Franco Sarto Women's Fashion Brand

Mr. Sarto easily understood that shoes and fashion were to be his life's work - and the biography that follows is a craftsman's, in full. He was born in 1949 in Dolo, in the outskirts of Venice. An apprentice craftsman by age 14, Mr. Sarto sought work in a shoe factory where he sat on a stool, hand-lasting shoes with hammer and nail. A founder who began by literally shaping shoes by hand, one nail at a time, is the strongest foundation a shoe brand can claim, and this one is recorded plainly.

By his early twenties, he moved to Stra - the epicenter of Italian shoe design - and opened a design studio. By 1990, he was able to launch his namesake line. Follow the geography and the ages and the story assembles itself: born near Venice in 1949, apprenticed at fourteen, a design studio in Italy's shoe capital in his early twenties, and his own name on a line by 1990. Franco Sarto women's shoes come out of a Venetian shoemaking district and a hand-laster's training, and they should be judged against both.

The Sarto Premiere Collection of 2015

In 2015, Mr. Sarto debuted a premiere collection for his most discerning customers. Simply called Sarto, it is a beautifully curated selection of fine footwear, mixing effortless style with a modern Italian sensibility. Available at exclusive outlets, Sarto offers every woman a chance to feel as if she is slipping on a piece of Italy. The distinction the profile draws is a two-level range: the namesake Franco Sarto line, launched in 1990, and above it the premiere Sarto collection of 2015, curated more finely and sold more exclusively.

That structure gives a shopper a useful internal comparison. The main line should show the design studio's habits - Italian lines, wearable shapes, honest finishing at its price. The Sarto premiere pieces should show more: finer materials, more careful curation, the extra finishing steps a discerning customer is being asked to pay for. If a premiere piece does not visibly and tangibly out-finish the main line beside it, it has not kept the collection's own promise, whatever the label says.

Judging Italian-Sensibility Footwear

Apply the hand-laster's tests. The last's shape should give an elegant line without torturing the toes; uppers should sit smooth at the seams; soles and heels should be finished as carefully underneath as the uppers are above, which is where a factory apprenticeship shows. Effortless style, the premiere collection's phrase, has a fit meaning too: a shoe that needs constant adjusting, slipping or gripping is not effortless, whatever its silhouette - walk in both shoes, on hard flooring, before deciding.

Care is the standard leather routine, kept faithfully: rest days between wearings, trees or tissue to hold the shape the last created, cleaning and conditioning as the material asks, and prompt heel-tip repair. Born in Dolo in 1949, apprenticed at fourteen with hammer and nail, a Stra design studio in his twenties, a namesake line by 1990 and a premiere Sarto collection in 2015 - Franco Sarto's women's footwear is a life's work, and the best test of any pair remains the founder's first skill: how well the shoe has been shaped to a foot.

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