Fendi (Q2235)
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Italian enterprise and fashion house
- crée par Angelica Mercier
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Fendi |
Italian enterprise and fashion house |
|
Statements
1962
creative director
co-designer
artistic director of jewelry
2020
creative director of women’s ready-to-wear and couture
artistic director of jewelry
2000
designer of leather goods
2008
designer
1989
designer
2009
intern
1997
worked for
2009
fur designer
Modernity and maternity have intertwined across time at Fendi to beget a form of fashion eternity—or at least 100 years of it so far and counting. For this first womenswear Fendi season of its centennial year, Kim Jones both considered and collaborated with the four generations of women who have shaped its course.Over the sound system, we heard Silvia Venturini Fendi discussing the house and the nature of beauty and fashion with her mother, Anna. It was Anna’s mother, Adele, who opened the first Fendi shop in the Eternal City back in 1925. And it is Adele’s great-granddaughter, Delfina, who Jones has cited as his central Fendi muse during his time here. Today, as is customary, Delfina had designed the jewelry and Silvia the accessories.Jones is a masterful editor—he has to be, to handle all the collections on his plate—and here he combined that attribute with his core design métier to present a collection that spanned Fendi’s century. What kept it cohesive was the combination of house craft, color, and an attitude that stemmed from the disruptive jazz-age modernism—the first rock and roll—of the 1920s.We started and finished with a series of gauzy drop-waist dresses embroidered with Art Deco graphics or pearl-edged botanical reliefs. Although there was the occasional fringed hem, these were nonu-flapper period pieces: Jones minimized the silhouettes and updated the necklines in a manner that made them echo ’90s slip dresses or even sportswear hybrids.Between these foundational bookends, Jones roamed freely, mixing beige shearling robes, white crocodile suede T-shirts and skirts, and a mesh vest edged and waisted with house-ochre Cuoio Romano. The collection included an extremely fine (and hopefully menswear-encompassing) collaboration with heritage U.S. boot maker Red Wing. The resulting Selleria-stitched moccasin work boots emphasized the history of family feminine industry Jones was celebrating, but also, when worn with ruffled floral socks and clematis- and jasmine-pattern tea dresses, delivered unmissable grunge overtones.Fendi’s 1990s moment of commercial nirvana was further explored in a series of tactile and boho iterations of the Baguette, which were sometimes fringed and amplified in volume. These were heaped with curios, charms, and jewelry, including furry bouquets and ruffle-edged earbud cases.
Today, Jones was exploring the contradictory nature of what’s “modern”—its constant permanence and impermanence—through his decorative references to different phases of fashion and also to a line of women all different but inherently connected. While Adele was responsible for Fendi’s conception, it was her daughters Anna, Alda, Paola, Carla, and Franca who first propelled Fendi into international renown. Over the PA, we heard Anna recall: “Our mother always said, ‘You are like a hand. There are five of you, the fingers. They are different from each other; they are complementary to each other.’” When you hear any mention of DNA in a fashion or luxury context, it tends to be marketing rhetoric—not at Fendi.
17 September 2024
This spring 2025 Fendi menswear show revealed the first collection of the brand’s 100th anniversary year: in it, Silvia Venturini Fendi transmitted multiple messages about the past, present and future of the house. “I’ve been deep-diving into the archives, and I wanted to talk about codes and symbols,” she said. A new house crest featured four sections on its heraldic shield; three of these contained the Double-F logo designed by Karl Lagerfeld, the earlier vintage Pequin stripe, and a squirrel as reference to something co-founder Edoardo Fendi would observe of his wife (and Silvia’s grandmother) Adele: that she was “as busy as a squirrel.” The last section contained a two-faced image of Janus, the Roman god of transition from what has been to what is to come—and another archive-sourced motif used by Lagerfeld during his many years here. Said Venturini Fendi: “I wanted to design a crest because I think that when you have 100 years of your story you are part of this club, let’s say, of people that have been changing the rules of Italian fashion and building something into what it is today.”Edging the crest and running through the collection was the robust Selleria stitching adopted by the founding Fendis from Roman saddlery techniques and incorporated into their earliest leather goods. Said stitch was embossed as a check onto a brown leather overcoat, overlaid onto a gently fizzy pastel check, inlaid into denim, or inserted as a jacquard micro pinstripe. Unsurprisingly, it also featured on bags including a zippered Baguette worn across the body and a new version of the design made in a chessboard patchwork of leather offcuts which were inevitably connected by Selleria.Fendi’s conception of her family house becoming a member of a club inspired her to reference various forms of club affiliation, including a knit Fendi soccer shirt (a nod also to the Fendi luggage used by the Italian national squad during the 1984 Euros), and rugby shirts in oversized Pequin striping. There were club ties and cricket sweaters too. Much of the attire seemed rooted in quite classical 20th century menswear forms—the check was used to fashion almost dad-like golfing blousons—but a progressive subversion was often applied through sensual touches and detailing.
In rib knit and suede half-button shirting or superlight henleys, for instance, the buttons traced a line diagonally across to the left armpit rather than straight down as is conventional: “I wanted to liberate the shoulder,” said Fendi.
15 June 2024
During his three years at Fendi so far, Kim Jones has stayed true to one muse: house scion Delfina Delettrez Fendi. Before this afternoon’s show, he happily doubled down on that position: “I will always say that. Because she is just so chic and because of the way she dresses. And when you put it all together, it’s about the idea of function in life.”As well as being a fourth-generation embodiment of the sophisticated and progressive female spirit of the house that bears her name, Fendi is also embedded in Jones’s practice as the house’s artistic director of jewelry. She was in the Milan show space as Jones unpicked the thread of this collection. It started as he was ensconced in Fendi’s Rome HQ, deep in the archives. Something in them from circa 1984 sparked thoughts of the New Romantics and the Blitz Kids in the UK—“Princess Julia, Judy Blame, Leigh Bowery, these people I have always admired”—as well as the positive cultural disruption that occurred when a wave of Japanese designers from Issey Miyake to Hanae Mori and Yohji Yamamoto hit Paris. Underlying all that was the influence of the eternal city itself: Rome, whose original Latin language contained the root of Romance tradition.This led to a collection layered with all these archaeologies but never overwhelmed by them. The Japanese influence was evident in the shape and precision of the immaculate tailoring and shirting. Through the polka-dot embroideries and the hoods, an echo of Leigh Bowery’s progressively anarchic spirit was present but not outrageously so. The Romanesque soul of Fendi itself was translated through the classical statuary, whose images were ingeniously integrated into the closing section, as well as the sophistication with which tailoring was blended with Aran knitwear, jersey, mink corduroy, tufted shearling, and stitched leathers and suedes to create a discreetly unconventional take on classicism.There was humor too in the leather fortune tellers and Chupa Chups–sized lollipop holders—surely a clubbing reference—attached to new soft versions of the Peekaboo and other bags or sometimes slung around the models’ necks. Two new bags, a midsize satchel named Simply and a larger rounded shopper called the Roll, were both crafted to be soft, yielding, and tactile and acted as further hero pieces. They were protagonists in a collection where Jones played the classical against the progressive on various levels to expose a new dimension of Fendi’s multifaceted 99-year-old soul.
21 February 2024
At Fendi haute couture Kim Jones’s opening look was as spare and minimal as could be: a black, strapless calf-length column he called “a box-dress.” He bookended the show with the same geometric shape, except it was smothered in silver bugle beads.“I wanted the collection to feel quite graphic rather than romantic because I was thinking about Fendi and how, under Karl, there was always an element of ‘futurism,’” he said in a preview. “I didn’t go back to look at what Karl did, but I like to take the essence of it.”Framing the language and materials of the house of Fendi—its rootedness in fur, fine leather, and bags—is part of Jones’s mission here. Against the simple elegance he’s carving out for clients, Fendi couture “bags and baguettes” play a jewel-like role. The most stunning examples were also the tiniest—miniscule bags on chains, dangling fringes, which were color-matched to a series of chiffon full-length “flag dresses” in pale pink, pale gray, or white.Jones had also developed trompe l’oeil decorativeness of an unexpected kind. “We wanted to do fur, but without using fur or fake fur,” he said. “So we’ve done it with embroidery instead.” Embroidered with miniscule filaments, and sewn in densely overlapping rippling formations, the results are feather-like and feather-light to wear, be it as a coat, dress, or pencil-skirt.With awards season imminent, Jones has been putting into practice what he knows from friends, actors, and clientele. “I’ve been thinking about how terrifying it is when you go onto the red carpet,” he said. A solution is what he described as the “shapes on shapes dress”—slim neutral-colored looks with narrower abstracted bugle-beaded silhouettes superimposed on them. Watch for the ones who’ll be trying out the illusion on the awards scene sometime soon.
25 January 2024
When asked backstage about today’s fall show references, Silvia Venturini Fendi answered that there were none, as for her the creative process is a continuous flow from one collection to the next. She ultimately works on functionality and what she calls what she calls “great classics” that she constantly reviews and revisits. The inspiration, or the lack of it, is always the same, she explained, because “if you have obsessions, it’s difficult to let go of them.”Working for a brand founded by her family one hundred years ago gives her an appreciation of what comes from the past, but she’s also fascinated by what today has to offer. In her view, attitude, that ineffable quality impossible to pin down but immediately perceptible when it manifests, is what can turn timeless pieces into pertinent expressions of modernity. And although Venturini Fendi didn’t admit to any specific talent or aura or personality hovering over the collection, she conceded that Anne, princess royal, has been a rather inspiring figure. She’s a confident woman, whose elegance is dignified and unfussy. “I think she’s divine,” she said.It’s telling and a sign of the times that the work of menswear designers is increasingly influenced by female figures; not only does it underline the blurring of the genders and the dissolving of rigid signifiers, it also brings about “an attitude of liberation,” mused Venturini Fendi who, as a woman designing menswear, is allergic to being pinned down by restrictive definitions. “A collection is a collection, period,” she stated.Fall was about a sort ofTown & Countryfeel, perhaps activated by images of the British outdoors. “A bit of a Balmoral look,” joked the designer. Tartans, twin sets, lodens, roomy bermudas pleated as kilts, a fisherman coat: The repertoire of a Scottish weekender was given the Fendi treatment—functional, luxurious, with a plethora of dense, engineered textures that were mind-bogglingly inventive and slightly twisted by a futuristic, experimental edge. Traditional loden was offered alongside a version made in needle-punched shearling; suede was rendered into velvety corduroy; a cocoon coat was made out of shredded washed denim and fringed mohair, looking like a fabulous fur. Outerwear—waxed jackets, greatcoats, peacoats with Selleria leather detailing—had generous proportions and looked great worn over roomy side-pleated trousers, accented by leather Wellingtons and hiking socks.
Contrasting with the collection’s outdoorsy feel, the show’s venue was transformed by artist Nico Vascellari into a stark, grey concrete box, with brushed steel benches displayed geometrically replicating the alternating graphic sequence of FF, the Fendi monogram. Vascellari also composed the electronic soundtrack with DJ Rocco Rampino. It all added up to a fine show, rhythmic and spirited yet with a cool, poised attitude—that elusive quality that Silvia Venturini Fendi has got in spades.
13 January 2024
Kim Jones has always believed in collaborations and, with Silvia Venturini Fendi, continues the tradition in his position as Fendi’s artistic director for women’s wear. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the house’s ever-popular Baguette bag, Jones asked Marc Jacobs to cocreate the2023 resortcollection, projects with SKIMS and Versace came earlier. The Friends of Fendi initiative continues for the coming pre-season, this time with designer and fashion plate Stefano Pilati.“Stefano is one of the designers I admire the most. I was always in love with his work and he is somebody I look up to—he has been an inspiration for what I do,” said Jones in a statement.It’s been 11 years since the Italian Pilati left Saint Laurent and was connected with a maison. He’s now based in Berlin where he runs his independent labelRandom Identitiesthrough which he often explores issues related to gender and queer culture. Pilati carried that line of thinking over to Fendi where he created a lineup that referenced the past without being at all retro. “My fascination to link fashion to history and vice versa, was inspired by the most progressive eras of the last century, the ’20s and the ’60s, and the rising gender conversations manifested in the clothes and the elegant, yet forward change of costume habits,” the designer explained in an email.In the Jazz Age, the flapper was seen by some as a threat to masculinity. Her counterpart might have worn the pants (roomy Oxford bags), but this new woman had a power that people didn’t know what to do with. Sound familiar? Pilati reimagined the flapper as a liberated person (versus a liberated woman) and specifically included a trans woman in his cast, putting the message into practice.Pilati’s take on the dropped-waist that was the defining characteristic of flapper wear is a masterclass in distilling the essence of a reference. In some instances, beautifully-cut trousers have inset “basque” waistbands in same color fabrics or ones that match the blouse they are shown with, giving the illusion of an elongated waist. The opening look pairs a black coat with a white shirt and skirt. In this case the waist is tipped in white, a subtle reference to the exposed boxer trend.
