Driving Force

By Kate Betts/Casette d''Ete

IT'S A GRAY OCTOBER DAY in Le Marche, the region of central Italy where about 90% of the country's shoes are made in nonescript industrial factories that dot the velvety, verdant landscape. The iffy weather and impending rain don't bother Diego Della Valle, 52. As the president and CEO of Tod's S.p.A., he's used to climbing into his silver twin-engine Dolphin helicopter after lunch at Villa Brancadoro--his 17th century hilltop residence in the town of Casette d'Ete, where he lives with his wife Barbara Pistilli and their son Filippo, 8--and zipping over to Ancona, where he usually boards his Falcon 2000 and jets off to Paris or New York City or maybe even Tokyo.

But bad weather makes Diego's younger brother Andrea Della Valle, 40, vice president of Tod's S.p.A., very nervous. Even after the elicottero has floated up several hundred feet and the 100-acre estate below--tennis court, boccie court, soccer field, man-made lake, lemon and olive groves and church included--has receded into the distance and there's not much left to view except gray fluff, Andrea keeps a watchful eye out the window. It's not surprising, given the family dynamic. Andrea plays the goalie to Diego's striker, the introverted, behind-the-scenes power broker to Diego's extroverted, genial public persona. (A recent cover story in Capital, an Italian business magazine, was titled "When the Secret Is Your Brother.") While Diego will make headlines sparring in the press with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi or hobnobbing with high-profile friends like Ferrari CEO Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Andrea is content to talk soccer scores and sneaker styles with production managers back at the factory--many of whom have known him since he was 5.

Together the two brothers have built Tod's S.p.A. into a global luxury group with $450 million in annual sales that includes Tod's, the high-end leather-goods company; Roger Vivier, the legendary Parisian shoe brand; Hogan, a sporty sneaker and handbag brand; and Fay, a casual weekend clothing line. Four years ago, the Della Valles bought the Fiorentina soccer team, a move that has made them famous in a whole new arena--especially among young boys. It helps that the team, which was at the bottom of the league when they bought it, has since risen in the standings. All of this, of course, started with shoes. And shoes still account for 70% of their business.

Shoemaking in Italy--like fashion--is a family business, a craft handed down through generations. And nowhere is that more evident than at Casa Della Valle. (Diego's eldest son Emanuele also works for the company, as do two cousins.) But you won't see Diego hand-stitching the driving shoes himself. Many of the families in his factory have been with the company for several generations, at least since Dorino, Diego and Andrea's father, set up shop in Casette d'Ete in the 1940s and later began manufacturing shoes for private-label department-store brands in addition to designers like Calvin Klein and Azzedine Alaia. Dorino's father Filippo was a local cobbler whose workbench still sits in a corner on the second floor of the factory as a kind of reminder of the family's more humble beginnings.

Remembering their roots is the most important lesson that Dorino, now 80, has instilled in his sons (their sister Gisella doesn't work for the company). "Dignity, duty and enjoyment," he says. "If I had five minutes left with my son, I would tell him that is what life is about."

Last night Diego indulged his own young son, allowing him to stay up late to watch a Juventus match on the television in their cozy basement family room at the villa. Diego is tired today after a long weekend celebrating Filippo's birthday (three parties: one at the local pizzeria, one at the grandparents' and one at home) and keeping tabs on Fiorentina. Now it is on to Paris, where he is planning a presentation of the Vivier spring collection as well as introducing a new line of Tod's clothing that is the result of a collaboration with American designer Derek Lam.

Diego took over his father's business in 1978 when law school no longer interested him and he had tired of wasting time in nightclubs. Inspired by the casual elegance of people like Gianni Agnelli and John F. Kennedy, Diego had an idea that was simple and obvious yet completely unaddressed in Europe: casual shoes that were chic. "At the time everything was very precise: black suit, blue shirt and tie. There was nothing casual," he says. "For me it was very important to find something light, to combine good taste with free time." So he combined the idea of leather shoes with rubber soles and came up with a soft pebble-soled driving moccasin that he labeled J.P. Tod's (the name came out of the Boston phone book). Through an old friend, he managed to get a pair onto Agnelli's feet. Word of mouth grew. He opened a few stores. By 1997 he had added handbags to the brand. Suddenly everyone from Princess Diana to Cher, Hillary Clinton, Jack Nicholson and the King of Spain were wearing J.P. Tod's. In 1999 he dropped the J.P.--too many people were inquiring after a real person.

The driving concept behind Tod's has always been the notion of enjoyment: bringing the casual freedom of weekend dress into everyday life. In conversation, Diego often refers to "the life," by which he means everything that is not work related or stressful. On bulletin boards inside the factory, magazine shots and vintage photos used as inspiration for the current collection consistently depict "the life"--Enjoyment with a capital E, whether it's Camelot, Farrah Fawcett, Bianca Jagger or a photo by Horst. The emphasis everywhere is always on a sense of freedom, ease and enjoyment.

The heart of the Tod's empire (which also includes 103 stores around the world) is the $60 million Richard Meier--esque white marble factory designed by Diego's wife Barbara and filled with art by Jacob Hashimoto, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol and Frank Stella. One wing is dominated by a Ron Arad silver staircase called The Wave. Inside, 2,500 workers--50% of whom are second-generation employees--turn out an average of 15,000 shoes a day. Their kids go to nursery school on the premises, and the workers eat freshly cooked meals in the cafeteria.

"This is really the heart of the company, these people," says Andrea. "Without them, without their expertise and the soul they put into this craftsmanship, we would not have a product." Indeed, most Tod's shoes require 120 different stages of assemblage, and each pair is made by hand and cut from a single hide so that the shoe's grain is consistent. The shoemaking process begins inside the patternmaking room--which Andrea refers to as the intelligence center--where a dozen engineers hunch over computer screens, carefully devising the patterns for each shoe--some entail as many as 70 different pieces. Down the hall, the modelist carves up each style's last by hand, a technique few manufacturers actually have in-house. Finally, the leather pieces will be chosen by the company expert, Antonio Ripani, who presides over more than 20 million sq. ft. of hides--calfskin, anaconda, gazelle, ostrich, crocodile--in a giant storeroom alongside the factory. After the patterns are cut by hand with an X-Acto knife, the shoes will be stitched and molded and blown dry on a special rack.

In addition to overseeing production in the factory, Andrea is president of the Fiorentina team (he designed the uniforms). He often finds himself applying his soccer management style to the workers in the company--which is to say, never be too confident when things are going well or too demoralized when they're not. That cautiousness at home, combined with Diego's easygoing joviality abroad, has made the brand as popular with Hollywood A listers as it is with Greenwich, Conn., housewives.

Plans are in place to launch a line of Tod's sunglasses, open 25 Tod's stores in China over the next two years, launch Fay in Asia and the U.S. (the brand is currently sold only in Europe), open more Vivier and Hogan stores and sign up Lam to design his own line of handbags.

Friends wonder if Diego will one day go into politics. He sits on the board of a number of companies--including Ferrari, Maserati, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and LVMH (which owns a 3.5% stake in Tod's)--but insists that shoemaking is his only work interest. "My job is to touch leather and create brands," he says. "And then more time for my family."

For now he is looking forward to his summer vacation in his new Capri house, which Barbara designed. There he will take walks, eat a simple plate of pasta and go for a ride on the Candida, his 40-m J-class yacht. "People think I'm provincial because I don't go to Capri to go out. I want to enjoy my family," he says. It's enjoyment, as in "Dignity, duty and enjoyment."