<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" The boat docked in Capri harbor says &amp;quot;Marlin Hyannisport.&amp;quot; And you wouldn&amp;#039;t be wrong to wonder if the vessel is a souvenir from the golden days of the Italian isle, when Jackie Kennedy strolled its cobble\u00AD stone streets in oversize sunglasses, a silk head scarf, white jeans, and Canfora sandals. The Marlin, a 52-\u00ADfoot cruiser that belonged to President Kennedy, was, in fact, bought by Diego Della Valle, CEO of Tod&amp;#039;s, at a Christie&amp;#039;s auction in 1998. The story goes that he got the call his bid had been accepted while he was having lunch with Ralph Lauren. The boat may evoke the khaki\u00AD-clad, tousle-\u00ADhaired Kennedy dynasty, but Della Valle is a proud son of Italy, born in the central Marche region into a family of cobblers. His villa on Capri, Torre Materita, which is finished with traditional Italian ceramics, was once a castle, with a tower erected in the 1500s by Carthusian monks. &amp;quot;Put a compass to paper and trace a circle. Then tell me which other country has such a concentration of places like Amalfi, Naples, Ischia, Procida, Sorrento, Positano, Pompeii, and Capri,&amp;quot; Della Valle says, without waiting for an answer. He rescued Italy&amp;#039;s Fiorentina soccer team from bankruptcy in 2002; he&amp;#039;s an investor in Cinecitt, the Roman film studio; he&amp;#039;s a mem\u00ADber of the La Scala Foundation, which supports Milan&amp;#039;s opera house; and he&amp;#039;s launching a new high\u00ADspeed train service, Italo, which will rival the government\u00AD-operated Ferrovie dello Stato. But Della Valle also seems keenly in tune with the iconography of American upper\u00AD-crust ease. For many years he let it circulate that he chose the name J.P. Tod&amp;#039;s from a Boston phone book. Lee Radziwill is a frequent guest at Tod&amp;#039;s events, and the company recently sponsored a book of photos of Jackie O in Capri. The signature Gommino driving shoe made its debut in the 1970s after Della Valle spotted a poorly made version on a trip to New York. Artisans at the Tod&amp;#039;s factory in Italy still glue, stitch, and polish each Gommino by hand, a process that uses 35 pieces of leather and requires more than 100 steps. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s difficult for companies that continue to rely on artisanal experience, because there&amp;#039;s a dearth of craftsmen, but luck\u00AD ily we&amp;#039;re okay here for the next decade,&amp;quot; says Della Valle, who is in the midst of expanding the factory in Casette d&amp;#039;Ete, in his native region. Sitting in the ornate Tod&amp;#039;s offices in Milan on a sweltering August morning, a relaxed Della Valle thumbs through Italian Portraits, a book published by Skira and filled with pictures of handsome male personali\u00AD ties at their countryside estates, in spacious flats brimming with memorabilia and antiques, on horseback, or in one case driving a vintage convertible Mercedes. &amp;quot;These men,&amp;quot; Della Valle says, &amp;quot;they felt at ease being photographed, because there&amp;#039;s nothing posed. They enjoyed it, and it shows.&amp;quot; Young or old, these assorted industrialists, artists, students, and wine producers are all wearing Tod&amp;#039;s, both from current collections and their own personal archives. The book, he says, is &amp;quot;a way to show a northern Chinese customer, for example, who we are through portraits of our culture, our DNA, our style. Together with art, food, and beauti\u00ADful places that are also very Italian.&amp;quot; Unlike some compatriots who are lured by all things foreign, Della Valle has never stopped voicing his patriotic sentiments. He is not letting the Eurozone crisis shatter this Italian dream. He is, however, well aware that the country needs an industrial plan to counteract its red tape\u2013burdened bureaucracy, not to mention a check on its sometimes less than stellar customer service. He likes to tell a story about disguising himself as an Indian gentleman and knocking on the door of Tod&amp;#039;s stores right before closing time to test the industriousness of his staff. Still, Della Valle is convinced that &amp;quot;people love Italy and they want to come here, because the Uffizi is in Florence and you can&amp;#039;t bring it to Shanghai, because Pompeii is here and you can&amp;#039;t transport it to Russia.&amp;quot; And the Colosseum is in Rome. Della Valle has shelled out $30 million to fund its restoration \u2014 with the condition that Tod&amp;#039;s be the sole sponsor. It&amp;#039;s his way of putting his beliefs into practice, and he has called on fellow Italian companies to do the same to restore the country&amp;#039;s glory. Corriere della Sera views &amp;quot;the restoration of the Colosseum as the symbol of an Italy that doesn&amp;#039;t surrender to the crisis but rediscovers its pride through its roots.&amp;quot; (Full disclosure: Della Valle, naturally, owns a stake in the paper.) In his hometown Della Valle is something of a superhero. He recently renovated a primary school in Casette d&amp;#039;Ete, and he&amp;#039;s mulling building a hotel, nursing home, and sports center. In 1988 he set the company&amp;#039;s headquarters there, in a sleek building peppered with artworks, including two Jacob Hashimoto kite installations, the shell of a Ferrari Formula One racing car, and a specially commissioned stainless steel staircase designed by Ron Arad. At the top of the stairs a shrinelike showcase holds the tools of Filippo, Della Valle&amp;#039;s grandfather, a reminder of the family&amp;#039;s cobbler origins. Diego&amp;#039;s younger son, Filippo, now 15, attended the nursery school in the pale marble and glass building, which was designed by Della Valle&amp;#039;s wife Barbara, an architect. His older son, Emanuele, 37, is based in New York and is the head of a digital media company. &amp;quot;I would say he is the kind of father that gave you quite a lot of freedom but not one bit more,&amp;quot; Emanuele says of Della Valle. &amp;quot;In life he has always taught me that if you do well then you have to do good. In work he taught me to always look for the next great idea, never rest on success.&amp;quot; Diego&amp;#039;s father Dorino died last March, at 87. He was a familiar face in the Tod&amp;#039;s offices, riding his bike through the factory daily to check out production. He was the one who made manufacturing deals with Calvin Klein, Azzedine Ala\u00EFa, and Neiman Marcus, a business his son turned into a $1.23 billion powerhouse. &amp;quot;My father taught me respect for quality as well as a sense of dignity - great values as we face a world going in a different direction. I try to teach my children to stay close to the real things,&amp;quot; Della Valle says. The words &amp;quot;Dignity, Duty, Fun&amp;quot; are inscribed on his private jet. Given the scope of his projects, the motto is lived on a grand, if hectic, scale. There are additional homes in Milan, Paris, Ancona, and New York, a helicopter, a floating residence called the Altair, and several Ferraris. &amp;quot;My free time is very virtual,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;But when I can, even for just one day, I go to Capri with bundles of papers that I never even look at. Sooner or later I&amp;#039;ll learn to leave them behind.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a2304/diego-della-valle-interview/>