6 October 2023
The look Kim Jones was going for at Fendi this afternoon was Roman insouciance: Appropriately enough, Jones seemed pretty insouciant himself. Asked at the end of a preview about a guest list that included Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Amber Valletta, Kate Moss, Demi Moore, Cara Delevingne, Gwendoline Christie, and many more, he said: “Well, my friends have come. This collection is very beautiful, and I really wanted everyone to see it. Milan can feel very quiet compared to Paris, so I wanted to do something—and actually also just to have a chance to see all my friends.”Moore opened Jones’s debutshowfor the house back in January 2021. Since then the British designer has seamlessly integrated his codes and practice into the Fendi story, drawing inspiration from his predecessor Karl Lagerfeld, the Fendi family and its traditions, plus his own plethora of personal interests. Today’s chapter was informed by Lagerfeld’s spring 1999showfor the house and its powerful practicality drew from the Roman women—not least the Fendis and their closest professional cohorts—with whom Jones interacts when serving this house.The designer imagined the show as a fantasia of Fendi-clad passers-by seen on his morning Roman route to work. That takes him down the Spanish Steps and past the Trevi fountain: On the runway such monuments were recast as titanic Fendi handbags—each one as long as around three 6-foot-plus models laid side to side—a set design that recalled Jones’’showsunder his own name back in the aughts.His collection was acutely and minutely designed to generate impact through detail, fit and finish. Mannish mohair tailoring (including skirts) was stripped of all visible closures and fittings, then cut with arms designed to be turned up, plus waistbands switched inside out, as if snaffled from a minimalistuomo’s wardrobe. Knitwear blouses, cardigans, skirts and dresses were architecturally entangled with each other against the body, creating striking new forms from conventional ingredients. Rib knits were expanded into a sort of jumbo-jumbo shearling corduroy, slightly flocked, used in a section of oversized work shirts, coats and split skirts.Washed silk dresses were printed to gently bleed the double-Flogo into snake print, while dresses fashioned from grids of shiny circular silicone studlets heat-bonded onto jersey had a solid look but the movement and drape of some unctuous liquid.
A 1990s puzzle-print of the double-F was pulled from the archive to be revived in abstract panels of napa leather bonded into dresses and coats. The strips of material falling from the waist of two opening looks were peeled-apart explorations of this same print. A paper-like, shiny-finish linen was used to fashion a cut-away dress in the same canary yellow that featured in that Lagerfeld collection 24 years ago.To counter the titanic proportions of the bags lining the runway, those grasped by the cast were smaller—some minuscule—variants of Fendi stalwarts including the Baguette, the Peekaboo, the Origami and First, alongside a new shopper-meets-clutch named the Flip. The Selleria top-stitching that is a feature of these bags was reflected in Delfina Delettrez Fendi’s jewelry. The models’ hair often featured an emphasized parting, something we had time to consider as they made a for-Fendi unusually relaxed pace down the runway. And the Jones favorite Max Richter x Dinah Washington mash-up on the soundtrack they walked to telegraphed a sense of bittersweet, high-emotion contemplation. Jones, though, appears quite merrily into his groove at Fendi: He said he is already deep into the development of 2025’s 100th-anniversary collections.
20 September 2023
Kim Jones placed the creative synergy between himself and Delfina Delletrez at the heart of his Fendi haute couture show. “I started with looking at Delfina’s Fendi high jewelry, which she’s done for the first time,” he said. His palette flowed “in almost an organic way, with colors and embroideries based around the hues of natural stones, rubies and sapphires,” he added. “It’s the idea of the silhouette being ‘nothing’, but everything at the same time.“If there’s a space for understated, grown-up luxury eveningwear now—which seems a logical tone for the times—then Jones’s vision for Fendi haute couture is aimed at filling it. The aesthetic he’s established is based around draped, wrapped, shapes—1990s minimalist aesthetics merged with echoes of the statuary of ancient Rome, where Fendi is based. This season’s iteration became his canvas for the launch of Delletrez’s 30-piece collection of Fendi precious jewels.The models walked around a marble floored quadrangle, a scenographic impression of Fendi’s headquarters in Rome. Most were clutching a version of a Fendi bag—small rectangular leather jewelry boxes. Earlier, Delletrez had been on hand, working on styling the concept with Jones, while her mother Silvia Venturini looked on.Her distinctive diamond earrings, brooches, and necklaces shone from the runway. “Everything is very fluid,” she explained, showing how she created draped, asymmetrical shapes, studded with pink spinels and yellow diamonds, ingeniously incorporating tiny geometric plays on the Fendi logo. “It was nice to work on the jewelry first,” Jones remarked.Even before the show, clients were lining up to view Delletrez’s jewelry in the same space as Jones’s couture fittings were going on. “You don’t normally have this, but at Fendi, we all work together.”
7 July 2023
There were two products on display at this evening’s Fendi show; the house’s latest menswear collection and the new €50 million leather goodsfactoryin which all the bags accessorizing Silvia Venturini Fendi’s 57 looks were made. That factory is in Bagno a Ripoli, a Tuscan hamlet 30 minutes outside Florence, and it was no chore to be at this workplace. The long, low, terracotta-hued building is roofed with foliage and designed to sink into the landscape. Butterflies danced through the sunlit herb beds outside as a few impressively dedicated fans clustered in the carpark screamed to see some undetermined celebrity guest.Inside, pre-show, we were invited to wander and wonder as the fully-staffed factory pretended to go about its business as if 400 or so perspiring menswear people were not there. A guy behind my bench continued to use his laser-guided cutting machine to process a richly dyed calf hide all through the show. A cheery signora gamely tolerated my questions as she stitched a Peekaboo by hand. Tucked away in her corner office, Silvia said: “Here is where our work collides with our sense of family. Sometimes, when a collection is coming, we ask our artisans to work a lot as we develop prototypes and make changes at the last minute, and they are all committed. In fashion you hear a lot about the designer, and the brand, but to be fully transparent you should be able to know who makes the items, and in what conditions. That’s what we want to do today.”Silvia’s grandmother Adele founded the company 100 years ago next year in a Roman shop that had the atelier in an upstairs backroom. When Silvia was a child, she recalled, her father would drive her to the atelier (a later, expanded one) to collect her mother Anna after work. Even after the bell had rung, Adele would stay. “Because there would be a line of workers waiting to speak to her about work things and personal things, because it was all family. If Adele could be here to see this today? I think she’d be very happy and emotional—and she’d probably have some firm advice.”There is something old-world, and certainly analog about what the word ‘artisan’ evokes. Yet what was especially notable today is how many of the craftspeople use highly specialized technology to augment their handicraft. “Yes, it looks like a lab, or something out of Silicon Valley,” said Fendi. The workers kept at it as the fruits of their artisan intelligence rolled down the runway.
15 June 2023
Editor’s Note: Ahead of the opening of “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” at the Costume Institute, we are celebrating his talent by adding five newly digitized archival shows he designed to the Vogue Runway Archive. This one, for Fendi, was shown in March 1999 in Milan.Fendi’s two 1999 ready-to-wear collections can be read as chapters, in terms of approach. Their aesthetics—sunny minimalism for spring, and a good dose of hippie splendor for fall—are divergent, but in both shows Karl Lagerfeld was preoccupied with a kind of reduction, showing unlined furs, for example.“Featherlight luxury” is howVoguedescribed the patchwork maxicoat Steven Meisel photographed on Maggie Rizer for the July 1999 issue. (Stella Tennant wore it on the runway.) “It’s a return to Fendi tradition,” Silva Venturini Fendi told the magazine at the time. “Fur: but with a richly modern feel.”In a floor-sweeping fur and what looked like her own jeans, Tennant seemed to capture the high-low mood both Lagerfeld and Venturini Fendi were after. She wore another stunning number with fur-lined felted-wool pants. Once again playing with dichotomy, Lagerfeld glammed up homey hand-knits with sequins, and applied simple quilting to luxurious pelts. Venturini Fendi followed suit, showing Aran-knit bags and others featuring felt leaf trimmings. T-strap shoes were beaded with Fendi’s Lagerfeld-designed double-F logo, shorthand for “fun fur.”Karen Elson in a Fendi Skirt. Photographed by Arthur Elgort,Vogue,October 1999Photographed by Arthur Elgort,Vogue,October 1999
4 May 2023
Editor’s Note: Ahead of the opening of “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” at the Costume Institute, we are celebrating his talent by adding five newly digitized archival shows he designed to the Vogue Runway Archive. This one, for Fendi, was shown in October 1998 in Milan.Karl Lagerfeld’s favorite material was paper, and he seemed to transfer some of its properties—such as its flat two-dimensionality—to leather and other materials for this Fendi collection. Thespring 1999season anticipated Y2K, and as a new century loomed many designers looked back to the Space Age. The crisp whites in this collection as well as its sock shoes could owe something to André Courregès, or simply to the possibility and promise embodied in a clean sheet of paper, Lagerfeld’s daily starting point.Much of the construction seemed to follow the length and width of the materials, with little seaming or darting. WhenVoguephotographed Gisele Bündchen in white puddle pants with proportions that rivaled those of JNCO jeans for the March 1999 issue, the magazine’s editors made a connection with hip-hop. They also resembled sails, adding to the collection’s feeling of (pre-White Lotus) Italian Riviera glam. The following month in another editorial, Bündchen wore an airy and sporty red skirt from this show barefoot on the beach.Taking up the scissors, Lagerfeld cut horizontal slits into the sides of dresses and tops, which fell open to reveal a contrasting color, akin to double-face paper. Some jersey dresses with insets had the simple graphic impact of a Matisse cutout. Adding texture was a wrinkled Tyvek-like fabric. The matte gold dresses, reportedThe Daily Telegraph,were made using cowhide gilded with gold paint. A different type of sheen was created by Lagerfeld’s use of plastic, which he combined with leathers—bringing the synthetic and natural worlds together.Accessories are a major element of any Fendi collection, and some of Silvia Venturini Fendi’s Baguette bags here featured the kind of bead and mirror work that hippies popularized in the Age of Aquarius. The brand expanded its menu to include an irresistible mini bag—a precursor to those of the late 2010s—in the form of the enticing, snack-sized Croissant.
24 April 2023
“It’s pure, simple, but complex,” observed Silvia Fendi of this Kim Jones-authored Fendi collection. Jones had popped momentarily away from our pre-show chat to scoop up a new-fabrication many-pocketed Baguette and another, entirely new bag, the Multi—that folds from day tote to evening back in one fast folding move—that were amongst the accessories on the runway this afternoon. Amongst the show’s audience was Donatella Versace, who with none of her own in Milan to tend to—although LA is coming up—had stepped in to Via Solari to see the latest offerings from her former Fendace colleagues.Silvia’s summation was as deftly succinct and effective as that bag’s flick-of-the fingers, no-fuss transformational operation. Today Jones worked to combine four finely-observed elements in order to fashion a collection that felt both inherently Fendi and simultaneously fresh. The first stemmed from his own instinct to incorporate menswear fabrics and shapes into the vocabulary of sophisticatedly feminine dressing. This translated into bias-cut pants “always very flattering on a woman,” and backless waistcoats with added, open-shoulder sleeves, mac-shaped jackets, and double collared jacketing.Sprinkled across and within this was the second element, drawn from Jones’s desire to create a conversation between this collection and his couture output for the house. Thus two menswear-style mackintoshes came lined with pale yellow sequins, a detail whose fabrication was adapted from the atelier. Other couture-origin details included the pressed lingerie applied to cotton shirting or worn as a midlayer. The closing capes on draped satin dresses were another haute note.The third ingredient was the baseline: Jones said he had been closely observing Delfina Delettrez Fendi’s personal style within the broader quest for the fundamentally Fendi. “She wears this really interesting combination of brown and pale blue,” he observed. Her daughter was not at the chat, but Silvia suggested that Delfina’s Jones-observed code was linked to her Roman school uniform. This was also echoed in the multi-length pleated kilts worn over those menswear fabric pants and in black satin suiting. The wickedly high, sometimes two-piece, clear heeled boots, were also apparently Delfina-derived.One last key protagonist in the Fendi story also made a subtle cameo.
The triple-yarned, ribbed knits that impressed graphic blocks of color on a clinging, popper-secured silhouette were drawn from Karl Lagerfeld’s fall 1996 collection for the house. Said Jones: “It’s about real dressing: that Italian sophisticated woman who you know, that becomes global.”
