Dancing into the future of Bally

When writing about luxury, whether they are aware of it or not, journalists are bound to quell the divides, make rigid dichotomies fluid and revive brand logos as colourful spirals for states of hypnosis. Thanks to the sacred seals of branding, cheap goods manufactured in Bengali sweatshops, where labour costs 0.23 dollars an hour, magically acquire the status of exclusivity in fashion magazines, while fashion influencers who improvise brands of accessories in their own name are seen as mere visionaries.This happens because luxury is now perceived by most - readers, consumers and social addicts - as a suggestion, if not a hallucination, and suggestion shuns analytical approaches. At the very moment when the tailor put down his needle and thread and decided to call himself a designer, the progressive decoupling of know-how from knowledge, of real from perceived quality, began.

There are, however, brands that, by virtue of their own manufacturing history, embody authentic luxury, that is, the successful fusion of craftsmanship and fashion, of artisan tradition and technological innovation, of cultural identity and global reach. Bally embodies this. Established in 1851 as a ribbon factory in Schönenwerd, in the Canton of Solothurn, the Swiss firm has distinguished itself over the centuries as an architect of leathergoods and as one of the most prestigious footwear manufacturers on the planet - representing Switzerland at the Expo in the 1930s - and is today a total look brand, ranging from footwear to accessories and clothing. We visited the headquarters in Caslano for a more intimate look at the company’s merits and to investigate its digital transition, which involves a total conversion of the rich historical archive, which transcends its product sector to become a universal heritage. «We are a Swiss brand open to the world», says Nicolas Girotto, who joined Bally in 2015 as Chief Operations Officer and who is, since May 2019, CEO of the firm. «We express an understated luxury that is inspired by art and architecture, and that through a clean-cut style exalts the pleasure of doing things well. Clearly, footwear and accessories still represent our core business, the preferred vehicle for expressing our executive expertise, but in the last ten years ready-to-wear has doubled in size and I have the ambition to develop it further.

I love to oversee the Bally collections with my own taste, but I have always left complete freedom to our designers and so I will do with Rhuigi Villaseñor, our new Creative Director. Beyond market opportunities», continues Girotto, «the tailoring enables the brand’s style to be outlined more accurately and to be communicated more eloquently. Evidence of this is the fact that our customers can shift seamlessly from shoes to coats, from bags to dresses, because they appreciate the expressive and qualitative coherence of the brand. Of course, this expansion requires strategies that are often overlooked by outsiders. Boutiques, for example, need to be reconsidered to install fitting rooms, which were not initially planned». And anyone who has explored the three storeys of the Bally Haus in Milan, in Via Monte Napoleone crossing with Via Manzoni, designed by Studio Casper Mueller Kneer Architects, will have appreciated the attention that is paid to the ready-to-wear customer. However, it is always on the excellence of footwear that the Bally tradition lands its feet on and embarks on new initiatives: «The shoe defines the Bally DNA and we are proud of it. All models are developed and produced in-house here in Caslano in creative harmony with the development center in Scandicci, Florence.

From design to 3D models to quality control, fashioned in the finest leathers that we select ourselves. Each shoe requires 200 manual steps, and the production lines located just a few meters from this office are the place where high craftsmanship and mechanized manufacturing come toghether. The workers are given 3 to 5 years of training and we have an overall seniority of 17 years. Girotto’s appointment as CEO has also coincided with an exceptional digital impulse for the company: «The pandemic has accelerated an ongoing process, namely the creation of an efficient hybrid between physical and digital. From communication to sales. The new and younger generations have a different sensibility than mine, and channels must evolve accordingly, using different vectors. Our own employees help us in this transition, as digitalization is spreading spontaneously throughout the company, thanks to our younger staff members. This doesn’t mean that stores will disappear, but that social media and the online domain will be embraced to attract those who don’t just shop in the more conventional ceremonial manner. From there we will then be able to create a way towards the boutique, because ours remains a product that needs to be felt and explained. Among the around 900 points of sale worldwide, 300 are single-brand stores, of which 160 are directly managed by us and this is why we want to train authentic Bally ambassadors, who are not limited to being mere shop clerks or assistants, but rather know how to convey the characteristic values». In this process of creative crossbreeding, of merging the past and the future, between tangible and virtual ecosystems, the digitisation of the archive is a key element: «Thanks to their innate Swiss rigor», says Girotto, «the people in charge of the Bally archives have worked with incredible precision over the decades, offering us very precise orders and re-orders.

