user. Paggio, the creator of Vespas, wanted to have a vehicle that was easy to use, small, and capable. The Vespa was created to suit the needs of the citizens after the WW2, and soon became an object of desire for people of all ages.











Vespas come in all shapes and sizes! This version is for the barbie girl in you.



The Ape (sounds like App-eh) the word for Bee in Italian is also a part of the Paggio family, This version is more accommodating when transporting larger goods. Like its scooter counterpart, both these designs have wide-spread popularity in Eastern parts of the world, namely Pakistan and Vietnam, where Paggio also has factories.





A very bright duo-tone car with an orange advertisement, spotted twice in Florence! Will look up the model name and type ASAP.


Drivers here in Italy have endless amounts of patience, and will creep up slowly behind you or gently reverse into you if you're Justine. (Thank goodness she escaped unscathed.) Well, this is it for my first post, look forward to more comments about strolling the streets of Italy!

David Palterer's Lecture

ISIA (Instito Superiore per la Industrie Artistiche), Florence - Thursday, June 2nd, 2011
Presentation by David Palterer

Part 1/5:

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Alan, Michelle, Lindsay

Wood Galore

Heyo! This was way back when in Rome during the surprisingly high class Golden Compass design exhibitions but I noticed that they use wood in lots of interesting ways. For example a wooden sink! (I'm sorry the pic is a bit small) What UP! And that bench with the unique natural wood patterns was gorgeous. This might not be that new to some people but I found it interesting how they use wood in some of the products (especially furniture) in Italian design (the ones that I have seen anyway). Not too sure about the practicality of these products but the creativity and beauty of them might trump their functionality… what do you guys think? These products are just in the pictures below :) Unfortunately I didn't record the designers of these products but feel free to add other info and /or any other pics of cool uses of wood that you guys have encountered on this trip!