22 February 2023
There was a serenely silvery flow of Fendi haute couture for spring. “I want to do lightness because for me, couture always seems quite staid and heavy,” Kim Jones had said earlier. “I wanted a floatiness. Elegant but youthful.”It’s his fifth season of establishing an identity for the Roman house, and it felt as if he’s into the flow of it now. Let it be said: when you’re out to create loyalty and cement relationships, there’s a virtue to not chopping and changing styles and themes with every season. Jones said this collection was “a continuation” of his fall couture, and a response to Fendi clients’ requests for evening dresses.What he offered was a discreetly modernized redefinion of statuesque goddess-dressing: slim silhouettes, in pale evanescent colors, somehow reworked through the sensibility of the ’90 slip-dress.Couture distinguishes itself from ready-to-wear when the specialisms of ateliers create textures and fabrics that are not at all what they seem. At Fendi, the heritage and know-how descends from its roots as an Italian leather and fur house. The passage of time obviously means that showing furs on a runway is out of the question. Jones gave a non-fur nod to the past in a couple of embroidered cross-body stoles; the rest of the trompe l’oeil expertise was concentrated on finessing leather to look and drape like fabric. Not that you’d ever know it, unless you were wearing it.You could barely tell—if at all—that some of the silvered dresses which had overlaid printed lace-patterns, a bit like tablecloths, were leather, decorated with scanned-in prints. Or the glinting “chain-mail” gloves. “I wanted to really work with the couture techniques,” Jones said. “What they can do now is so advanced.”The concept of the swoops and drapery lightly referenced an archival Karl Lagerfeld for Fendi silk dress that Jones had studied; a glancing echo of the classical staturary of Rome, of course. Jones layered it over delicate constructs of lace-edged silk bras and slips.Something of the 1930s has been emerging from the couture shows this season. Jones nailed the essence of the genre in the hammered-silk folds of a draped dress worn by Julia Nobis. A subtle and beautiful thing, carried off with casual elegance. For a woman who has the funds to afford Fendi, that would be quite a way to walk into a room.
26 January 2023
Fashion is complex, but it doesn’t have to be complicated: Mirroring the collection it produced, Silvia Fendi’s intention for her namesake house’s fall collection was relaxed and playful. As she said in a hastily-grabbed cusp-of-show moment: “I was thinking about having a good time—feeling great with fashion during the day but also during the night.” The execution of that intention, however, was deeply sophisticated.This was a collection that you could inhabit as a cocooning, swaddling, comforting hug that also allowed you to inhabit the Fendi-fashioned characteristics of a 1970s creature of the night, with varying degrees of balance on the conventional masculine/feminine scale. The second aspect—the night moves—came via Fendi’s hankering to recall her days of disco (she said she used to throw her shapes at Jackie O’ in Rome and New York’s Studio 54).The shimmering facets of a disco ball and the one-shouldered mid-length shape of an archetypal ’70s disco dress were the two chief ingredients imposed to create a jolt of surprise in an otherwise comforting—but not always exactly what it seemed—landscape of clothing. The one-shoulder chorus was visible across the collection and occasionally we saw its equivalent hem too, most often in the closing-section gray suiting sometimes hung with little F-shaped and circular baubles. One look combined a one-shouldered rib knit under a two-piece suit in a look whose respective ribs and pinstripes sheared off in multiple directions to mimic beams of light above a dancefloor.Other cashmere knits, both-shouldered this time, came with disguisable in-built collars to afford formality without the trouble of slipping on all the garments usually required. More trompe l’oeil touches included pale shearlings sprayed with dark paint to resemble long-worn and loved leathers. There was a lovely lavender sideline in leathers layered over felted and fringed cashmeres. Two highlight bags, in shearling, came crafted to look like baguettes (the baked good rather than the existing Fendi handbag). One of these was carried at the elbow and meant for toting a real baguette within it. The other was slung across the shoulder and contained an umbrella. “This is very much for the French market,” observed Fendi, dryly. She did not specify for how much dough they would go.
There was another new piece of hardware in a cascading and connected cluster of Fs—there were five of them—used on earrings and chains and meant to symbolize house founder Eduardo’s quintet of dynamic daughters: Paola, Anna, Franca, Carla and Adda. This was designed by Silvia’s daughter, Delfina Delettrez Fendi. This house has a long history of collaborative partnerships, but its DNA runs deep and true; this was another satisfying chapter in its story.
14 January 2023
“The sunsets were purple and red and yellow and on fire, and the clouds would catch the colors everywhere.” Rickie Lee Jones’s sampled interview in The Orb’s classicLittle Fluffy Clouds floated through the club-like Fendi showspace this afternoon. It was central to a piano-heavy, densely-mixed soundtrack of ’90s bangers, yet provided more than mere mood music for the collection that flowed across the runway in front of us.Backstage Kim Jones was wearing the smaller, daywear version of his pink-ribboned Order of the British Empire against the blue of his denim trucker jacket. This collection’s shots of color, in green and blue and fiery red, were, he said, purposefully projected across a clothes-scape of the neutrals that are key to the Fendi identity in order to generate new freshness to the jolt of recognition.Fundamentally (or Fendimentally?) recognizable was the double-Flogo first drafted by Karl Lagerfeld in 2000: Its graphic geometric severity contrasted with the silhouetted botanical relief that Jones said had featured in a ’96-vintage Lagerfeld outing for the house. This featured on pieces including a laser-sliced leather vest and sheer, organza, Fendi-brown racerback dresses and tops.Those Lagerfeld samples pointed to the referential span of a collection that evoked late ’90s and turn-of-the-millennium New York and London sports-inflected minimal modernism: something by no means specific to Fendi, and part of the wider spirit of the time. This was evinced in double-Fhardware-strapped combat pants in silky technical fabric, sporty rib knits, pieces in perforated Aertex-reminiscent shearling and shrunken truckers, also in shearling. And it was given extra edge—an elevating baseline— from atop the podium of colorful patent leatherF-wedge boots.Peekaboo bags were presented with chained straps for the first time, and miniature Fendi First bags were draped by finer chains as pieces of jewelry. As Silvia Venturini Fendi said in the press notes: “Everything comes from the conversation around the double F which makes us see things in couples. Even the bags become part of a family: big and small.”There was still another level to a collection that seemed as densely produced as My Bloody Valentine’sLoveless. Obi-belt detailing and the inverted masculine tailoring (also seen in an inverted lining skirt) were respectively nods back to the most recent Jones for Fendi Couture collection, and then fall before that.
Explaining this, Jones unpacked part of the process that will allow him to produce 11 collections this year (he thinks) and probably 12 collections next year. He said: “I program it so that if you put fall and then Couture and then this in a row the brand makes sense. And then there will be another to build upon it after this.”The customer, he said, is responding enthusiastically—so could he produce even more collections than he currently does if he put his mind to it? “We definitely could,” he said: “But I want to make sure we get a month off in the year!”One last chord that spoke to the past identity of Fendi while representing it afresh sounded through the woven garments in stretch-backed strips of mink: dresses and zipper-backed tops. These, Jones said, were made from vintage Fendi minks that the company had bought back from customers to disassemble, renew and then reinvent. This process—of “layering different sounds on top of each other,” as The Orb described it in that soundtrack—is what gives Jones (as it did Lagerfeld before him) such metronomic fashion momentum.
21 September 2022
It’s been years since New York has seen a fashion production as big as tonight’s Fendi show. Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi came to town to mark a milestone, the 25th anniversary of the Italian label’s Baguette bag—a bag, said Venturini Fendi, “that does what fashion should do: bring pleasure to people”—and they threw quite a party. The Hammerstein Ballroom was transformed with soft beige carpet and curtain, the rough edges of the rock venue all but buffed away. In the front row, Kim Kardashian, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Naomi Watts held down one end of the bench, and Kate Moss, Shalom Harlow, and Amber Valletta the other. What Grace Jones was doing in the second row is anyone’s guess. Then, of course, there’s what happened on the runway itself.First, though, a word on the New York connection.Sex & the Citymade the Baguette famous. “It was almost like a character,” Jones said at a preview. “So I thought let’s do the show here, and let’s add in a few curveballs as we always do.” That Jones is a prodigious collaborator has been well documented, but the match-ups he orchestrated this season were particularly inspired. Tiffany & Co., an LVMH brand like Fendi, was brought in to provide the baguettes—as in diamond baguettes. The double-F logo on the Tiffany blue croc Baguette carried by Bella Hadid was pavéd in the precious stones.Marc Jacobs and Jones go back to their days together at Louis Vuitton, where Jacobs was something of a serial collaborator himself—see Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, and Yayoi Kusama—and anyway who is New Yorkier than him? Jacobs’s section riffed on his recent collections with block letter intarsias spelling out FendiRoma rather than his own logo on everything from tracksuits and trucker jackets and matching jeans to an oversize terry robe.“I called Marc up and asked him if he wanted to design a collection for Fendi. I haven’t been involved at all,” Jones explained. “We worked side by side during fittings. We were doing ours, he was doing his. I’m looking very much at 1997 and I think Mark’s is fresh and now.” Google results for Fendi’s collections from 1997 don’t yield many overlaps between that year and today. Jones was after more of a feeling. “I was thinking about when I was first coming to New York and we would go out clubbing,” he said. Hence the irreverent, high/low mix of sequins and utility jackets, or a shearling sherpa and a mini. He meant what he said about utility.
Even beanies and gaiters came with built-in Baguettes, as did many of the garments, those shearling sherpas most temptingly.For the kicker, Linda Evangelista, who is the current face of Fendi, glided out, resplendent in a Tiffany blue opera cape, with a sterling silver Baguette bag in the crook of her arm. Jacobs, who joined Jones and Venturini Fendi for a bow, encouraged everyone to stand up—not that the crowd needed any convincing.
10 September 2022
“Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.” Karl Lagerfeld coined this permanently true aphorism — one of the sparkling fashion quotes he dashed off in a zillion interviews. Kim Jones didn’t drop it into backstage conversation about his Fendi haute couture collection, but he might’ve, since essentially what he sent out met the Lagerfeldian standard of t-shirt-y elegance; a show of uncomplicated, minimal dressing realized in the most subtly eye-wateringly expensive of materials.To start: a trio of looks, two tailored trouser suits and a long turtleneck sweater dress with a slashed skirt and sash in a distinctive brown. Only the super-wealthy — other than farmers in the Andes, and the expert fabric weavers at Loro Piana in Italy — will recognize that distinctive shade as Vicuna, combed in extremely tiny quantities by local communities from herds of the protected llama-like animals living in the wild.Then came tailoring, and a molded bustier in paler shades of slightly pink-tinged beige: Fendi’s specialty calf leather. And then, calmly on with the abbreviated lines of the t-shirt dressing. There were slim tank dresses, made of rolled metallic bugle-beads, asymmetrical long-sleeved patchworks of Japanese silk kimono fabric commissioned by Jones from traditional makers in Kyoto, and beaded deco-style pajamas.Karl Lagerfeld’s Fendi heritage had indeed had its hand in this collection. Jones explained in a preview that the pair of outstandingly lovely shimmery silver sequinned bias cut slip dresses — one backed with eau-de-nil chiffon, the other pink — had been made from swatches Lagerfeld had commissioned which had been archived and never used.There was a rationale behind Jones’s choices. He’d had the idea of triangulating the collection between Rome (Fendi’s home), Kyoto (where the reproductions of 18th century Japanese kimono were woven), and Paris (where the trend for Japonisme was famously a source of western arts and crafts up until Deco times), but he didn’t allow that to overcomplicate it.True, there were a lot of not-so-wearable sheer “nude” dresses. But the majority of this collection was as purely simple and beautiful to wear as Karl Lagerfeld’s timeless dictum laid out. And every stitch as expensive.
