René Caovilla
René Caovilla is an Italian shoes brand, born in 1928 in Fiesso d’Artico (VE).
The history of the company
The maison Caovilla was born in 1928, in Fiesso d’Artico, next to Venice, when Edoardo Caovilla founded the first handmade luxury shoes workshop. Here, in the core of footwear tradition of Riviera del Brenta, in 1934, the brand started imposing with a recognizable identity.
In the ’50s his son René Fernando took the reins of the company: because of his creations, of his passion and of his incredible creative abilities, he managed to bring the maison into the couture and to make it be known worldwide.
Named the «Cellini of shoes», this creator-entrepreneur who works in Stra, in the Riviera del Brenta, inherited by his father a simple handcrafting workshop. Nowadays he produces about 200 pair of shoes every day, he can boast a twenty-year fellowship with Valentino and partnerships with Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano and Ralph Lauren. Among his most attached customers there are Caroline of Monaco, Liz Taylor, Sharon Stone, Sophia Loren, Madonna, Nancy Reagan and Brooke Shields. His creations are characterized by unusual and really precious materials and by endangered artisanal working methods. It’s renown the snake-sandal, made only of a band encrusted by crystals which wraps the ankle.
The jewel-collections
Since 2000, in the workshop, only the jewel-collection designed by René Caovilla are produced. In order to guarantee the exclusivity of the product and the qualitative excellence, the distribution is reduced to few and selectioned stores in the world. Furthermore, to crown a history of success, monobrand stores inaugurated in the main luxury cities: these ones are furnished with artworks and architectural elements from Venetian XVIII century.
The third generation Caovilla
Since 2009 the brand has been being under the Creative Direction of Edoardo Caovilla, who represents the third generation at the leadership of the company. His father René is stille president and the brand is still named after him.
Among the creations of the maison Caovilla, the Cleo sandal stands: designed by René in 1969, its exclusive band was inspired by Roman snake bracelets from I century b.C.; in 1975 the shoe was exposed at the MoMA, in New York.
In 2021 the company started an internal restoration, which helped in closing the fiscal year with a growth of +20 % in turnover. To repeat the performance the following year, the company decided to inaugurate two new monobrand stores, in Ho Chi Minh and in Chengdu; furthermore, it programmed 4 new inaugurations in 2023, in Asia, Middle East and USA (the last market, in particular, is becoming more and more important for the company).
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Contacts
Via Nazionale 24, 30032, Fiesso d’Artico (VE), Italy
To read the item in Italian click here.