From the NASA to the àpres-ski: the history of the Moon Boot A small step for man, a big step for footwear design

Last January 25th, the Court of Milan issued a judgment requiring Chiara Ferragni to withdraw a boot produced by her identical brand, glitter aside, to the famous Moon Boot produced by the Tecnica group. In doing so, he reaffirmed the originality of one of the masterpieces of Italian product design of the second half of the 1900s, the Moon Boot which, starting from a factory in the province of Treviso, has come over time to be exhibited at the Louvre among the 100 symbols of 20th-century design and is today part of the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The design of the Moon Boot, in fact, originally created in 1969 by Giancarlo Zanatta, who founded the Tecnica group in 1960 from his father's footwear workshop, perfectly represents that historical schism with which the world of sports aesthetics has separated itself from its original context to enter the field of pure clothing, that is, lifestyle and has been imitated many times, not only by Chiara Ferragni's brand but also by brands such as Dior that has inserted a snow boot very similar to it in the FW21 collection. 

However, the brand seems to be ready to reaffirm the originality and heritage of the Moon Boot, also reporting positive data such as a 70% increase in online sales in North America, a territory on which the product has no physical retailers. At the moment there is a vast strategy that will see the brand arrive in the Asian and US markets, driven by the offer of the FW21 collection that will then expand also in the production of accessories. But the most important thing is that the repositioning on the market will take place through a fairly dense collaboration program and a relaunch of its e-commerce, as the general manager of the brand, Mirko Massignan, has hinted:

«If previously it was the brands that contacted us, from this season we decided which partners we would have liked to work with, choosing them also based on their presence in the markets in which we want to expand. We have several collaborations in the pipeline: one focused on women, one on sustainability, a unisex dedicated to our iconic models, a very pop with which we intend to reach the Asian clientele. [...] We will also adopt a more immediate type of communication inspired by the concept of see now buy now, focusing every month on a particular product».