7 July 2022
It was a year ago that Silvia Fendi kickstarted the current mania for male midriffs in fashion with her crop top suiting for SS22. Asked today if it feels satisfying to see a Fendi-fired trend ricochet across the fashion sphere, she said: “Yeah, it does! When we did it, it was very well received—and there were so many comments on Instagram. And it was the moment to do it. But if you look at all of our shows, there is always something that might be a bit disturbing for some.”Today’s chief Fendi disturbance to the fashion force, as nominated by Silvia, was look 27’s pale greige coat in ultralight technical gabardine. Thanks to the ultrasound bonded seamless internal pockets, the coated buttons, the fluidity of the material and the gently kinky serrations at each shoulder, it looked more akin to a shirtdress. In the editing process, she said, her team had repeatedly proposed it being consigned to the nearly-rans: “But I said ‘No, this is my favorite—you cannot take it away.’”Her team did have a point in that look 27’s intriguing ambiguity rested on perceptions of gender signifiers in clothing, whereas the rest of the collection was firmly trad masculine gender wise, but often deeply ambiguous around the fulcrum of materiality. With the exception of one shirtless tuxedo (to my colleagues back at Runway towers’ general chagrin, the only glimpse of midriff), most of the looks were rooted in a mid ’90s Cali workwear/skatewear aesthetic, complete with tote-toted runway skateboard. What seemed a denim-heavy collection was not always so: look 34’s soft-washed patch pocket coat was crafted of shaved mink, while look 10’s blouson—a little more evidently—was fashioned from strips of dyed shearling. What looked like crispy cotton khakis turned out to be cut from ultra-thin nappa.Those house-specialty trompe l’oeils apart, there was a dialogue between texture and smoothness in the play of fringed denim and moccasin against that seamless ultrasound bonding. Jewelry included Delfina Delettrez Fendi’s nugget necklaces, friendship bands and pocket-fob timepieces: bags ranged from denim Peekaboos with water bottle holders to recycled double-F mesh plastic totes via buckets with removable linings that were desirable in spades. Moccasins apart, chief footwear hotness came via hand-beaded skate sneakers and the molded double-F-pressed slides that were reproduced as cute key fobs.
As for that abstract pattern, it began, Silvia said, as a cowhide-inspired series of splodges that morphed during the creative process into a consideration of the abstract patterns of meteorological maps and barometric pressure systems. As well as the slits in the shoulders of that ambiguously featureless shirtdress/coat, there were perforations that doubled as seams across the collection. Along with the handsome cropped crown bucket hats, these were designed to allow heat to lift away from the body of the wearer: that they might simultaneously inflame the eye of the beholder was by no means by-the-by. "I wanted a feeling of pressure," said Fendi. That pressure in turn generated pleasure, drawn from watching a collection that was simultaneously highly sophisticated yet powerfully wearable.
18 June 2022
Fendi’s best asset, as Kim Jones knows, is the Fendi women themselves, mother and daughter Silvia Venturini and Delfina Delettrez. Backstage today Jones explained that the genesis of his new fall collection was seeing Delfina in the Rome office wearing a blouse of Silvia’s from a 1986 Fendi collection by Karl Lagerfeld, when he was in his Memphis phase. “I took it off her back and put it on the research rail,” he said. Jones recolored the print and collapsed the more obviously ’80s proportions of that show’s tailoring into separates, some in menswear fabrics, others in denim.Then, because he was after lightness, he combined those references with a callback to another Lagerfeld-designed Fendi collection for spring 2000, one with a delicacy in direct opposition to the blousy proportions of the ’86 show. An editor who was in Lagerfeld’s audience 22 years ago clocked the reference right away. Naturally, Jones updated these looks too, starting by layering them over matching flutter-edged underpinnings.Jones is in many ways like Lagerfeld, an enthusiastic collector with a capacious mind for references, and he’s bringing all that to bear on Fendi. The job before him is at least in part to woo a new generation to the label; Lagerfeld, though he never lost touch with the young, was in his position for 54 years. Nominating that spring 2000 collection for a re-see couldn’t be a coincidence, what with that era being newly relevant to people who didn’t experience it the first time. But Jones has done it with finesse, avoiding any of the retro allusions seen on so many other runways.As he’s shown time and again at Dior Men, he’s an exacting and imaginative tailor. Here, his tweed jackets were cut lean and longish with softly shaped waists or cropped right below the rib cage, the collars turned up against the neck. Trousers were high-waisted and leg-elongating, but for every pair of pants there was a pair of shorts, often offset with a waist-defining half-apron or topped by a corset. Because Delfina came out for the group bow in a narrow, 3/4-length skirt (she’s the artistic director of jewelry for Fendi), it’s worth paying extra attention to that silhouette. Its womanly sensibility offered a counterpoint to the more youthful pieces elsewhere.Jones has landed at Fendi at an opportune time.
The Baguette bag, made famous bySex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw but beloved by fashion insiders years before its first appearance on that influential show, turns 25 this year—gasp! An archivist by nature, Jones is bound to go big for the anniversary at precisely the moment when the fashion cycle (and another Carrie Bradshaw-fronting TV show) is sparking interest in the It bag among a new generation. The timing really couldn’t be better. And in Delfina and her younger sister Leonetta, Jones has ideal muses. “What they wear is what Silvia wore when she was younger, and she’s very cool and they’re very cool; seeing how it’s generational is very inspiring. They’re obsessed by clothes and details, having those women around you when you’re working is a real joy.”
23 February 2022
The galactic sci-fi set Kim Jones had erected for his show inside La Bourse felt entirely apt. His haute couture for Fendi always seems like a flight of fancy: fabricated for the thrill of it, for the fun of it, and the extravagance. Sitting under a black globe and suspended fragments of Roman arches—smoke and radiance in the air—watching one lavish evening gown after the other glide through his spaceship, you could as well have found yourself inside a Marvel film, or watching one at the cinema.“At this moment in time, couture is quite a strange thing with what’s going on in the world. Customers can’t see it, so everything gets sent to them. It’s a bit of a fantasy,” Jones said during a preview, referring to the restrictions that are still preventing many clients from traveling to Paris. In the pandemic age, those conditions can either heighten the mirage-like quality of haute couture, or they can give it real importance. The métier can provide a rare space for ideas that can reflect and affect a broader discourse on fashion and beauty.This season, Jones continued his evening-centric approach, proposing a series of gowns he said illustrated the craftsmanship and techniques he can’t show in his ready-to-wear for Fendi. Like previous collections, Rome played muse: “It has so many layers to it. It’s such an ancient city,” he said. “We’re always thinking of the past, present, and future of it. The idea of different times and that very spiritual side of Rome, which becomes almost celestial; almost spacey.”Space, astrology, and heaven have been themes in this season’s couture and men’s collections. No doubt mildly inspired by last year’s billionaire space race, they mainly represent the great escape. The pandemic’s part in that scenario is pocket psychology. Jones, who said he had been re-readingDuneand a book onStar Warsby George Lucas, approached the theme with a Hollywood zest that recalled a number of sci-fi films centered around the age-old conversation between the ancient and the futuristic.Mirroring that dialogue in the time-transcendence embodied by Rome, Jones mixed the city’s structures with futuristic imagery and applied it to eveningwear. Renditions of the statues outside Fendi’s monumental Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana headquarters hand-painted on velvet dresses and a sheared mink cape looked like the statues inPrometheusor the landscapes in the scenes inThe Planet of the Apes.
Monastic dresses—black cassocks from the front, white nymph-like gowns from the back—evoked those of the Magisterium inHis Dark Materials.That was perhaps the celestial component Jones was talking about, symptomatic of a time when escapism has become a spirituality in its own right. Elsewhere, he applied the contours of a Roman fountain to a white dress and “filled it with mink,” while the radiant opening and closing dresses seemed to morph the lines of the peplos—the oldest dress in history—with a sci-fi structure.Jewelry by Delfina Delettrez—the daughter of Silvia Venturini Fendi—was a small but shining star of the show. Executed in natural crystal geodes and amethyst, her spiky black ear cuffs had an aggressive glamour about them that broke with the spacey romanticism of it all. Packed with emotion, her pieces made you consider how the hell she’d made them and what inspired that kind of expression. You wonder if she could adapt her vision to surface decoration, too.The collection was Jones’s first haute couture show for Fendi with a live audience, and a nice opportunity to see his work in 3-D. As a showcase of the skill of the house’s Roman atelier and a theater of ballroom fashion, it brought some fantasy to the curtain call of haute couture’s big comeback season.
27 January 2022
If occasion wear is a category that sounded vaguely quaint before the pandemic, today it sounds almost preposterous. And yet, said Silvia Fendi today: “I wanted to celebrate the classic wardrobe with which you are dressing for occasions—these are very few now so, they should be celebrated even more than before.”Thanks to the dry ice, the restless light direction and the late-for-the-office (if such a place still exists) pace of the models as they strode down the runway, it was sometimes easy to conclude that this was indeed a straightforwardly sentimental reprise of the “classic” menswear wardrobe. Signifiers of this included the houndstooth and checks galore that patterned a gentlemen’s club color palette. There were loafers and Oxfords alongside a new Fendi runner, and tailoring aplenty. A closer look, however, revealed that almost every outfit—with the exception of Jonas Glöer’s emphatically conventional Astaire-ish tailcoat tuxedo (plus bow tie!) at the very last—was built-in with a twist so anti-conventional it would leave most sartorial dandies needing physio. This was occasion wear spliced with the surreal, the ironic and the sensual.Witness the knitwear cut in with cable-pattern intarsia fur strips that featured V-shaped cutaways at the neck to allow for a flash of the pearl-garlanded Delfina Delettrez Fendi-designed O’Lock necklace, worn with matching earrings. This clavicle-curious detail was developed in two evening jackets near the close, whose necklines were more Audrey Hepburn than Humphrey Bogart, and appropriately used to frame a pearl necklace. A stone-centered, crystal clad fur flower brooch adorned each lapel.Suiting-centric pants and shorts in check wool or oxblood leather came with anterior caping details that linked each leg and made for a satisfying swoosh when walked in, even through the tasteful techno. This was reprised above in sleeveless jackets that could be shoulder-robed or buttoned at the skirt to allow for more capey flavor. There was a black check, reverse-layered jacket-topcoat hybrid whose box-pleated upper layer, if worn with arms outstretched, would be totally Batman appropriate. Especially enjoyable were the schoolgirl Mary Janes with Fendi timepieces attached to the strap—a throwback to the turn of the last century’s grapple with where best to place a personal clock. These handsome horological footnotes could be worn on either right or left shoe, depending on your persuasion.
Fendi said: “Because everybody uses their mobile phones to see the time, the watch has become more and more a decorative piece today.”
15 January 2022
Many extraordinary shows have happened in the courtyard of the Versace family palazzo on Via Gesu, but tonight’s was something entirely new—and in fashion, that’s very extraordinary indeed. What went down is that Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi ofFendiand Donatella Versace ofVersaceswapped houses—apparently for one night only—to design 25 looks for their erstwhile rivals. The result was a fabulous fashion Frankenstein christened Fendace, and it was modeled by a cast you suspect will go down as by far this season’s most spectacular.And yet as mind-blowing as the casting was—and it was—arguably the most thrillingly unprecedented moment of all happened shortly afterKate Mossand Amber Valletta had walked together and Kim Jones had popped out to take a bow for his part in designing the first 25 looks. Suddenly the Medusa faced panels embedded in the foliage walls of the fashion space rotated to reveal the double-F logo designed by Karl Lagerfeld for Fendi. In this citadel of Versaciness, that felt almost shockingly radical.In the love-crush backstage afterwards the audience that included Elizabeth Hurley, her son Damian, and Dua Lipa collided with the cast. The vibe was, as Amanda Harlech so aptly put it, “hallucinatory.” Had we really just seen Donatella Versace take a bow for designing a Fendi collection—ok, Fendace—that closed with Naomi Campbell? Was that really Moss dancing with Shalom Harlow for the final lineup alongside Karen Elson, Kristen McMenamy, and contemporary up-and-comers including Gigi Hadid, Adut Akech,Emily Ratajkowski, Vittoria Ceretti, and, oh yes, young Lila Moss Hack?In the thick of that crush was Kim Jones, who explained how the Fendace Frankenstein was first formulated. “In February after the ready-to-wear show we came to dinner here with Donatella. Silvia and Donatella got on really well, and we thought it would be nice to have some fun. It was a design-off: we designed Versace and she designed Fendi. Remember these two houses are not in the same group: we’ve just done it as friends, and out of respect for each other. It’s never been planned as a commercial thing.”Having the chance to get his hands on the Versace archive, he added: “was mind-blowing. There are things I’d never had the chance to see with my own eyes. And when Donatella went to the Fendi archive she picked out things from the same period we were looking at, by chance.
Also Donatella has never designed for another brand, and neither has Silvia so it was very interesting to see. But the reasons behind it were straightforward: we wanted to do something that was optimistic and fun as we return to live shows. And we wanted to do it because we love each other.”As Jones was hinting, the most notable recent comparable fashion ‘contamination,’ between Balenciaga and Gucci, was indeed a project comprising two parts of a greater corporate whole. The most committed contaminator in fashion, meanwhile, is probably Moncler through its Genius project: however in this it acts more as curator more than co-creator. This was something both more radical and more daringly democratic: a meeting of three disparate design minds, all at the highest echelons of fashion, and all acting with an in-this-business all-too-rare creative humility in allowing one another free rein to reinterpret each other’s IP. It also had a heritage house logic to it, in that Gianni Versace and Karl Lagerfeld were both extremely friendly rivals. What remained unclear as the post-show party that promised to be an all-nighter began is whether this Fendace capsule is a one-off—or whether there might be a return round, maybe hosted by Fendi, next season. Tonight would be hard to top.
