For Footwear News Emerging Talent 2017, the fashion team selected 32 of the most promising and progressive names in shoes to know right now. The specifications we looked for were both formalized and guided by editorial instincts, drawing us to a diverse mixture of personalities that fused originality, intuition, verve, business savvy, on-point branding, quality, point of view, personality, cool factor, unwavering style and passion. Read on.
CORNETTI
LAUNCHED: 2013
BASE: California
MADE IN: Southern Italy
YOUR SHOES IN THREE WORDS: “Whimsical, colorful, well-made.”
CREATIVE PROCESS: “My best ideas come to me 4-8 a.m. with coffee and a laptop. It’s very much a one-woman shoe show. Designing, selling, managing production, marketing, etc., all falls in my lap.”
SHOP TALK: Revolve.com, Shopbop.com, ShopBazaar.com, Madison Los Angeles.
BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT: “From 2014 to 2015, when I was able to increase wholesale by 600 percent. Having return customers from all over the world who reach out season after season to order more. When these women say, ‘I literally wear your sandals every day,’ they have no idea how happy that makes me.”
WISE WORDS: “The lessons never end. Once you overcome one obstacle, you are greeted by yet another and then another, and each is a harder test of your will than the previous.”
MENTORS: “My grandfather, who passed in 2009, was a one-of-a-kind man and entrepreneur. Imagining how amused and proud he would be of my sandal plight keeps me going in my darker hours.”
WHAT’S NEXT: “Businesswise? To expand Cornetti’s distribution to retailers all over the world. Personally? To own a boat. Just a smallish sailboat would do.”
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