When he was about 18, Silvio Campara watched an episode of MTV’s Stylissimo dedicated to David LaChapelle, in which the surrealist photographer shoots Alexander McQueen and his long-time collaborator Isabella Blow. In one of the most famous images from the shoot, an original print of which currently resides in the Golden Goose CEO’s office, the pair stand in front of a burning castle. As McQueen explains in the interview, “the castle is the establishment and I burned down the establishment.”
It’s what Campara also set out to do — in his way. “I think before starting on a path, you have to see or experience something in order to envisage it,” he says, sitting in the executive meeting room of the Golden Goose headquarters in Milan. “The Golden Manifesto” is emblazoned in massive gold letters on one wall, while all the chairs carry the words “Dream Maker” on the back.
“Say you want to become an astronaut,” he explains. “You probably saw a movie or read a book that activated your imagination, that made you dream. For me, it was that LaChapelle shoot. Watching that Stylissimo episode gave me a sense of revolution, while also making me feel at home. Maybe it wasn’t so clear to me back then, but in the end, that’s what I’ve done in my professional life. My creativity didn’t land on product or aesthetic, but I think I have been disrupting the business world.”
Today, Golden Goose reported earnings of €342.1 million for the first half of 2025, which is up 13 per cent compared to the same period in 2024. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) net revenues, which represent 77 per cent of total sales, were up 19 per cent year on year. When Campara joined the company 12 years ago, Golden Goose was reporting annual revenues of €30 million whereas in 2024, net revenues reached €654.6 million. In a luxury landscape of unprecedented uncertainty, consistently reporting growth can certainly be seen as disruptive.
Golden Goose was founded by Francesca Rinaldo and Alessandro Gallo in 2000 in Marghera, Italy. Campara joined the company in 2013, initially as chief commercial officer, and was promoted to CEO in 2018. Before that, he held positions at swimwear brand Sundek and Giorgio Armani in Hong Kong. Serendipitously, he started his career working in retail for Alexander McQueen.
“When I met Alessandro, it was magic at first sight for me,” Campara remembers. “I had been approached by another luxury brand to be their general manager in China at the time, but we just clicked. It was in the first Golden Goose showroom on Via Salaino in Milan. Francesca was there, those two were inseparable. They also both come from Veneto, and so do I. It s not just a geographical thing to be Venetian — it’s a sense of belonging. We all sat together for 12 hours and wrote a P&L. It was an incredibly collaborative, almost spiritual process.”
This year marks the company’s 25th anniversary, but they have eschewed celebrations, choosing instead to focus on their Haus strategy, which comprises the opening of community spaces in different cities around the world. Next week, Campara and his team will be in Tokyo for the opening of Haus there, while Haus Madison Avenue and Istanbul are in the pipeline for next year. There are a few more special brand moments sprinkled across the rest of the year, such as a flagship store opening in Mumbai and another in Chengdu. “In a difficult macroeconomic context and luxury backdrop, fashion doesn t need another big celebratory moment. Instead, we decided to celebrate and reconfirm our loyalty to local communities around the world,” comments Campara.
Playing his own game
Golden Goose is known for its trademark distressed sneakers — which account for 90 per cent of the sales — but also offers full ready-to-wear men’s and women’s collections. We continue the interview with a tour of the HQ building, which includes a greenhouse, a terrace with a golden swing set and a massive showroom. While walking through the latter, I note that the collections are a mix and match of references and styles — there are cowboy boots and hats, tailored jackets and an endless amount of studs.
Campara explains that the brand concept is “a traveller’s wardrobe” and starts pulling out random pieces from the rails and throwing them on the floor to demonstrate how easy it is to put together an outfit using any Golden Goose item. “Each collection represents a metaphysical journey through America, Asia, Africa, Europe, everywhere in the world. When you travel, you pick a souvenir, and then these souvenirs become part of your look or your home — part of your memory. The idea is to make the customer feel as relaxed as possible about pulling a look together,” he adds.
Before Campara joined the company, product strategy was very different: ready-to-wear accounted for 65 per cent of sales, with boots at 15 per cent and sneakers at just 20 per cent. He saw an opportunity in sneakers and decided to go hard in that category. “We didn’t have the budget or the marketing prowess of the bigger fashion brands, so we had to play our own game,” he explains. “The only category that was not owned by anyone was sneakers. It also felt like the sneakers, with their incomplete star motif, really spoke to the message of the brand. That it’s perfect to be imperfect.”