26 September 2021
“It allows a girl to glide.” Kim Jones made this observation of Moodymann’sShades of Jae, the house track he said he’s long wanted to use in a show—and did this afternoon—after saving it specifically for womenswear. Jones’s comment also applied more broadly to a collection in which a bass line of rigorously curated, classically-flavored silhouettes and color progressions was played against an irresistible decorative sample of archiveAntonio Lópezillustrations. This was mixed into the fabric of these clothes and accessories via the radically accomplished artisanal techniques that live at the house of Fendi.The models glided out from a newly-configured backstage—where the vibe was light but Covid-19 regulations strictly observed—down a runway whose arches echoed the house’s Roman home, the Palazzo della Civiltà. Other points of continuity included the white-to-black color progression that acted to sandwich the riotous López-focused central filling, and the creative collaboration of Silvia Venturini Fendi and Delfina Delettrez Fendi, both of whom joined Jones at the close.Even the big reveal of this collection, the decoration, was not a u-turn but a return. Jones said he had dug up a Fendi logo drafted by López during his period of collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld. Said Jones of López: “He was a big, big fashion influencer for a lot of people, but is not so talked about. He had this relationship with Karl and with Fendi, and he helped shape so many strong visions of women, because he loved them: that feels very authentic and topical.”The illustrations drawn from the López estate’s archive originated, Jones said, as the 1960s transitioned into the 1970s. Here his work was introduced via oversized brushstrokes, then zeroed-in upon via one particular drawing, a rouge-lipped profile of Jane Forth that was abstracted into the pattern that contoured four vivid intarsia and jacquard looks. Color became more impactfully calorific as further illustrations of wavy-haired and cherry-lipped rainbow-framed women were worked into kaftans, a fringed tapestry-woven Baguette, intarsia leather thigh-highs and silks. Plexiglass jewelry by Delletrez was shaped in gold-edged transparent lily leaves, another López signature.
Many looks remained illustration free, including some Moodymann-perfect, bouncily-fringed dresses and a series of diagonally-striped silks (which featured that archive Fendi logo as a sub-pattern) and a complementary marabou jacket over rose gold tailored silk pants. Yet even without the figurative signposting, these looks echoed the aesthetic of the period in which López was working, and seemed further to echo a period (and in Erté, an illustrative style) that to an extent prefigured it. Or as Jones observed: “There was the 1920s, the 1970s, and now the 2020s, these fifty year periods. And the 1920s is when Fendi was founded, so it all rolls into one thing.” Continuity: it allows a girl to glide.
22 September 2021
Fresh off the heels of his second haute couture collection for Fendi, Kim Jones is releasing his most retail-focused proposal for the Roman house since his arrival. But don’t call it a pre-collection. “Rather than doing pre-collections, we do large show collections and then capsule collections, which can be different things,” Jones explained, on the phone from Rome where he was shooting campaigns to come. “We’ve decided to invest more in actual show collections, which have much more visibility, and which customers can enjoy the experience of.”So far, he said, it’s paid off. The Fendi First bag he and Silvia Venturini Fendi launched in February’s ready-to-wear show hit shelves last week and has already sold in the thousands. The F-heeled shoes are “a big hit.” Talking about his first “capsule collection,” which arrives in stores in winter 2021, Jones had his business hat firmly strapped around his chin. As someone who churns out more seasonal collections for Fendi and Dior than a bystander can count, he is—has to be—undeniably driven by sales.“The thing about having a capsule collection rather than doing pre-collections is that we don’t have to stick to a formula. We can change things around. We’re an agile company. We can turn things around quickly. We can find new things,” he said, illustrating the strategy that will underpin his Fendi residency. The first such collection was an exercise in responding to response: Quite simply, Jones expanded on the highlights from February’s ready-to-wear show, building on the elements most likely to catch customers’ fancy.The approach manifested in trippy reinterpretations of the marble motifs Jones likens to the surfaces of Rome, outerwear branded with the so-called Karligraphy monogram he launched in homage to Lagerfeld, and louche pajama silhouettes reminiscent of the look Demi Moore wore in January’s haute couture show. Echoing sentiments conveyed on Jones’ ready-to-wear runway, the feeling was decidedly practical: the easy, breezy businesswoman on the go, captured in portraits that could have appeared in a 1980s fashion magazine. It’s a sense of age Jones doesn’t shy away from at Fendi.“I have to consider the women who shopped at Fendi before, and what they like, and I have to consider the women coming to Fendi now. That’s been the message with ready-to-wear,” he said, reiterating how inspired he is by the women of the Fendi family themselves: Anna; her daughter Silvia; and Silvia’s daughter, Delfina.
“It feels very proper. And I think the Fendi family are very proper, but they’re also very open. So, that’s the brief I’ve set myself.” In that transition, Jones is using capsule collections like these to establish a permanence within his work for the house—“creating a staple wardrobe,” as he put it.“From my experience of being a shopper, I go to certain brands for certain items. I’ve already seen a week’s sales, and seen what’s sold out very fast, and it gives you a chance to work towards having staples: something that people will want to get a new version of. People are loyal to their clothes, but they also want new varieties,” he said. Only a season into his tenure, carving out a fresh familiarity for Fendi customers old and new is a sensible strategy for Jones. But his capsule collections won’t all be staple-centric. The next one, he promised, will be “quite different.”
21 July 2021
Supermodels and ball gowns: Kim Jones is living the haute couture dream. His second such collection for Fendi was captured in an emotive film, which saw the likes of Kate Moss, Christy Turlington, and Amber Valletta gaze enigmatically into the camera as they wafted around a Roman theater set in dresses evocative of the stone and statues of the Eternal City. It was shot by Luca Guadagnino—theCall Me by Your Namedirector, whose feature films Silvia Venturini Fendi sometimes produces—and scored by Max Richter. Kim Kardashian, who happened to be in town while Jones was filming, got an early preview.In the age of social media when big, beautiful dresses go viral, the direction Jones is setting for Fendi epitomizes a popular understanding of haute couture as something the eye can easily identify: bold ballroom silhouettes, sumptuous surface decoration, and famous faces. “It’s being optimistic about being able to socialize properly. I thought it was a nice moment to say that,” he said, explaining his focus on eveningwear on a phone call from Rome the week before his digital premiere. Couture clients, Jones pointed out, “go to Fendi for something extravagant.”Two seasons into his tenure, his couture expression is manifesting itself in decoration and fabrication above all. His glamorous evening dresses serve as canvases for this finery, like the mother-of-pearl embellishment and recycled fur mosaic work that graced this collection. Watching it unfold, it feels like a formative process, as if all that intarsia and all those embroideries have been locked inside him for so long, waiting for the day when they could burst out into bona fide couture.Where his January show represented Jones’s journey from England to Rome, this one had arrived and bought the postcards. The film was inspired by Pasolini’s neorealistic Roman cinema, every architectural era of the city visible on its mock horizon. The fabrics and textures were informed by the buildings and pavements of Rome, some employed in statuesque lines that underscored the theme.Jones’s evolving exercise in the decorative aspects of haute couture made for eye-catching effects like the allover petal work of Moss’s oversized dress, or the marbling of Valletta’s swathing gown.
Most compelling were the silhouettes that really took form, like the hypnotizing construction of a mosaic bolero jacket that resculpted the body through the volume-specific grammar of haute couture, or the dress worn by Mica Argañaraz, which demonstrated a similar idea in flou. As he showcased in his terrific Dior collection with Travis Scott two weeks ago, Jones’s work is at its most captivating when he amps up his cutting and plays with shape.“We had a lot more time to work on this one. We’ve actually had a full season. So, it’s a lot more worked into, and I think people will see a lot of difference in it. The people here, when they see what we’ve been doing, they can’t believe it’s the second one I’ve done. They say it’s a lifetime’s worth of understanding,” Jones said, noting how he’d watched Marc Jacobs at work during his years at Louis Vuitton. “I’ve only really scratched the surface, but we’ve already planned what we’re doing for the next couture,” he teased, hinting at a physical runway show in Paris.
8 July 2021
"In a moment where our freedom has seemed to have limits, I think it’s also the moment to push it… so I really wanted to give a sense of freedom to this man. I think it’s the time to break boundaries.” So said Silvia Venturini Fendi over Zoom from her office high in the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, the beautiful neoclassical (and less beautifully, Fascist-era) building that has been home to her family-founded brand since 2015.From her elevated office, Fendi enjoys a dawn-til-dusk panorama of Rome’s famous seven hills that’s framed by the bulging Apennine mountains to the northeast and the flatness of the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. As Fendi described it: “When you are on top of this roof, you feel that life is beautiful, and that the world is beautiful. I feel optimistic. It’s like an observatory: you see everything, but so small, and you can reconsider things and you put them in the right proportion.” Framed by the perspective of the last 18 months, this collection mapped out some new contours in the shifted topography of Fendi’s menswear thinking.The clearest signposts to Fendi’s refreshed perspective included the sunrise pastels expressed most vividly in a technically superb intarsia shearling T-shirt, and shorts whose cargo pockets functioned both as storage and expandable frill. “You know I’m an accessory addict,” she said. “I like to use garments by also treating them as accessories, and this little short gives me that.” The boldest piece on Fendi’s fresh horizon was a chic, vaguely retro, double-skirted tennis (ish) dress in white linen with striped, shrunken shirts-sleeves and a silk collar, worn with a cute bucket hat/bucket bag. Said Fendi: “The back is very nice because it is very grounded: it gives you this sense of freedom.”The metier of the house was mapped out in bombers fashioned from loom-spun knitted shearling cut into asymmetrical panels to reflect an aerial view of land or inky nighttime contours. More conventionally, linen short suiting starred landmark tailored jackets built with special pockets for cell phones and AirPods. An opaque nylon duster in coral tones of lime and aquamarine shimmered against the knitwear below.The accessory addict in Fendi received its fix most potently via shrunken Baguette bags worn by the belly with (detachable-skirted) crop top suit jackets, and a fantastic “ping pong peekaboo” featuring a specially cut pocket for your table tennis bat—surely a smash.
The inspiration for all of it, said Fendi, came from considering the view from her office window and allowing herself to relax in order to create. “The last 18 months, I have reconnected a lot with my more intimate feelings,” she said. “I was always a very introspective person, and I was fighting against that before. This year has been almost liberating because I am no longer feeling any guilt about being myself and not needing to go somewhere to find inspiration."
19 June 2021
Last month at couture the English designer Kim Jones evoked a story long meaningful to him, cast it with those he considers friends and family, and articulated it through his newly-assumed role at Fendi. Today that dynamic was neatly flipped. For his first women’s ready-to-wear show Jones delved deep into some of the stories most meaningful to the Roman house—hat-tipping along the way the many people who previously helped shape it—and thus began in earnest the process of adding his new voice to that narrative.“So that was EnglandtoRome,” said Jones of couture, “and this is EnglandinRome. Where we start.” But where exactly do you start with Fendi? Like Rome itself this house bristles with monuments of design, historical landmarks, and beguilingly beautiful vistas. Also like Rome itself, Fendi wasn’t built in a day: Adele and Eduardo Fendi opened their first shop on Via del Plebiscito back in 1926, dropping their firstSelleriabags and leather goods six years later. Quite a lot has happened since.Wisely, Jones neither committed himself to reflecting every aspect of the Fendi story (impossible), nor contained himself to narrowly defined elements of it (limiting). Instead he allowed the collection to unfold for the watcher as the city unfolds for the visitor, a multitude that coalesces towards the impression of a whole.The models walked through a group of Damien Hirst-ish,F-shaped vitrines in which were scattered a multitude of apparent architectural fragments not unlike those that ornament the Roman Forum. The looks were all in neutral shades, both to reflect the mineral colors of the city and the organic shades that have dominated in Fendi’s history. Each evoked fragments of the different creative voices that have filled Fendi’s own creative forum; we were sightseeing Fendi through Jones’s eyes.Spaghetti-fringed furs in contrasting herringbone, house Pequin striped silk shirting, and the opening loose-sleeved suede bonded mink evoked the period of Fendi’s first great flowering under the stewardship of the founders’ five daughters Paola, Anna, Franca, Carla, and Alda. It was they who recruited Karl Lagerfeld in 1965, and his great influence was stamped most clearly in a soft tote whoseF-framed handle evoked his famous “Fun Fur” of that period. It was visible too in a series of silhouettes homaging a few of the more than 70,000 Lagerfeld sketches in the house archive that Silvia Venturini Fendi had shown Jones during his immersion in the house.
