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The Ampezzo strips a mountaineering tour down to what an approach shoe actually needs, then rebuilds it in leather for the street.
Diemme‘s Ampezzo borrows its silhouette from approach shoes, the hybrid category climbers wear on the hike into a route before switching to dedicated climbing shoes for the rock itself. That lineage shows up in two details the brand calls out directly: an extended lacing system that runs low down the shoe’s throat for a more adjustable, secure fit than a standard low-top offers, and a rubberized protective toe box, both features approach shoes carry specifically because a loose ankle or a stubbed toe on loose scree can end a trek before it starts.
What Diemme has done with that shape is strip out everything an approach shoe needs for actual mountain use and rebuild the rest in leather. The brand describes the stripped down upper as “an antipode to heavily constructed mountaineering boots,” and frames that pared back construction as strictly a matter of weight in its purest form, the same logic that governs real technical footwear, just redirected toward a shoe meant for pavement rather than scree fields. The result sits closer to a smart, slightly rugged leather shoe than to anything resembling a hiking boot, while keeping just enough of the original silhouette’s DNA, the toe shape, the lacing, the low ankle collar, to read as clearly descended from mountain gear rather than styled to merely look that way.
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The name isn’t incidental. Cortina d’Ampezzo sits in the heart of the Dolomites in Italy’s Veneto region, one of Europe’s most storied alpine climbing and hiking destinations, and Diemme’s own factory, Calzaturificio Diemme, operates out of Onè di Fonte in that same broader region, an area the brand describes as one of Italy’s most important centers for performance footwear production and research. Diemme is run by brothers Dennis and Maico Signor, who spent 25 years building outdoor and performance footwear for other houses, including Maison Margiela, Chanel, and Bottega Veneta, along with Japanese labels like nonnative, before launching their own label under that same roof.
That manufacturing background is part of why the Ampezzo reads as more than a nostalgia exercise. Diemme’s own framing of its process, converting classic mountaineering silhouettes into products shaped around everyday needs, only works if the brand actually understands the technical shoe it’s referencing well enough to know which parts to keep and which to cut. A quarter century spent building genuinely technical footwear for other labels is the kind of institutional knowledge that’s hard to fake when a brand tries to simplify a mountaineering shape without it collapsing into a costume version of one.
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Diemme ships the Ampezzo with an extra set of laces, letting a wearer switch between a neutral tone and a contrast color depending on how dressed up or down they want the shoe to read on a given day, a small detail that does a lot of work for a shoe explicitly positioned as one that moves between registers rather than committing to just one. Retail listings for the model currently show leather versions, including black leather and a brown pebbled leather offered as an END. exclusive, priced around $525, with suede versions in colorways like black, olive, dark sand, and light taupe running closer to $465. Diemme also offers waxed leather finishes in tones like cold pine and mogano within the same Ampezzo family, giving the silhouette a noticeably wider color and material range than a typical single seasonal release.
Construction details confirmed across retailer listings include a full leather upper paired with a rubber outsole, described by at least one retailer as a Cornaro outsole with a tonal rubber mudguard wrapping the toe, and a leather lined latex insole intended to keep the shoe breathable in warmer weather despite the leather upper. The overall look is deliberately hardware free and clean, letting the lacing and toe construction carry the shoe’s technical references rather than any branding applied on top.
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None of the retail listings reviewed specify a single unified release date for the current Ampezzo lineup, since the model functions as a standing part of Diemme’s catalog rather than a one-off seasonal drop, restocked and re-colored on an ongoing basis rather than launched once and retired. Anyone shopping a specific colorway should expect availability to vary by retailer and season rather than following a single fixed calendar.
That standing-catalog status is itself a useful signal about how Diemme positions the shoe. A model built around swappable laces and a wide spread of leather, suede, and waxed leather finishes is designed to be revisited season after season rather than chased once and discontinued, closer in spirit to a house staple than a hype release. It also means the Ampezzo shows up regularly through Diemme’s own retail partners rather than being tied to any single drop calendar, which suits a shoe whose whole pitch is versatility rather than scarcity.
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