The Secret of a Fashion Legend

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Holder of nearly a thousand patents of shoe designs, Salvatore Ferragamo (1898–1960), began making shoes at the elfin age of nine. With only a 6th-grade education and evenings spent observing the neighborhood shoemaker in the building where his family lived, he resolved to make footwear his life.

 

His career took a fortunate turn when, in Hollywood, he opened the Ferragamo Boot Shop at only twenty-five years of age, designing footwear for the movies and the movie stars, then opening a boutique in Florence and selling to Saks Fifth Avenue. Meanwhile, aiming for both comfort and style, he patented the revolutionary steel arch support, and introduced eye-catching styles such as the “cage heel” and the “wedge.”

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The Secret

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The great shoemaker was without doubt creative, responsible, and hardworking, even taking anatomy courses in Los Angeles to enhance his understanding of the foot. And yet, by his own admission, his secret was his "ear."

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A master at responding to somatic signals coming through his thoughts, his emotions, his hands, and even the world around him, he knew what he wanted — and hunted it like a prize boar in the Italian hills. But what accounted for his many triumphs wasn’t determination alone, but the innate knowing that precedes conscious effort.

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In the documentary Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, he says:

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“I have not followed any master. I have not followed any school. Where have I learned all that I know? I had a clear vision that my work had been done before. I have done it — but where? I do not know. But everything that I have done since my boyhood has been work which came back to me. All I have to do while I work is to sit down and recall what I knew about this work — and do it again.”

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Inventiveness

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Even in hard times like WWII, when materials and customers were scarce, he continued to listen. Believing his shoes like living things “talked” to him, he refused to quit in the face of shortages, substituting unconventional materials for leather and steel:

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● Cellophane from candy and chocolate wrappers

● Fish skin in place of conventional leather

● Cork, which led to his revolutionary wedge heel

● Raffia, straw, and hemp cord, woven into shoe uppers

● Tree bark, including specially treated poplar bark

● Felt, nettle fibers, and scraps of fabric

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Even after the war, he continued his experiments. For his famous Invisible Sandal, 1947, he used transparent fishing line. The inspiration came from an employee who had caught a fish using the newly invented nylon.

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What is somatic listening?

 

Somatic listening is hearing internal and external signals in a way that serendipitously converge to generate creative insights. When we see life as Messenger, more becomes possible.

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Just as Ferragamo knew beforehand how to design each pair of shoes, so we also can produce with prescience — whether we know the “neurological mechanism” behind it or not.

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In some ways, Ferragamo was very lucky. Unlike most of us, he was spared decades of education and employment demands that typically overwhelm the inner music.

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The take away

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Anyone may listen better. Instead of defaulting to conscious deliberation, maybe we can also listen to our souls and our surroundings. When we believe that through them a messaging wisdom is ever talking to us, life opens up.

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Making the Brain Sing

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I spent $10K on performance neuroscience training. But what if the best biohack is . . . ?

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Some cherry-picked. Others chose the full buffet. The coaching school where we studied Performance Neuroscience taught 29 biohacks.

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PN, as taught in the program, wasn't a scientific discipline. It was a training methodology intended to trigger and sustain flow. Armed with the right biohacks, it was said, this natural state of heightened focus could become reliably accessible. Flow can be fertile ground for creative thinking.

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The BS

 

Like many people, I’d experienced flow early on — first as a child at play, and later as a musician. Even after 17 years of starting work at first light, I found my way into flow, sometimes composing music during my lunch break. Whatever the demands of my working life, the creative current hadn't disappeared. I didn't need 29 biohacks to discover it. I already knew the experience, even if I hadn't given it a name.

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In fact, the biohacks taught felt forced, and some, like the Wim Hof cold plunge, carried risks. I found no convincing evidence that this particular collection of techniques could reliably induce and sustain flow over time. Even the professors conceded that, however "well-designed,"  biohacks require constant tweaking.

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Recovery & Discovery

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Since completing the $10K program, I've replaced the hacks with the practice of connecting to my brain as body. The brain is not some abstract, vaporous thinking thing, like a ghost, but is made of real flesh and blood.

 

Flow, I've discovered, occurs most readily through somatic listening.​ Just as we respond to our emotions, so we can respond to the feelings of our head. Sinus pressure, for example, prompts a squeeze of nasal mist; a headache calls for aspirin. I suggest that the brain also communicates its condition through feelings and sensations, even when the neurochemical mechanisms behind them are murky. Redundant as it sounds, the brain, too, needs executive thinking to be made well again.

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What is "flow"?

 

Flow, a term introduced by the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934–2021), is a finely tuned harmony. Whatever its precise neurochemical ensemble, we experience its music through focused action. Alternatively, when flow is blocked and focus scatters, we experience the brain's disharmony.

 

I ask myself: Why does my brain hurt?

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Interruptions?

Fatigue?

Erratic processes?

Rumination?

Digital conundrums?

 

Once I've named the source of the discomfort, only then can I address what pains it, adjusting my choices accordingly. By attuning to my mind's somatic life, alert to its signals, I can make my brain sing.

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