Significantly, these were often punctuated with the 1981 “Karligraphy” monogram. This had also featured in Jones’s couture debut and Lagerfeld’s final, posthumously presented collection at the house for fall 2019 to act as the punctuation mark linking two chapters in Fendi’s longer story:Ars longa, Vita brevis.
24 February 2021
There were great expectations for Kim Jones’s Fendi debut today. Three years into his menswear tenure at Dior, the designer who once staged a Supreme collaboration for Louis Vuitton and worked for years for Umbro has unquestionably become more couture than streetwear. The literary and artistic sources that shaped his Fendi collection couldn’t be further from the street, although Virginia Woolf did always try to get back to the city. It was conceived in the spirit of Charleston Farmhouse, the 16th-century Sussex retreat of the Bloomsbury set located not far from the village of Rodmell, where Jones, now 41, was partly raised and owns a house. “It’s very personal to me,” he said on a video call from Paris.Young Jones would spend school trips exploring the house and learning about Bloomsbury’s bohemian members. If they had been alive today, you can imagine he would have enlisted them for one of the menswear collaborations that embody his practice at Dior and, previously, Louis Vuitton. His Fendi collection showed a more single-handed demonstration of how Jones expresses himself in form and decoration. “The movement and freedom of things were quite interesting to me,” he said. While Jones has dabbled in womens wear in past endeavors, it also unveiled the first real idea of what his vision for women’s dressmaking looks like.Of carving out that silhouette, Jones said he observed “the reality of what women around me are wearing. I have friends that just buy couture clothes, and they don’t buy big ball gowns. They buy real clothes, things that fit their bodies.” Above all, he wants to create work “reactive to the time we’re living in.” EnterOrlando, Woolf’s time-traveling tale of androgyny and fashion’s favorite lexicon for the study of genderlessness. He employed its premise to illustrate his Grand Tour from Rodmell to Rome. “Orlandowas published in 1928, and Fendi was founded in 1925,” he pointed out. The “journey from Bloomsbury to Borghese” interpreted Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s frescoes of Charleston in hand-beaded prints and the marbles of the Galleria Borghese in painted tailoring. Dresses evoked the wet drapery of its Bernini sculptures.In the prerecorded show, Jones echoedOrlando’s themes in a coed cast featuring many of his high-profile friendships: Demi Moore, Kate and Lila Moss, Christy and James Turlington, Adwoa and Kesewa Aboah.
The family constellations celebrated Fendi’s values as a matriarchal fashion dynasty, whose class-act custodian, Silvia Venturini Fendi, still serves as artistic director of accessories and menswear. Joining the cast were her daughters, Leonetta Fendi and jewelry designer Delfina Delettrez, whom Jones has now named as creative director of jewelry at the LVMH-owned brand. Delettrez’s supersized chandelier earrings graced evening gowns with a 1930s Vionnet silhouette, a certain slinkiness that resonated in Moore’s slithery silk suit, which was dying to morph into a dress.
27 January 2021
When the furthest you’re inclined to venture is the fewest possible footsteps beyond your front door, a Fendi logo silk jacquard dressing gown padded with feather-stuffed diagonal quilting, or a top-to-toe thermal underwear inspired rib-knit look—complete with dungarees—make sense. This collection contained both those examples of bed-to-bodega attire, along with a riotous “Fendi” cursive intarsia shearling coat and some powerfully colored piumino pajamas. Hidden in plain sight among them was a look (22) that Silvia Fendi laughingly conceded was arguably this season’s most transgressive: a black evening suit that was made extra thanks to its pajama-acknowledging blue piping and a louchely low double-breasted construction, but which was a black evening suit nonetheless.“Yes that’s true! Because where can you go today dressed like that?” said Silvia of this momentary aside into 2019 nostalgia. We were backstage at the Fendi showroom shortly after the filming of this collection had been completed. In her customary ante-room Silvia was just off a call with one far away journalist, waiting for the next. Between times, she took a chamomile tea then broke free to roam the rails and point out details and pieces—slits in suiting and outerwear that presented glimpses of lining when in motion; camel hair topcoats; hooded shearlings; mink liner-jackets—that reflected a collection of pieces she called: “very tactile—so soft you can sleep in them—and also very functional. Clothes that make you feel good. Because I do think that fashion can have a therapeutic aspect.” Accessories included slipper-spats for seamless indoor-outdoor footwear functionality, and mini-trolleys to reflect our shrunken but still aspirational physical horizons.As Fendi demonstrated, many of the garments were reversible to double their dosage of potential therapy. And the population of patients who might benefit, she added, was purposefully broad: “To avoid that fashionista attitude, I like to consider menswear through many different men who keep their personality… I think in the future, fashion is going to be more individualistic, and I wanted to keep that idea in the show.”That show was a purposefully-tight runway film soundtracked by samples of Fendi wondering “what is normal today” over a dynamic track by Not Waving. Apart from a set whose lighting reflected the evolving palette of the pieces, the approach was straightforward and succinct.
“I want it to be energetic and not too long… we have so much information today and and I don’t think we can [ask for viewers’] concentration for too long.”One attention grabbing aspect was the inclusion of artwork—including that cursive Fendi lettering—by Noel Fielding. Probably best known in the US as a host of more recent series ofThe Great British Baking Show, Fielding is a stalwart of British alternative comedy—seeThe Mighty BooshandThe IT Crowd—of whom Fendi said: “I like him as a man, and he is a multifaceted talent: writing, comedy, music, art. This is something we all have to do today, I think, to change our own skins. And speaking of therapy, in his graphics you can read what you want to see, like colored yarns that have been thrown on the floor to make a pattern.” What Silvia wants, or at least hopes for, she said, is that this collection “will be something that can be worn on the street next winter, and be enjoyed for its bright colors and tactile feel.” Whether still-cocooned pupa or freshly-metamorphosed imago, this Fendi collection offered options for man at every stage of re-emergence.
16 January 2021
This first real, live—and alive—show of Milan’s reawakening Fashion Week opened with prints of photographs taken during lockdown by Silvia Venturini Fendi from her bedroom window. It closed with Leon Dame and Paloma Elsesser among those swathed in snuggly satin quilting and pale lace-embroidered linens. “This reminded me of Karl [Lagerfeld],” said Fendi preshow. “He had a love for bed linen; he had a big collection.”As well as emergence from lockdown, this collection marked a stage in Fendi’s transition from Karl, Silvia’s womenswear confrère for so many decades, to Kim Jones, her newly elected brother-in-arms. Mid-chat, Fendi’s new womenswear creative director dropped in, to say ciao. “I’m here to celebrate Silvia,” he said. “ I love this woman.”Love was the common thread in a collection forged during the surreally intense domestic experience of lockdown. It saw past models, collections, concepts, and most definitely bags tenderly renewed, stories told afresh. All were presented with a fondness accentuated by recent absence, and (at least in the room) viewed that way too: Before the show, (distanced) bench mates shared their delight at being together here again (although afterward we all ran off as usual).The loungewear and pajamas and floaty wood-printed caftans had a follow-on relationship to last season’s “boardroom to boudoir” collection; “but here,” said Fendi, “she was a little more…sweet.” Much of the collection was cut in barely dyed but beautifully embroidered linen, a fabric Fendi said she had chosen thanks to its simplicity and sustainability. Runway bags ran from a sweetly naïf rattan version of a child’s beach bag to a wicker picnic basket—SVFon its leather monogram tag—that was a nod to Fendi’s wonderful recent menswear “gardening” collection. Cecilia Chancellor wore a jacket featuring trompe l’oeil embossed buttons that also glanced backward at another collection dedicated to inversions in tailoring.Prodigal accessory daughters were the Baguette and Peekaboo, incarnated in a host of collection-specific fabrications (shaved mink, braidedajouré, artisan-hewn bobbin lace, and fisherman-woven willow). Often these were presented with their own little offspring mini bags, plus gloves, clipped to the side: All were shrouded in lace and linens like freshly christened infants. There were also sweet reprises for the Fendi x Chaos collaboration strapped to some looks.
23 September 2020
This first real, live—and alive—show of Milan’s reawakening Fashion Week opened with prints of photographs taken during lockdown by Silvia Venturini Fendi from her bedroom window. It closed with Leon Dame and Paloma Elsesser amongst those swathed in snuggly satin quilting and pale lace embroidered linens. “This reminded me of Karl [Lagerfeld],” said Fendi pre-show: “He had a love for bed linen, he had a big collection.”As well as emergence from lockdown, this collection marked a stage in Fendi’s transition from Karl, Silvia’s womenswear confrère for so many decades, to Kim Jones, her newly-elected brother in arms. Mid-chat, Fendi’s new womenswear creative director dropped in, to ciao. “I’m here to celebrate Silvia,” he said: “ I love this woman.”Love was the common thread in a collection forged during the surreally intense domestic experience of lockdown. It saw past models, collections, concepts, and most definitely bags tenderly renewed, stories told afresh. All were presented with a fondness accentuated by recent absence, and (at least in the room) viewed that way too: before the show (distanced) benchmates shared their delight at being together here again (although afterwards we all ran off as usual).The loungewear and pajamas and floaty wood-printed caftans had a follow-on relationship to last season’s ‘boardroom to boudoir’ collection; “but here,” said Fendi, “she was a little more… sweet.” Much of the collection was cut in barely-dyed but beautifully embroidered linen, a fabric Fendi said she had chosen thanks to its simplicity and sustainability. Runway bags ran from a sweetly naif rattan version of a child’s beach bag to a wicker picnic basket—SVF on its leather monogram tag—that was a nod to Fendi’s wonderful recent menswear ‘gardening’ collection. Cecilia Chancellor wore a jacket featuring trompe l’oeil embossed buttons that also glanced backwards at another collection dedicated to inversions in tailoring.Prodigal accessory daughters were the Baguette and Peekaboo, incarnated in a host of collection-specific fabrications (shaved mink, braided ajouré, artisan-hewn bobbin lace, and fisherman-woven willow). Often these were presented with their own little offspring minibags, plus gloves, clipped to the side: All were shrouded in lace and linens like freshly christened infants. There were also sweet reprises for the Fendi x Chaos collaboration strapped to some looks.
Fernando Cabral, Karen Elson, Maty Fall, Ashley Graham, Eva Herzigova, Yasmin Le Bon, and Penelope Tree (so wonderful to see her in a show IRL) were all part of a cast as diverse as the swathe of reminiscence Fendi was mustering in this collection. Naturally there were some seriously savoir-faire saturated sections in fur. Maty Fall wore a loosely woven coat of nappa and mink over a floral-pressed romper, Vilma Sjöberg a dégradé coat of knitted fox, and Aliet Sarah an outrageous skirt of shaved mink ‘lace.’As well as these key pieces of design furniture from the house of Fendi, Silvia offered access to the home of Fendi: Her invitation included a portfolio of family images, her grandmother’s lemon pesto recipe, and two packs of double-F logo pasta shapes by Rummo with which to try it. “I wanted to talk about values,” she explained. “At this time to just talk about fashion seems not enough. I wanted to talk about the values that are behind fashion, and I can tell you that there are a lot. In my family we have always put great meaning into what we do. Here I wanted to achieve clothes that are about the moment, but which also are part of your life, for your life.” By presenting clothes and accessories that whispered of past manifestations of Fendi’s history Silvia was also looking to a future in which garments function as cherished furniture, ever more redolent with memories and meaning in a long and fruitful life.
23 September 2020
Jill Kortleve and Paloma Elsesser tonight became the first ever so-called “plus-size” models to walk a Fendi runway. There was also a sprinkling of relatively “older”—but let’s face it, still winners in the genetic lottery of life—representation via Karen Elson (what she did to that gray knit was borderline profane), Liya Kebede, Carolyn Murphy, and Jacquetta Wheeler. Backstage we wondered if Silvia Fendi, one of only two preeminent female designers in the Milan fashion universe, ever found it frustrating to always present shows whose casts were defined by the fashion fascist diktat of sample size (the other great female seer of Milan fashion had been all super-skinny shortly before). “Of course,” she replied. “Especially because you talk to me and I am not really a prototype of that shape. So it’s liberating for me to portray these clothes in a different way, on different sizes.” Size-wise, two models in a cast of 50-ish is hardly a landslide change, but even for such baby steps applause is still due.Fendi mentioned liberation, and that was the spirit of a show presented on a fittingly curvy, pink upholstered runway. The spectrum of that freedom ran from the liberatedly libidinous to the glass-ceiling smashing, or “from the boudoir to the boardroom” as the show notes flaccidly put it. The pieces that combined executive chic with a sexual tweak were effectively overpowering: cashmere overcoats with the imprint of corsetry boning (ahem). The sleeve shape at the top was something Fendi termed “pull off” and the half-undressed effect was markedly different in a pink satin version with lace back-paneling (ingenue) compared with an identically cut example in black velvet (vamp). This was a collection that embraced the double standards of male-eye categorization and short-circuited them via disassembly and disguise: dressing up for self-gratification rather than that of others. There was also doubleness in the materials. A mohair topcoat looked to be fashioned from patches of colored fur. The paisley-meets-leopard-print body of a jacket was made of mink, but upcycled. The freakishly oversized shopping bags (same as menswear, but pink instead of house yellow) and gleaming tech accessories from house stylist Charlotte Stockdale’s Chaos were suitably stimulating sundries.Female authorship of the wearable expressions of female power, whether sexual, social, or professional, seems like an absolutely correct act of representation now.
