Venice’s velvet-slipper mecca 

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Like a kid in a candy store. Instantly you know what it means: happy sensory overload, the joy of multiple confections tempting you from every direction. Where can grown-ups go for such a sweet pay-off? Piedàterre Venezia, a shop selling jewel-toned furlane slippers on a corner of Venice’s bustling Campo Santo Stefano, offers it in abundance. “I saw Ladurée, mochi balls, sweets of all kinds,” says Stuart Parr, the shop’s co-owner and creative director, speaking of his impressions of the original Piedàterre shop near the city’s Rialto Bridge, the first time he saw it years ago. The shelves were stacked with the elegant velvet slippers that originated in Friuli in the 19th century and have been worn by Venetian gondolieri since the early 20th. The shoes have since been adopted by men and women alike, pairing as they do equally nicely with denim, beach kaftans and black tie. They’re the ideal party footwear.

“I’d see Carlos Souza and Giancarlo Giammetti [formerly of Valentino] wearing these,” says Parr, “and when I asked where they got them it was always ‘in Venice, darling’.” He became fascinated by them. After three years of negotiation with the Venetian owners, Parr – an occasional film producer, art collector and luxury-brand executive – acquired Piedàterre in 2021, along with Paul Deneve, the former CEO of Yves Saint Laurent. Together they opened up a new space on the Campo Santo Stefano. And so a new flagship for Venice’s original and oldest continuously operating maker of furlane was born.

The shelves are stuffed – emerald, tangerine, Capri lemon…

Parr and Deneve have taken the materials and the company’s production process back to the furlane’s 19th-century roots. “Nothing we use” – not the threads, the velvets, the silk ribbon borders, or the dense cotton heel pads ingeniously incorporated into the sole – “is made outside Italy,” says Parr. Rubelli and Fortuny have both provided textiles; today Parr and Deneve’s producer creates exclusive colours for them, keeping stock so clients can have different designs in their favourite shades. They hired the former president of the school for Italian shoemakers of the Veneto region to consult, and enlisted the shoemaker Deneve had worked with at YSL – “the guy who made every YSL shoe for the past 20 years”, notes Parr – to remake all the Piedàterre lasts.

Piedàterre does a thriving online business, and there are collaborations with Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in the south of France and Le Bristol in Paris, among others. But Campo Santo Stefano is the mothership. The curtain panels and tufted settees are a rich teal velvet. Shelves line the walls from the polished terrazzo floor to the original wood ceiling joists. They’re stuffed, in a satisfyingly orderly way, with slippers in every imaginable shade: emerald, tangerine, Capri lemon, violet, aubergine, indigo.

There are furlane in velvet, canvas and raw silk (from €125); some are monochrome, others have contrasting ribbon borders – ochre with turquoise, pale-pink grapefruit with fuchsia. There are backless models (from €145), slip-ons (from €125) and Mary Janes for both sexes (from €135), after Parr introduced them for men earlier this year. “People said, ‘Who’s going to wear those?’ I said, ‘Go look at some Goyas, man,’” says Parr, in his LA drawl. “I invited the chief of police here – he’s, like, 6ft 3in – to come and pick out any pair he wanted, and he loved these.” Like a kid in a candy store? Parr laughs. “Totally!”