Berluti

Berluti was established in 1895 by Alessandro Berluti, an Italian from the Marche region who set up his Paris shop on rue Marbeuf. A trained cabinetmaker, Alessandro arrived in the French capital and translated his woodworking instinct into leather. The result was an apparently seamless lace-up shoe crafted from a single piece of leather, the Alessandro, the style that named the house.

The shop quickly drew a particular clientele. By 1962, Berluti was shoemaker by appointment to figures including the Duke of Windsor and Charles de Gaulle, then president of France. The label that stuck was shoemaker to the elegant man, defined by patina, leather, and a single signature last.

For most of the twentieth century, Berluti remained a footwear house. The Berluti patina, developed in the 1980s, brought nuanced colors to men’s shoes at a time when most were black or brown, and that color vocabulary would later open the route into clothing.

LVMH bought the brand in 1993, and that ownership shaped the subsequent expansion, beginning with leather goods in 2005. In 2011, the group appointed Alessandro Sartori as creative director and launched Berluti’s first ready-to-wear collection, unveiled for the spring-summer 2012 season.

Sartori imposed a vision where footwear served as a constant reference point within the silhouette, expanding the range through a softly aged calfskin jacket, denim pieces, and tailored suits in cashmere, mohair, and alpaca.

The fall-winter 2012 runway show sharpened that argument, with a hand-patinated leather down jacket as its centerpiece, sharply cut suits alongside it, and a series of deep patina coats translating the house’s shoemaking surface onto outerwear.

Later that same year, Berluti acquired the Paris tailor house Arnys to scale the operation and fold bespoke Parisian tailoring directly into the clothing line. The house now operated in the same Parisian menswear conversation as Dior Homme and Lanvin under Lucas Ossendrijver, with the patina serving as its separating credential.

Creative leadership has shifted several times since. Haider Ackermann took the helm as creative director in 2016, followed by Kris Van Assche from 2018 to 2021. In 2023, the brand returned to Paris Fashion Week while operating without a creative director.

Today, Berluti dresses a client who began as a shoe customer and stayed for tailoring, sitting alongside Loro Piana and Dior Men in the LVMH menswear bracket. The house signaled its civic profile when it designed uniforms for the French team at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics in France.