“My father was the genius, but my mother was the one that kept the dream alive.” That is what I recall Salvatore Ferragamo — yes, of those Ferragamos — mentioning to me at a thing he was hosting in Toronto, many years ago now, at the now-shuttered Grano, a one-time Yonge & Eglinton bolt-hole of Italian culture and food.

A grandson of the storied shoemaker, he had arrived bearing a perfectly calibrated smile and an easy sincerity — as if he had just floated out of a Henry James novel or was just back from a glamorous jewelry heist. His brogues: not so bad either, of course. Bearing wine, too. Lots of it.