Tod’s

Filippo Della Valle started a shoemaking business out of his family home in the late 1920s, and his grandson Diego Della Valle expanded the workshop into a factory that began manufacturing shoes in the 1970s. Operating from Sant’Elpidio a Mare in Italy’s Marche region, Diego named the company J.P. Tod’s in 1978, choosing an English-sounding name to court an international audience.

The proposition was a softer, more pliable kind of Italian shoe. The Gommino loafer arrived in 1979, an ultra-light, flat, hand-stitched shoe defined by 133 small rubber pebbles on the sole. Within a year, Gommino loafers were selling well in the US, Italy, France and England, and the Italian luxury goods industry had a hot new competitor on the block.

Menswear at Tod’s grew outward from that single shoe. The Gommino set the vocabulary for everything that followed, supple leathers, hand-finishing, and a flat, unfussy line that translated into bags, suede jackets, and knitwear aimed at a wardrobe meant for travel and weekends.

Diego had come up with a moccasin-based driving shoe that married the comfort and ease of American clothing he’d witnessed on trips to the U.S. with Italian élan. That logic placed Tod’s alongside Italian contemporaries such as Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli, brands selling a similar idea of quiet Italian dressing to the same global client.

Visibility came through association as much as advertising. Della Valle scored a coup when he asked a friend, Luca di Montezemolo, to pass on a pair of Tod’s driving moccasins to Gianni Agnelli, who later wore them while attending highly publicized football matches, which helped to increase sales dramatically. Tod’s went public in November 2000, listing on the Milan Stock Exchange at a valuation of €1.2 billion.

The company expanded into a group around the founding label. Della Valle launched two sister brands, Fay in 1986 and Hogan in 1988, later forming Tod’s Group, which then bought 60% of Roger Vivier, the French shoemaker known for the stiletto heel, in 1995.

Leadership shifted over time. By the late 1990s, Diego turned over the day-to-day operation of the business to Andrea, his younger brother. More recently, Tod’s Group made the decision to delist and go private, a move that involved Della Valle stepping away from his role as CEO, with John Galantic, formerly of Chanel, now holding that position.

On the creative side, the brand has shaken up its ready-to-wear offering, with Matteo Tamburini, formerly of Bottega Veneta, joining as creative director in 2023. Today Tod’s sits in the upper tier of Italian leather goods houses, dressing a client who wants Milanese dressing in a softer key, the Gommino still the centre of the men’s offer alongside suede outerwear and weekend tailoring.