Male designers of whatever sexuality sketching them feels increasingly jarring. This collection was a thrill that should prompt its watchers to conclude: I’ll have what she’s having.
20 February 2020
Shortly after his participation at the LVMH Prize event last year, the shortlisted designer Kunihiko Morinaga of Anrealage was approached by Silvia Fendi. Would, she asked, he consider being part of her next menswear show? Morinaga said yes, of course, and backstage this morning he could be found watching the final lineup. Fendi, he noted, is a seriously big operation.When his looks came out the planned Anrealage coup de théâtre did not quite come off. Those of us who attend his women’s shows in Paris could anticipate what to expect, but for the rest of the audience the transformation of his four looks from white slate to logo’d and patterned when placed under UV light was too subtle to startle.However, that isn’t to say they didn’t make a fitting closing gesture at a show whose very interesting collection felt like it was about putting what is conventionally on the inside on the outside, and about modularity, and about technology, and about the place of classicism in an iconoclastic age—this collection was about alot. It also looked good.Backstage, Fendi said her reach-out to Morinaga had come out of the thinking that led to her solar women’s show shortly before that LVMH event last September and because her early thought of this menswear collection had included the notion of “transforming garments.” Away from Anrealage’s photochromatic transformation, Fendi’s shape-shifting attire including three-panel coats in fur or different tones of flannel that could be unzipped according to whether you planned to wear an overcoat, a jacket, or a bolero. There were also pants (from the front) and skirt (from the back) hybrids, which moved easily and looked attractive. There was another dialectic in the patterned jackets, coats, and hats: Some were in patched shearling that looked like cashmere, others in tufted cashmere that looked like shearling. “I want to give everybody the choice,” said Fendi.She said her fundamental agenda was “to work on the essentials of the classic wardrobe of a man of tomorrow,” and one especially clever, modernizing twist on the classic was bringing the contours of linings and inside pockets to, a whole panoply of coats, vests and jackets. For good measure, Fendi added several credit card pockets and an AirPods compartment, and revived the historical cigar pocket. On contrast tailored jackets, leather jackets, and even shaved shearling, these outlines were both attractive and functional.
Another almost Surrealist but simultaneously functional play on interior and surface was the presentation of bags that appeared to be pieces of Fendi yellow packaging, rather than actual Fendi products. There was an oversize Fendi shopper in leather, and multiple Fendi boxes that were more like tiny trunks. Opening a box to reveal an item designed to be nearly identical to its packaging would surely be the ultimate Barthesian feedback loop.The packaging riff extended to the garments via yellow taping stamped withFendi Romathat defined the seams of certain outerwear pieces, and knit bags which had a satisfyingly hand-wrought roughness to them but that also resembled shoe and garment holders. For footwear, Fendi proposed a luxurified version of a mid-calf gumboot, also seen at Dolce, Ferragamo, and Prada. This was a collection rich in obvious luxury, in that the fabrication and construction was both extremely elevated and expertly done. It was also rich in ideas and ambition—a much more subtle but potent ingredient for luxury—and there were in those inside-out pieces quite probably a few of the future classics Fendi said she aspired to.
13 January 2020
Behind a surface of well-bred manners and haute bourgeois reserve, Silvia Venturini Fendi hides an irreverent, free-spirited, almost disobedient flip side. A blasé flair for the subtly perverse shapes her sense of style, tinged with a nonconformist, unconventional streak. Now that she’s in charge at Fendi, this compelling dichotomy is in full creative view. Even if a similar energy was at play in Karl Lagerfeld’s oeuvre for the house, Venturini Fendi is bringing her own twist to the equation, smoothing the edges with a softer touch—more feminine and gentle but no less fabulous.“In the spring show the idea of a new woman was already taking shape, and this pre-collection strengthens her identity,” she said from her office on the top floor of Fendi’s headquarters in Rome, the monumental 1930s building known as the Colosseo Quadrato (Square Colosseum). “She’s a younger, softer woman, closer to real life, with a feel of warmth and lightness.” Yet with Venturini Fendi, the idea of femininity has layers of complexities. “I was thinking of young aristocrats. But a bit perverse, a bit like mischievous Lolitas,” she said. “And also with a strong sense of self, of discipline. Powerful.”Riffing on this duality, the collection blended equal amounts of grace and force, sensuality and control. Venturini Fendi’s love of uniforms played out in substantial yet soft tailoring with a dash of the military, while a more seductive side was apparent in short, slightly naughty baby doll dresses with little rounded collars; brassieres in soft hand-knitted wool worn over camisoles; and quilted satin jackets evocative of the languid nightdresses and robes de chambre favored by Hollywood movie stars in the ’30s and ’40s.Twists of perception are what make Fendi’s technical feats unique—and its approach to innovation so peculiar. The aristocratic Lolitas’ frilly frocks were made not only from tulle as would be expected, but from nylon, inspired by the old-school, rather mumsy warp-knitted lingerie available at department stores in the ’60s. And what at first glance looked like corduroy on pantsuits and minidresses was actually shearlingsolcato, or suede, worked in a cool ribbed texture.Movies being one of Venturini Fendi’s passions, collection development often starts with a film screening for the design team. “We have lots of fun—movies make you enter the realm of dreams,” said the designer. But her dreams seem planted on terra firma. She’s definitely ready for her close-up.
12 December 2019
Silvia Venturini Fendi described it as “a solar mood”: that anxiety-free state of sun-kissed, serotonin-boosted, high-summer bliss that the Italians—with their enviably looong August holiday—know exactly how to cultivate. She said that she gets her solar hit at the family house on Ponza. “The island between Rome and Naples where you can see the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets, I think, in the world . . . I think when you are in this period of year, you feel more liberated and relaxed than at any time, and you have that feeling of being ready for new experiences.”Today’s theme—summer for a Spring/Summer collection—was probably purposefully straightforward in a season that represents both a reset and a new experience for Venturini Fendi. She has, for many years, had her hand in the creation of Fendi womenswear, but as she said of Karl Lagerfeld, “He was the captain! So my life has changed in the way that now I decide. Before, there was a dialogue, a big dialogue. So today I feel the responsibility very much because the choices are mine—no compromise.”That is not to say she is alone. She cited her team, “who is always there.” Charlotte Stockdale, Amanda Harlech, and Venturini Fendi’s daughters Delfina and Leonetta are key creative counselors: “They are always tough enough to tell me the truth. I think it is important to surround yourself with people who don’t always say, ‘This is beautiful.’”The sun rose on Fendi’s new day to reveal a languidly relaxed collection of clothing into which was embedded the artisanal expertise for which the house is renowned. A double-face, vaguely psychedelic, floral-print Lycra shirt’s collar and cuffs were etched in mink. A long, floral Lycra robe-jacket featured overlaid panels of dyed floral-pattern fur, which matched fur-floral beach totes. Wide-weave bags in brown ribbons of leather were intertwined with ribbons of yellow-dyed fur. Brown suede wrap dresses and trenches, lightly perforated to let the breeze pass through, were engagingly loose. A long, Fendi-brown micro-check skirt made of opaque organza was worn beneath a wide-gauge knit racer-back tank with a dipping side-split hem.
Also opaque yet still visible was an imprint of Venturini Fendi’s own personal style in the superlight organic washed-cotton workwear pieces—most of all the jacket worn by Selena Forrest—which the designer said she had placed against synthetic twists (such as Forrest’s shiny green-check organza shirt) to mirror the day-to-day yin and yang of digital life and real. The use of some relatively humble materials—a white terry skirt beneath that fur Lycra shirt, the quilted cotton “shower curtain” floral dress at the end—reflected her will to make a collection that would be desired as much for its wearability as its editorial appeal. This carried through into the wedge moccasins—“not a single high heel in the show!”—and a slouchy, heavily textured pink cardigan worn over a tiered organza and floral-print fur dress.“You think of the practicality of things,” said Venturini Fendi. “I want women to feel natural and good in these clothes.” Nobody knows Fendi like a Fendi.
19 September 2019
“We dominate the city from here!” declared Silvia Venturini Fendi exultantly before her show, surveying Rome’s Colosseum from the Palatine Hill. “The city was founded on this hill,” Fendi added. “The first stone of Rome was laid here by Romulus.”Karl Lagerfeld had been enthusiastic about the prospect of a show set against this magnificent backdrop, and of the Fendi company’s underwriting of the restoration of the Temple of Venus and Roma, built by the emperor Hadrian in 121 (where the post-collection dinner for 600 would be held alfresco under the moonlight).Venturini Fendi explained that her collection was an homage to the late designer, who revolutionized fur with his innovative designs and transformed the company—founded by her grandparents Adele and Eduardo Fendi in 1925—into a design force and a global luxury powerhouse in the 54 years that he designed for it.For Venturini Fendi, Lagerfeld’s legacy includes not only the skills and techniques that he inspired those workrooms to develop, but “his attitude to break rules and push boundaries.” For him, she added, “nothing was ever impossible, and that’s what we all tried for.”The supremely elegant collection celebrated the astonishing feats that the Fendi workrooms are capable of.The clothes took their cue from the floors of Rome—of the ancient mosaics, timeworn terra-cotta or stone, and the marble that once clad the Colosseum itself, and then of the plants growing up through those monuments and the sturdy roots linking them to the strata of the city’s history. This was a tour de force of complex intarsia work that looked from afar like geometric prints.The opening looks set the tone, evoking Lagerfeld’s early-’70s glory years when he first made himself felt as a design force at Chloé and Fendi—from the ABBA-tastic pudding bowl wig to the rock crystal heels. The show opened with a shapely white felted-wool suit with a full-sleeve jacket and wide boot-leg pants. In this period mood there were maxi coats with fur strips worked in different directions or sheared to create Deco patterns in other Lagerfeld signature inventions. Every coat was reversible, and one example—a swaggering, ankle-grazing duster of faille lined in darkest sable (and worn with a chunky medallion and attitude)—paid homage to the Fendi costuming of Silvana Mangano for Luchino Visconti’s iconic 1974 movieConversation Piece.
Mindful of global warming, and on a sultry Roman day that saw the thermometer bubble to 95 degrees, Venturini Fendi had also noted that even furs need to be “lighter and lighter.” This meant “bricks” of finely sheared fur or fabric pieces with sheer tulle as the “grout.” For this Fall collection there were even sheer black ball gowns, worn over marble-print sports bras.The evening gowns—shown under the slither of a picture-perfect crescent moon—bloomed with a Renaissance beauty: flowing Juliet dresses in rose or celadon quartz–colored chiffon embroidered with sheaves of wheat or trembling tendrils like the powdery stamens of lilies, and magnificent gowns that might have excited a Titian or Bronzino. Like the haunting live soundtrack by Caterina Barbieri, the virtuosic composer, the clothes evoked a mystic past but remained firmly rooted in the present and the future, proving that the ever-inventive, questing Venturini Fendi and her team are able standard-bearers of the Lagerfeld legacy.