But it wasn’t easy to manage, after all we’re talking about a history of over 170 years with 60,000 pieces produced plus a thousand posters. It was as difficult to use as it was to share. So, in collaboration with Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), we decided to organize a complete process of digitization of these artifacts. Yet, as I mentioned before, Bally was not only a pioneer in the field of collections: it was one of the first companies to engage with great graphic designers and photographers, such as Bernard Villemot and Gunter Sachs, to create its advertising campaigns. Given the wealth of the industrial and social innovation available in the archives, the project is not only an efficient multiplier of ideas for our designers, but also a source of information on the culture of the region. We say goodbye to Nicolas Girotto, who we discover being also a passionate motorcyclist, with a garage that would be worth a feature article on manufacturing excellence, and we move to the LifeStyle-Tech Competence Center (LTCC) located in Manno to meet the team working on the digital archive. We are welcomed by Jelena Tasic Pizzolato, managing director of LTCC, a multimedia competence laboratory at the disposal of companies operating in the fashion, food, design and lifestyle sectors, with partners at the level of Microsoft and Accenture. We are also welcomed by Maria Aguado Cabrera, Bally Heritage & Innovation Director, and by Beatrice Carducci, appointed by LTCC to perform the digitalization process.

Upon entering the digital atelier, we soon discover the history of footwear in all its substance. A collection of shoes from the 1930s, for men and women, including two superb white and brown 1932 dovetail spectator shoes with a delightful full Brogue design. In addition to the shape, the shoe still bears the original product reference, with all the handwritten specifications, the inscription Partie No.09226 and the price tag. The items to be digitised are retrieved from the Schönenwerd archive in thematic or chronological order, stored in a room with controlled temperature and humidity, and then photographed, item by item, through 24 high-precision shots on a rotating table. For the bags, a wire is hung from the ceiling to which they are hooked to make them float, and then the picture is taken. The ultra-high resolution images captured do not require post-production and can be scanned, indexed, tagged and given a QR code for immediate reference. Beatrice and her coworkers photograph 50/70 artifacts a day, but the archive is so rich that the whole operation will be completed in 2027. The program panel on the wall reads, «From Heritage - to Innovation: preservation, enrichment, accessibility», a sort of inspirational quote, the aim of which is to preserve, enhance and make more accessible the brand’s production process. «Preserving the archive was our first concern», Maria Aguado Cabrera explains. «In fact, digitising it means extending its life». We then follow her to the room where historical samples are kept, from where Maria pulls out the original Reindeer boots worn by Tenzing Norgay during the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953. «We were born in the Swiss Alps and our intimate relationship with the mountains has allowed us to produce top performance footwear in extreme conditions». The bespoke creations that were commissioned from Bally throughout its history were numerous and Maria tells us about the pointed toe shoes made for the Zurich Opera House at the end of the 1930s and of famous clients such as Grace Kelly. But the company’s history also tells of innovative explorations of other areas, in the progressive wake of founder Carl Franz Bally: the company has always used its know-how to explore and advance in new areas of knowledge and industry.

For example, the plexiglass pane of the famous Moonwatch - the Omega Speedmaster caliber 321 that landed on the moon in 1969 with the Apollo 11 - capable of resisting vibrations, decompression and sudden temperature changes in space, was developed from research performed at the Bally’s Chemical Technical Department for an acrylic glass. Finally, we move on to the brilliant Beatrice Carducci who tells us more about the concrete possibilities of translating this precious archive into the digital idiom. She chooses a blue hockey skate from 1932 and starts to rotate it. The shoe can be observed in detail, from every angle, and thanks to tagging, the original tag we read on the spectators becomes a metadata that can then be used by category. It is enough, for example, to input the blue tag to retrieve all the shoes made in this colour in the company’s history. But you can also navigate by materials, types, intended use, etc. A wealth of information just a click away, devised not only for professional use, but in the future also for buyers and customers, who will have the opportunity to travel backwards and forwards through a manufacturing saga that has few equals.