Tod’s Creative Director Matteo Tamburini Exits: Why the Gommino House Wants Its Codes Back

Some fashion houses are famous for a logo. Tod’s is famous for the underside of a shoe. Those little rubber pebbles on the sole of the Gommino driving loafer, introduced in 1979, have done more for the brand’s recognition than any runway show. So when Tod’s announced on 10 November 2026 that its creative director Matteo Tamburini is leaving, the official explanation sounded almost like a love letter to that sole: the company wants to communicate its values, its distinctive codes, its artisanal quality and its Italian lifestyle more decisively.

Translated from corporate Italian, that reads like a house that wants you to recognise it again from across the piazza. Whether that is fair to the designer who spent nearly three years there is another question. You are about to get both sides.

Who is Matteo Tamburini?

Tamburini was born in Urbino in 1982 and entered fashion in the early 2000s after studying fashion and design, according to Pambianco News. His most formative chapter came at Bottega Veneta, where he worked from 2017. Bottega is the house of the intrecciato weave and the radical idea that a bag without a logo can be the loudest bag in the room. That training shows in what he did next.

Tod’s hired him in December 2023 to succeed Walter Chiapponi, who had held the role from 2019 until 2023. Tamburini oversaw both women’s and men’s collections. His first collection for the house was presented for fall 2024. His last one came in September 2026 during Milan Fashion Week, a Spring 2027 outing that drew on his own 1990s youth: relaxed tailoring, leather draped across the body, silk parachute trousers, a sailing-inspired belt buckle and a Gommino with fresh perforations, as Harper’s Bazaar Singapore described it.

Read that list again and you will notice something. Almost nothing in it shouts. Tamburini’s Tod’s was quiet, tactile and very good at leather, which is exactly what the brand’s craft story claims to be about. It was also a wardrobe that rarely went viral.

The polite goodbye

The statements were as smooth as a well-worn suede upper. Diego Della Valle, chairman and CEO of Tod’s Group, thanked Tamburini for his “creative and professional contribution” during his tenure. Tamburini called his time at the company “an important chapter in my professional journey” and thanked the Della Valle family plus the teams who supported him, as reported by The Impression and Pambianco.

No successor has been named. No exit date has been published either. If you were hoping for a juicy backstage feud, we have to disappoint you. Nothing on the record suggests one, so we will not invent it. This is a magazine, not a group chat.

Why a quiet designer can be the wrong fit for a loud moment

Here is where interpretation begins, so please read the following as our analysis rather than as reported fact.

Tod’s has always been less of a designer brand than a lifestyle brand built around one hero product. Filippo Della Valle started making shoes in the family home in the late 1920s. His grandson Diego turned the workshop into a factory in the 1970s and later into a group that also owns Hogan, Fay and Roger Vivier. For decades the selling proposition was simple: the shoe you wear when you have nothing to prove, ideally while stepping out of a boat.

Think of Matt Damon and Jude Law idling along the Italian coast in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Nobody in that film needs a logo. The clothes signal money through ease. That is the fantasy Tod’s has been selling for generations. It is also the same fantasy the internet later rebranded as “quiet luxury”. The problem with quiet luxury, as you may have noticed in your own feed, is that it became so popular it stopped being quiet. Every brand from mass market to haute couture now sells beige knitwear and soft loafers.

When everyone whispers, the house with the most recognisable whisper wins. That seems to be the bet behind the phrase “distinctive codes”. Tod’s appears to want design that points straight back to the Gommino, the pebbled sole and the Italian holiday, not a designer’s personal memories of the 1990s, however charming those were.

The ownership factor

There is a second layer. In 2024 the Della Valle family agreed a deal with L Catterton, the private equity firm linked to LVMH’s Bernard Arnault, to take Tod’s private. Under the plan the family kept majority control while L Catterton and an LVMH investment arm took minority stakes. Private ownership tends to change the clock. Investors who paid a premium want growth stories they can explain. Clear brand codes are easier to sell than subtle design evolution.

We cannot tell you that the investors pushed for this change. Nothing published says so. What we can say is that the language Tod’s chose, codes plus craft plus lifestyle, is the language luxury companies use when they want the product to be the star rather than the person behind it.

A fall season of empty chairs

The timing places Tod’s in a very busy week for fashion’s revolving door. Only days earlier Balenciaga named Martine Rose its creative director following the exit of Pierpaolo Piccioli, who had lasted roughly 16 months. If you feel like you need a spreadsheet to keep track of who designs where, you are not alone. Miranda Priestly could probably recite it from memory. The rest of us need coffee.

What makes Tod’s different from Balenciaga is the scale of the ego involved. Balenciaga is a house built on provocation, so it hires provocateurs. Tod’s is a house built on a shoe, so it may end up hiring someone who loves that shoe more than their own signature. Do not be surprised if the next appointment is a strong product designer rather than a famous name.

What it means for you

If you own a pair of Gommini, nothing changes. The shoe has outlived several creative directors already and will most likely outlive the next. If you liked Tamburini’s softer, more fluid women’s collections, it may be worth looking at the current season before the house changes direction. Spring 2027 is the last collection with his name on it.

The broader lesson is a little bittersweet. Fashion spent years telling you that quiet confidence is the ultimate luxury. Now one of its quietest houses has decided that quiet is not enough and that you need to recognise it at a glance. Somewhere, a pebbled rubber sole is feeling very validated.