How Men Are Learning to Love the Friulana, Italy’s Best-Kept Footwear Secret
Yolanda Edwards remembers seeing her first friulane in the wild.
“A guy who seemed cool and confident was wearing them with jeans and a T-shirt and a blazer. I had no idea what they were, but they made an impression on me, and it wasn’t until decades later that I started seeing them on chic Italians, usually on holiday.”
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The experience of the prolific traveler and YOLO Journal founder—who has since collected about 20 pairs of the lightweight velvet slipper herself—is typical of American friulane adopters. For years, the rubber-soled shoe native to Venice has been a favorite of the well-traveled and well-connected, usually women. But it’s starting to gain a foothold among American men including Matt Hranek, Edwards’s husband and the founder of the magazine Wm Brown.
“At first I thought, ‘That’s kind of a lady’s shoe,” Hranek tells Robb Report. “Then I saw all these men in Italy—from guys in their garden to men dressed in the streets of Milan, particularly in the hotter months—wearing this elegant slipper.”
Converted, Hranek followed in his wife’s footsteps by launching a collaboration with the Italian maker Scarosso, which had earlier produced a friulane capsule with Edwards and her travel-focused publication. Hranek’s effort took a more consciously male approach to the slight slipper, which was made available in earthy tones like olive or a midnight navy that might even pass for creative black tie.
That the friulana (singular) could even be considered formal wear is a marker of how far the style has come since its humble beginnings. As Viola Arrivabene, co-founder of the Milan-based friulane brand ViBi Venezia, explains, the shoe emerged in Italy’s Northeastern Friuli-Venezia Giulia region following the Second World War. Faced with the scarcity of the immediate postwar period, resourceful women made shoes with whatever fabric was at hand and bicycle tires that had been repurposed as soles.
Before long, the gondoliers of nearby Venice took a shine to the style, finding that its rubber was gentler on their boats’ paint. For similarly practical reasons, it was also embraced by the city’s palace-dwelling aristos.
“Having a bicycle tire, you wouldn’t hear a loud ch-ch-ch on the floor, and it would be quiet while walking around your piano nobile or palace on the Grand Canal,” Arrivabene says.
Viola and her sister Vera, who grew up in Venice with a friulane-wearing father, glassmaker Count Giberto Arrivabene Valenti Gonzaga (who often sported them at home with a T-shirt and a sarong) assembled sizable collections of their own and were often besieged with requests from friends asking after a pair themselves. Seeing an opportunity, the duo founded their business in 2015.
In contrast to the unisex, ambidextrous friulane traditionally sold in drugstores or small boutiques, ViBi Venezia divided its product into men’s and women’s and left and right. It also expanded the definition of what a friulana can be, with new designs for men including leather-soled loafers and a “Gym Collection” with a sneaker-style outsole, and tweaked the design of its core style to have a slightly higher vamp.
“What we noticed is that loads of men said that it was shaped too much like a ballerina,” Arrivabene says. “We made the top of the shoes a bit higher instead of the ballerina effect.”
ViBi Venezia’s latest play for male clientele is a capsule with swimwear brand Peninsula, which sees the former’s slippers made with hand-printed linen uppers. Notably, it is the first major ViBi Venezia collaboration made exclusively for men.
Another friulane brand feeling bullish about the male customer is Piedàterre Venezia, which was founded in 1952 and purchased from its original owners in 2021 by Stuart Parr, an American film producer and designer living in Venice. Piedàterre, whose bright boutiques in Rialto and Campo Santo Stefano are flooded from the lush hues of its 25 proprietary velvets, counts about 35% of its customers as male. Parr, for his part, has further challenged conceptions of footwear and gender by introducing Mary Jane-style friulanes for men.
“Bruce Lee wore them,” Parr says, speaking of Mary Janes generally. “They’ve always come in and out of fashion, so I wanted to relaunch them—I did, and it’s been doing great.”
To get the best case of why men ought to adopt the friulane, you might have to ask a woman.
Firm fan Emilie Hawtin, who lives in the slipper with suits from her women’s tailoring brand Clementina year-round, sees a friulane-forward stance as a mark of good character.
“There are few things more appealing on men than casually worn friulane in the summer. I assume that guy is well traveled, at ease with himself and his style, and has little to prove by wearing obvious labels,” she tells Robb Report. “He’s too enlightened for something as nouveau as Loro Piana slides.”
That, and the fact that though friulane may have some overlap with sandals—both are supremely packable and beach-ready—the former covers a controversial part of the anatomy in velvet.
“There really is nothing more stylish on a man or a woman. And they’re more practical than sandals,” Hawtin concludes. “No one wants to see your feet while walking around a city, at the office, or in general, really.”
Get the Look:
ViBi Venezia Gym Sneaker in Bottle Green
Piedaterre Red Terry Modigliani Slipper
Azaleri Certosa Friulana in Tobacco
Scarosso "Valentino" Slipper in Blue Velvet
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