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" Creating a full-blown ready-to-wear collection from scratch for an iconic accessories brand isn&amp;#039;t a task for the faint of heart, but on a recent chilly afternoon over mint tea in the luxuriously cozy bar of the Bowery Hotel, Alessandra Facchinetti, the creative director of Tod&amp;#039;s, looks almost\u2014could it be?\u2014at peace.   &amp;quot;I am so in love with what I am doing,&amp;quot; Facchinetti says, her huge black eyes dancing. She&amp;#039;s wearing a dusty blue double-breasted pantsuit with a blouse of the same color and a chunky modernist cuff\u2014all from the collection, of course. &amp;quot;It just feels so right.&amp;quot; Facchinetti&amp;#039;s sense of relief is palpable, and unsurprising: Critics and retailers across the board adored her debut, applauding its groovy haute-Neapolitan vibe, genius twists on leather, and hues both icy and rich. Inspired by midcentury masters of Italian painting and furniture, including Piero Fornasetti and Gio Ponti, the look is lush but pared down, simple yet vibrant.   Related: Made In Italy: Tod&amp;#039;s To Pay For The Roman Colosseum&amp;#039;s Renovation   The collection marks a new era at Tod&amp;#039;s, the company whose driving moccasin once captured the heart of Gianni Agnelli and whose name now is shorthand around the world for casual, high-end elegance. Tod&amp;#039;s CEO, Diego Della Valle, grandson of the label&amp;#039;s founder, has made clear that Facchinetti&amp;#039;s hiring is the opening salvo in plans to make the brand a competitor of such global lifestyle powerhouses as Burberry. As such, the pressure on her to produce a killer collection was intense. &amp;quot;We are all in heaven now that people are loving it,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But I cannot lie and say we were not nervous.&amp;quot; Related: Tod&amp;#039;s and David LaChapelle Collaborate on Pop Touch At this point in time, only the most hard-hearted among us could blame the 41-year-old Facchinetti for exhaling with joy as her clothes fly off the racks. She&amp;#039;s had a bumpy ride over the years. Despite her widely acknowledged talent and relentless work ethic, her career has been one of the most tumultuous in fashion\u2014the daughter of an Italian rock star (her father, Roby Facchinetti, still records with his band, Pooh). A decade ago, after four years working under Tom Ford at Gucci in its glory days, Facchinetti was named Ford&amp;#039;s successor when he left the company in a legendary huff. Critics conceded that no designer could shine under such circumstances\u2014and in the same breath they ripped her initial collections as too derivatively Fordian. In 2007, Facchinetti was given another virtually impossible task: to follow the retiring (only in the strictest legal sense, it turned out) Valentino Garavani at the legendary house that bears his name. Determined not to fall into the same trap that ensnared her at Gucci, she brought out a sharp-edged collection that was loved by avant-gardists\u2014but savaged by others for its disregard for the historic brand&amp;#039;s DNA and archives. Valentino&amp;#039;s new owners replaced her after only two seasons with Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, also originally accessories designers, both of whom had been at Valentino for a decade.  But the stars are aligning at last for Facchinetti, who in recent years has collaborated with Pinko, the trendy midprice Italian line. Free from having to conjure in the shadow of a male design legend, the game is hers entirely this time around. And Della Valle, the iconoclastic scion whose family controls Tod&amp;#039;s, is an entirely different sort of alpha male. &amp;quot;He is very human,&amp;quot; she says, grabbing her knees, her long legs coltish beside the low table. &amp;quot;We really understand each other. I trust him. He is strong, but in a good way. He has built a very special place, his company. There is something more there than I&amp;#039;ve ever experienced.&amp;quot; Facchinetti&amp;#039;s challenge, which she has thrown herself into in her usual obsessive manner, is to conceptualize a &amp;quot;Tod&amp;#039;s woman&amp;quot; from head to toe. Or (this being Tod&amp;#039;s, after all) from toe to head. Although she had never before begun her creative process with accessories, this time it seemed totally natural to think first about shoes. Among her first gestures were to give the loafers a feminine twist and to add soft, strappy sandals to set the tone. &amp;quot;I realized that to know the Tod&amp;#039;s woman, to create her, you had to know how she moves, how she walks. That tells you everything.&amp;quot; If the clothes now in stores are any indication, the answer to the question of how the Tod&amp;#039;s woman moves is this: easily. She strolls with the self-confident gait of someone at home on the streets of Rome, Positano, or New York. And she&amp;#039;s always got one arm swinging, all the better to feel the soft embrace of the silky-thin leathers in unexpected shapes and colors, from a tiny white sleeveless shell to a pearly pink perforated tunicdress. Leather is a bedrock of the Tod&amp;#039;s brand\u2014Facchinetti has learned her lesson about respecting history\u2014but she was determined to say something new and modern. Using so much leather in a spring collection, especially a first collection so eagerly anticipated, was a daunting task, but she refused to compromise her vision. She admits she drove everyone crazy, from the leather suppliers to the tailors\u2014but somehow the clothes manage to drape like a diaphanous fabric, rising and falling in the breeze. &amp;quot;I had to work very hard with the sourcing, with the hand-finishing, to get things perfect. I knew what I wanted,&amp;quot; she says. Instead of having the pieces sewn at the factory Tod&amp;#039;s uses for its leather goods, she insisted on having the clothes sewn by the silk workers. &amp;quot;They thought I was insane. I had to tell them over and over, &amp;#039;Just pretend it&amp;#039;s silk,&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They said it wasn&amp;#039;t possible, but I knew we would find a way.&amp;quot; That the Tod&amp;#039;s woman is likely to emerge as, well, a lot like Facchinetti herself, is a happy coincidence, she says. &amp;quot;I understand what it is to simplify, to spend on things that will be a part of your daily life and make you happy for a long time instead of just being something in your closet that you regret and can&amp;#039;t remember why you even bought.&amp;quot; After helping shape Gucci&amp;#039;s sex-is-power image and trying to update Valentino&amp;#039;s ladylike veneer, these days Facchinetti dreams of light. Her refuge\u2014when she can tear herself away from the office\u2014is the small, plant-filled terrace of her Milan apartment. And she prefers to vacation with her boyfriend amid the ancient, untouristed, sun-soaked towns of Puglia, the heel of Italy&amp;#039;s boot, rather than glammed-up locales like Capri or Tuscany. &amp;quot;I think the Tod&amp;#039;s woman is of any age, but still she is grown-up. She knows what is important. She knows what is beautiful. She knows what&amp;#039;s of value. This is something that I understand very well.&amp;quot; This story originally appeared in the April 2014 issue of ELLE magazine. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a12688/alessandra-facchinetti-profile/>