The central courtyard of the baroque building was covered with a layer of sand dyed vivid red
Italy - On Saturday 24 September, the Italian fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo held its Spring-Summer 2023 show at the Portrait Milan Hotel, a 17th-Century former seminary in the city that has long been the centre of Italian fashion – and, by extension, of world fashion.
The central courtyard of the baroque building was covered with a layer of sand dyed in the same vivid red colour that is now the Ferragamo house colour, and which also filled the arches around the courtyard. The contrast between the classical location and the bright modernity of the clothes on view could not have been sharper.
In the centre of the courtyard, also forming a clear contrast with the building, its red decor and the new fashion collection, stood a circle of GUIL lifters, eight ULK 500 towers holding the speaker system that provided the music as the models walked across the sand.
The black towers formed a visual frame too, providing a focal point as the models followed the path through the centre of the circle from one side to the other of the courtyard. Discreet in colour, but at the same time a quietly strong, functional presence, the ULK 500s, like the clothes the models wore, were another reminder that, although we were in a 17th-Century seminary, this is very much the 21st Century.
Salvatore Ferragamo announced in March 2022 that the young British-Caribbean designer Maximilian Davis as their new in-house designer, and he has lost no time in making his presence felt. The sand on the courtyard floor is an evocation of Ferragamo’s work in Hollywood, where he designed shoes for actresses such as Marilyn Monroe, and of the part played by the sea in Davis’s own Caribbean heritage.
“It’s a place where you can go to reflect, and feel at one with what surrounds you,” he says. The new house red colour, meanwhile, pays homage to the sunsets and sunrises in both these places, and the fashion house has also changed the lettering of the company logo, and even the name, discarding the name Salvatore to leave only the surname Ferragamo.
To stage the presentation of the new collection, Ferragamo put their trust in Guil’s ULK 500 lifting towers. This Spanish company, which will celebrate its 40th birthday next year, manufactures more than 30 models of lifting tower for use in all kinds of events. The ULK 500 which Ferragamo chose for their show is a versatile tower with a maximum lifting capacity of 220 kg to a height of up to 6.30m and can be used for a number of jobs in event organisation. They can fly line array as they did for Ferragamo, lift and direct lighting elements to illuminate stages or similar spaces, raise truss parts to set up the structure that you need, or hold LED screens or projectors for video mapping or other uses.

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