There are nearly 15,000 shoe designs in the Ferragamo archive of work by its founder, Salvatore. And, said Maximilian Davis today: “all of them were created for a reason, and all of them contain a story.”

The stories he zeroed in on this season related to dance. The moodboard featured a 1950 shot of Salvatore fitting footwear on Katharine Dunham, the American dancer and choreographer whose art was influenced by her ethnographic research in the Caribbean: “There were a lot of things I felt connected to,” said Davis of Dunham. Added to that were images of Nureyev (who apparently danced in Ferragamo shoes) and some Mapplethorpe-ian ballet photographs by Hans van Manen. The final twist was a reference to the canvases (not cans) of artist Piero Manzoni: Davis said he was drawn to the tactility and texture of Manzoni’s surfaces.

Cue curtain up. Loose trench coats with sub-butt belting, field jackets and sectioned skirts were cut in metal-spiked nylon give that crunchy Manzoni feel and emanated that ’80s off-duty ballet hunk vibe that Nureyev so powerfully emanated—this was further transmitted in a great, butch oversized black leather pea coat. Leggings, bodies, and ribboned pointed-toe pumps were worn with double wrapped tops that mirrored the classic ballet cardigan. These telegraphed Davis’s design leap to a section of silk-mix block color sportswear looks that featured double-wrapped jackets and silk knit dresses with ribbed hems thrown into unorthodox shapes through knotting and drape.

Full parachute dresses billowed against the wearer obscured physical form as much as it was mapped and accentuated by fitted knit dresses inset with striped organic shapes that looped as fringe below and back into the hemline. Bags, shorts and asymmetrically defined fitted dresses and skirts in washed denim were edged with an emphatic spray of tufted fringing. The house codes were reinforced in outerwear and a skirt cut from leather Gancini mesh.