MIAMI, 21 October 2026 — Michele Lopriore, the Italian footwear house founded in Milan in 1986, marks its fortieth year in business in 2026, four decades after its founder opened a single store in Piazza Cadorna and named it Giada, after his newborn daughter.

That store became ten across Lombardy and beyond. Today the house is run in the United States by the founder’s son, Mike Lopriore, from Miami, and sells through eight company-owned boutiques, a wholesale business shown each season at Coterie in New York, an active pop-up programme, and online at michelelopriore.com. The shoes are still made by hand in Italy.

What has changed in forty years is not the making but the selling. Michele Lopriore is among the few Italian houses of its size that runs every channel itself. It is its own importer of record, clearing its own customs rather than working through a distributor. It holds its own leases and staffs its own floors. And in a single year it has opened more than thirty-five pop-up and temporary-tenant locations, in markets including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Long Island and across South Florida — a pace of physical retail expansion that runs directly against an industry closing stores.

My father opened one shop in Milan and named it after my sister. He was not building a company, he was making shoes properly and selling them to people he knew. Forty years later I am doing the same thing in eight American cities, and the only reason it works is that we never handed any part of it to somebody else. Mike Lopriore, Principal

The shoes are made in Italy by hand, in leather sourced from Tuscan tanneries. Each pair is Blake-stitched, a construction that joins the sole directly to the upper for a slimmer, more flexible shoe than cemented alternatives, and each pair passes through seven pairs of hands before it leaves the atelier. The collection runs to loafers, boots, pumps, flats and sandals in Italian sizes 35 to 41.

Michele Lopriore operates boutiques at 900 North Michigan Shops and The Shops at North Bridge in Chicago, Copley Place in Boston, The Shops at Chestnut Hill in Newton, the World Trade Center in New York, King of Prussia, Palm Beach Gardens and Boca Raton, alongside its Miami headquarters and warehouse.

The company marks the anniversary with client events at its boutiques through the autumn, beginning at The Shops at North Bridge in Chicago on Thursday 29 October 2026.

Michele Lopriore at forty

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About Michele Lopriore

Michele Lopriore is a family-owned Italian footwear house. The first store opened in Milan’s Piazza Cadorna in 1986, named Giada after the founder’s newborn daughter, and the house grew to ten locations across Lombardy and beyond. Today the brand is handmade in Italy and run in the United States by the founder’s son, Mike Lopriore, from Miami. The company operates its own boutiques in Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and South Florida, sells wholesale to US retailers and exhibits at Coterie in New York, imports directly as its own importer of record, and sells online at michelelopriore.com.

Media contact

High-resolution imagery, brand boilerplate and further background: michelelopriore.com/press