It is apparently very simple to connect via Tornuabuoni to the “made in Italy” concept. All you have to do is look at the names of the shop windows that are there. Via Tornabuoni is in all respects similar to one of the many other shopping streets that you can find in the major cities of the world.
But via Tornabuoni in Florence is something more.

Imagine you are at the crossroads between via Tornabuoni and via della Vigna Nuova: in front of you the beauty of Palazzo Strozzi, perhaps the most representative palace of the Florentine Renaissance.

Gucci

But right there is also the Gucci store. This is actually the first Gucci store in the world. The Gucci myth was born right here in 1921.
Gucci
Guccio Gucci was born in Florence in 1881 and in his youth he went to work as a lift boy at the Hotel Savoy in London. He was fascinated by the elegance of the English aristocracy.

Spanish flu

However, that was a very difficult time because of the war that has just ended and the Spanish flu of 1918 – 1920 which is considered the pandemic with the highest mortality rate in modern history.

According to some estimates, the pandemic caused 50 million deaths worldwide, with an estimated lethality rate between 2% and 10%

In that situation Gucci, back in Florence, thinks about how the tragedies of the First World War and the pandemic have changed society.
In the air there was a great desire to live, to change, to leave the past and all those dead behind!
It is no coincidence that the years 1921 to 1929 are called the Roaring Years!

Gucci thinks of luxury. He focuses on the excellence of his city: the mastery of Tuscan artisans. He specializes for this on leather goods and gives rise to timeless creations with beautiful collections of bags, trunks, gloves, shoes and belts.

Ferragamo

In 1927 another visionary arrived from the United States: Salvatore Ferragamo.
He is returning from California where his Hollywood shop had been an incredible success. Salvatore had quickly earned the name of “Shoemaker of the stars”.
He is not Florentine, but he chooses Florence for the same reason as Gucci: the mastery of the craftsmen and the general taste of the Florentines, who have always been surrounded by beauty. And here in 1927 he starts making his shoes.
Palazzo Spini Feroni, on the other side of via Tornabuoni, was purchased by Ferragamo in 1933 and here he established the headquarters of his company.

The Spanish flu changed the world and Gucci and Ferragamo understood the change. They were able to offer what they world needed.
This way they laid the foundations for the birth of what a few decades later will be called Made in Italy.

And all that in a street in Florence: via Tornabuoni.