Campara’s next pivotal move in joining Golden Goose was setting up the company’s retail network, which until that point operated fully wholesale. Golden Goose opened its first store in Milan’s Via Cusani in October 2013. “It was magical,” he remembers. “We finally had a home for all the lovers of the brand. Thanks to that store, we realised that we didn’t have customers, but people obsessed with Golden Goose. Anyone who came in really engaged with the product and the staff. It was a great learning for me because that was the day I understood the real potential of this brand.”
Talking directly to the customer
He first scoped out the opportunity in DTC while working for Sundek, where he served as brand and export manager from 2009 to 2013. “Sundek was fantastic because any problems I faced in my career, I first faced there. We didn’t have a lot of resources, and the company was 100 per cent based on beachwear, which back then worked more seasonally. It was also a wholesale business, which meant we were selling the product through agents, who work with a pretty narrow way of thinking. It would take about nine months to deliver the product, when the sales period was technically never more than six weeks. We had to pay production in advance because the product was mostly being made in Korea, and then, of course, there was cash conversion to account for too. By August every year, I wasn’t able to pay my own salary. It was then that I realised the need to step over the agents and talk directly to the customers. Because then you can have real feedback on your product.”
Campara’s biggest bet to date has been Golden Goose’s “co-creation” strategy, which means that at any store or online, a customer has the opportunity to get involved in the design process of their shoes. It’s a smart tactic that immediately elevates the store experience while also fostering an emotional connection to the brand. “Being born in 1979 means I find myself between two generations,” he explains. “When I started my career, I was the youngest of the oldest, which meant I was able to not only embrace change but anticipate it and even create it. The fashion industry used to work transactionally and on the basis of scarcity. But that’s shifted into something more sentimental and emotional, and the reason many companies have been left behind is their inability to comprehend the need to put the customer at the centre.”
Golden Goose opened its first co-creation store, back then called Lab, in 2018. “That’s when the biggest shift happened and I became the oldest of the youngest,” Campara continues. “I had this notion that if the younger generations were making their own content, then soon they would start making their own products too. And that’s how co-creation was conceived, and we shifted the paradigm. We were now inviting the customer into our store not to shop, but to make something. It was epic. We never paid for any billboards or any other type of marketing. But we built 295 stores in 64 countries in 12 years.”
Still, what Campara stands out for the most is his leadership and communication style, which is intently focused on fostering emotional connections with not only his customers but also his employees and collaborators. “My recommendation to other leaders is to keep exercising their listening skills. And it’s not about just listening with your ears but also with your heart and your instincts,” he says. “You need to understand what people fear or dream about, what is making them happy or angry. And you need to lead with empathy, which means to always take a step back and put yourself in someone else’s shoes, in order to make the next two steps forward. If you can do that in today’s world, then you can really succeed in making a brand meaningful.”
He credits a number of mentors with helping him develop his managerial skills, including Style Capital CEO Roberta Benaglia (“She showed me that every single action you take is there, reflecting in the full P&L”) and former Armani Exchange global director Andrea Paoluzzi, who taught him the importance of letting your team see what you see.
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The first seeds for Campara’s own brand of management, however, can be traced back to the time he worked as an events co-ordinator and assistant store manager for Alexander McQueen in London. “Giovanni Pisu, the then global retail director of Alexander McQueen, taught me that leadership is directly related to energy. Any time he would enter the store, everyone felt his presence. He always had a smile on his face and the ability to make you feel like the most important person on the planet. He wasn’t faking it, he probably is the person most devoted to people I’ve ever met,” he recounts.
He is known for saying that instead of chief executive officer, he would rather his job title be chief emotional officer. At one point, he wanted to change his LinkedIn page accordingly but his board wasn t supportive. Which could be seen as a little cheesy but, in his case, it s genuine and it works — Golden Goose products sell and the company keeps growing. At the Vogue Business Global Summit in Lake Como back in May, which Campara attended as a speaker, the line of people waiting to talk to him was long.
“People tend to joke about the chief emotional officer thing, but it’s not a joke and it’s not a strategy. It’s the reason why we are successful,” he shrugs. “Anyone can have ideas, but nothing will come out of an idea if you don’t put your heart into it and dress it with emotions.”
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