Tod's built much of its international identity around the Gommino suede driving loafer, introduced in 1979 and recognizable by its rubber pebble soles. The design was repeatedly accused of copying the earlier Original Car Shoe, founded in 1963 and credited with pioneering the driving loafer. The dispute became unusually public in 2014 when Ferrari executive and style figure Lapo Elkann attacked Tod's chief executive Diego Della Valle through social-media posts, emphasizing the phrase 'Car Shoe founded in 1963... The original!' The public argument transformed what might otherwise have remained a specialist design-history dispute into a pointed confrontation between two prominent Italian luxury networks; The Original Car Shoe was by then owned by Prada.
The case illustrates the difficulty of claiming exclusive ownership over a shoe category whose elements—soft leather, moccasin construction, and rubber driving studs—can be treated as functional or traditional rather than wholly original. Tod's became associated with the accusation even though the public record described it primarily as a dispute over design precedence and brand identity rather than a definitive court finding that the Gommino was legally counterfeit. The controversy nevertheless weakened the aura of effortless originality surrounding one of Italy's most commercially successful luxury shoes.