4 July 2019
When weekending at her country place outside Rome, Silvia Venturini Fendi likes to garden. She grows vegetables, roses, and—when the birds and bugs don’t get there first—fruit, too. Today Fendi transplanted this most bucolic of pastimes to her next-summer menswear collection. To add extra flourish, she applied a sprinkling of creative fertilizer in the form of a collaboration with this season’s guest artist, the film director Luca Guadagnino.The show was held in the handsome gardens of Milan’s Villa Reale. As we crunched across the gravel to our chairs, we were guided by groundsmen outfitted in khaki Fendi work overalls. Along with fellow gardener and noted tomato specialist, Bruce Pask of Bergdorf Goodman, I cultivated fantasies of tackling the weeding post-show season so chicly attired. Even when horticulturally appropriate, however, the clothes that followed were far too lovely to consider muddying.As they sat in a conservatory earlier, Guadagnino recalled that Fendi first asked him to work with her on this season’s collection when they were backstage together at January’s menswear show, for which Karl Lagerfeld was guest artist. “I was flattered and humbled, and immediately said yes.” The two are in fact longtime creative associates, having first coproduced a short film in 2005. Since then Fendi has notched associate producer credits on bothI Am LoveandSuspiria. Guadagnino immediately sent Fendi some patterns he had sketched during the shoot for his most recent movie, a swirling abstracted grid, which became the basis of the print used on long side-split shirts inspired by memories of the director’s childhood years in Ethiopia. This was also the basis of cut-out knitwear, shearling cloaks, and tote bags toward the end of the collection whose latticing echoed a gardener’s trellis. Along with Fendi, Guadagnino germinated the idea to have the show soundtracked by Ryuichi Sakamoto and to include elements of the studied, almost formal, precision of Japanese workwear in the collection.The gardening looks were sometimes thrillingly literal: olive drab outerwear with detachable pockets and one great short-sleeved overall, accompanied by clipping baskets, watering cans, and organza-backed gardening gloves. There was a utility vest in botanical-print-organza-clad strips of shearling teamed with a multi-compartment tool bag in leather. Some of the wide-brimmed Bruce Chatwin–inspired travel hats featured apiarist-inflected mesh veils.
Luxury-loving gardeners are a pretty niche market, and this collection wisely saw Fendi broaden its purview to encompass soft tailoring with split-hemmed pants arranged around floral-print ties, swimwear teamed with slashed cut-out sections, softly washed workman’s denim that came sometimes leather-patched, and some floral-print camp-collar shirting in silk or organza. These though were all looks that grew from the show’s green-fingered starting point. Before the show Fendi had observed: “In a time where so much of what we encounter is so virtual and so synthetic, I think the feeling and spirit of wanting to be connected to nature now is stronger than ever before.” In the mise-en-scene she mustered with Guadagnino today, as carefully observed as any in his movies, that spirit fostered as fine a crop of Fendi menswear as we have seen for a while.
17 June 2019
Resort 2020 is the first Fendi collection designed without the late Karl Lagerfeld’s guidance. Such a huge, irreplaceable loss was obviously deeply felt, yet the transition has been seamlessly secured by Silvia Venturini Fendi, who has worked alongside Lagerfeld all her life. Her clever drive was already perceptible in the creative input she gave for the season, treating the design teams to a private viewing of John Cassavetes’s ’80s thrillerGloria, starring his then-wife Gena Rowlands. The collection’s rather intriguing starting point was Rowlands’s fearless, sexy character, a former call girl and mobster’s lover who redeems herself by helping a kid escape death at the hands of the mafia.In the movie, Rowlands’s wardrobe was designed by the French couturier Emanuel Ungaro, who gave Gloria a stylish yet provocative look, classy but seductive. The same vibe was highlighted in a daywear offer where the experimental bent inherent to Fendi’s repertoire was smoothed in favor of a softer and more fluid approach, without detracting from the eccentric play between masculine and feminine, and construction and looser shapes, which are other recurring Fendi themes.What could’ve resulted in a passing reference to the bourgeois look in favor today was given a jolt of edgy discipline and a haute sensuality. This was expressed in a series of soft tailored suits with sharp-cut blazers paired with matching trapeze midi skirts that were deceitfully demure, the sexy high slits on the sides revealing bare legs and high-heeled leather boots. As an homage to Rowlands’s seductive style, a black suit with a fitted blazer and a pleated midi skirt in silk jacquard was named “Gloria”: It was the template for a few variations on the theme, the most glamorous being a version in warm brown shaved mink with handmade pierced geometric motifs.Stamped patent leather in flame red added a frisson of audacity to a classic trenchcoat, and the sensuality of soft black leather was in evidence on an elongated midi dress with a feminine bow at the back. Leather was also the fabric of choice for ’80s-inspired high-waisted, wide-legs trousers, worn with chic silk blouses or with a sporty mink blouson tucked in.
The logo was played subtly but consistently throughout the collection: the famous Karligraphy theme, together with the double FF and the Pequin (the signature black-and-brown stripes), were printed in discreet, micro versions on fluid silk-twill pajama suits, or rendered as piping along slit skirts or else as colorful intarsia work on a luxurious mink wrap coat.
30 May 2019
“He used to call me‘la petite fille triste,’” remembered Silvia Venturini Fendi in an emotional backstage scene at the elegiac Fendi show, the last designed by the late Karl Lagerfeld, whom she first met when she was four years old. “Now is not the time to be sad,” she added, noting that Lagerfeld supervised every look in the focused collection that revealed what she called “those facets of him”—the signatures that he had embedded into the brand’s DNA since he first met the quintet of Fendi sisters, including Venturini Fendi’s mother, Anna, in Rome in 1965.Those signature touches included the stiff, high Edwardian collars that Lagerfeld himself wore and riffs on the scissor-sharp tailoring with geometric seams that he returned to every season. This time, those seams defined a strong, sharp pagoda shoulder line or the A-line panels in a perfectly fitted coat. There was also a play of layers and translucency that included laser-perforated “fishnet” leather. The interlinked doubleFlogo (dubbed “Karligraphy”) that Lagerfeld himself invented in 1981 was reimagined in the copperplate font of his own handwriting and woven into hosiery or used as an intarsia on shearling. (The classic Fendi brown-and-beige stripe, worked in shearling for an overscale frame-handle bag, was one of the accessory hits of the collection.)The furs, a category that Lagerfeld redefined with soaring imagination and invention as a seasonless contemporary fashion item for Fendi, included an overscale mink shirt with contrast intarsia suggesting the shadow of the collar and pocket flaps; an amazing tone-on-tone effect of Art Deco palm fronds worked into a black suit with a trim, ’40s silhouette; and a perforated trenchcoat, the soft buff fur punctured to reveal flashes of pale gold beneath the surface. “The last touch was the scarf,” said Venturini Fendi, referring to the unexpected flourish of broad ribbon threaded as a belt in back, ends fluttering, on many of the dresses and coats, which lent a touch of disheveled romance to the clear-cut silhouettes.
Lagerfeld’s longtime music collaborator Michel Gaubert, working with Ryan Aguilar, set the show to a poignant biographical soundtrack that began with Lou Reed and John Cale’s “Small Town,” a brilliant ode to Andy Warhol (“No Michelangelo came out of Pittsburgh,”) via Stravinsky and Ornella Vanoni’s lament “Sono Triste,” and ended in a finale file-past to David Bowie’s “Heroes”—paralleling Lagerfeld’s own remarkable arc from his childhood in Hamburg to his hard-earned position as an internationally recognized and revered cultural icon. An icon, let it be said, who never once contemplated retiring from the job that began seven decades ago as a studio assistant with the thoroughly Parisian couturier Pierre Balmain.
21 February 2019
Silvia Venturini Fendi recalls that she was 5 years old when she first encountered Karl Lagerfeld. It was at Casa Fendi—the real one—in Rome. “I didn’t know what he was doing,” she reminisced this afternoon. “I thought he was a painter.” In a working relationship that goes back to 1965 (way before Chanel was but a twinkle in his eye), Lagerfeld has become profoundly insinuated within the fabric of both the Fendi business and family. Or as Venturini Fendi put it today: “In my fantasy world, he is the only man related to Fendi. So yes, he is the man in my life.”Given that, it’s surprising that what came to pass at today’s Fendi menswear show has not happened previously. Lagerfeld was both the inspiration for, and a contributor to, the collection, the latest and most prominent in the series of guest star collaborations that have marked recent seasons here.For the collection, Lagerfeld sketched a strong-shouldered double-breasted jacket with a shawl collar on the right side and a notch on the left. This in-your-face asymmetry in a menswear genre typically defined by symmetry—tailoring—was one starting point for the series of complementarily opposing dualities that ran throughout the lineup: the half-and-half jackets, the interplay of calligraphic monogram and futurist logo, the kinkily veiled back-and-forth between transparency and shine.Also influential was the personal style of Lagerfeld himself: a play in several acts that included his Caraceni years, his Japanese interludes (Comme des Garçons, Undercover, Number (N)ine), and the Dior Homme coup. Even the physical mementos of Venturini Fendi’s almost lifelong collaboration with Lagerfeld were included here. The collage print on suitcases, plastic trenches, and a voluminous seamlesspiuminowere made up of a lovingly assembled cache of the notes and images the designer has sent her over the years.This collection was a wearable expression of Lagerfeld’s encyclopedic knowledge and history of self-expression through menswear—indeed, the show space was a re-creation of his personal library in Paris—but it was not an homage or an exercise in costume design. Certainly you could never imagine him wearing any of the metallic technical outerwear pieces, sometimes in organza overlay for extra shine. As Venturini Fendi noted, “I have never seen him wearing sportswear; he is always wearing tailoring in a contemporary way.
”What the use of Lagerfeld achieved so cleverly here was to remind us that while tailoring might seem like old hat right now, it is a dynamic form that constantly evolves. Venturini Fendi declared that she would love to see a younger client discovering that dynamism, which is perhaps why—as a pretty hard-to-resist sweetener—she teamed many of the tailored looks with what she said was the first-ever-for-men iteration of the Baguette. Redesigned in collaboration with the Japanese technical luggage specialist Porter-Yoshida & Co. to be harnessable at the waist (or, of course, slung cross-shoulder), it came in various sizes and fabrications—nylon, crocodile, shearling, metallic leathers, and more.Inspired by the man in Venturini Fendi’s life, this collection deserves to find a place in the lives of many other men, too.
14 January 2019
Leave it to Karl Lagerfeld, whose boundless erudition is rather unmatched, and to Silvia Venturini Fendi, whose sense of fearless creative daring is also unique, to give Fendi’s design studio the most diverse and apparently incongruous set of references to work with. For Pre-Fall, they took inspiration from a book on 19th-century French ironwork gates and an antique tome on men’s Japanese kimonos. The collection’s dialogue between curlicued baroque graphics and almost inconspicuous exotic micro patterns was a virtuoso exercise in decorative bravura.To counterbalance the abundance of surface ornamentation, shapes were kept strict, tailored, and masculine, highlighting the play on opposites that is one of Fendi’s compelling style traits. Coats and double-breasted blazers were cut sharp, severe, and elongated, often boasting quirky asymmetrical lapels. Softened with discreet mink details and sometimes cinched at the waist for a feminine hourglass silhouette, they were worn over sensual see-through dresses or with full-circle, swirling plissé skirts.The masculine tailoring was again counterpointed by an injection of sporty utilitarian elements, rendered with eccentric flair, as in a shirt-jacket hybrid that was one of the collection’s new proposals. The best example was in a bright turquoise shade of soft suede, unfussily cut in slightly oversize proportions and paired with acid green cropped pants. Practical pockets as big as bags sprouted from a zippered leather city coat embossed with the double-F logo. On a sensational ’70s-inspired slim and belted midi coat in punched leather net, the pockets came in fluffy quilted red mink.As always chez Fendi, craftsmanship was stellar; here, the curlicue motifs were rendered in as many conceivable artisanal (shall we say artistic?) iterations as possible: printed all over on silk jacquard, embroidered on silk tulle, or as mink intarsia inlaid on a mink fur bomber. A sumptuous black coat was emblazoned with the ironwork motif in silver silicone; apparently, its prototype was made using a pastry icing bag and then rendered serially. It really looked like a succulent piece of cake. With the same hyperbolic sense of experimentation, the pattern was embroidered on silk tulle via thin-sliced strips of leather, painstakingly hand-sewn to achieve the look of the flimsiest lace, which was the fabric of choice for ethereal yet densely decorated evening dresses, light as feathers and of exquisite feminine allure.
3 January 2019
Bags of bags, pockets upon pockets, and plenty of logos: Silvia Venturini Fendi and Karl Lagerfeld were in utility mode at Fendi today. There were exaggerated external tan leather pockets on a transparent vinyl raincoat worn by Adwoa Aboah: that started it. Then there were puffy poacher pockets on silk blouses and a utility jacket and brown leather jackets, pockets that had their own smaller pockets on top of them, and cargo pants and parkas with multiple pockets. Buckled in there, too, was the option of a tool kit belt with pockets hanging off it.Fendi is witnessing a generational shift in terms of who it appeals to; Venturini Fendi has been watching it happen on social media. “I’ve seen on Instagram all the young kids wearing their mothers’ Baguettes, so I thought,Well, maybe it’s time,” she said. The Baguette was born in 1997. It started small—“we only had five stores!” said Venturini Fendi—but it was a runaway success, a contender for the title of “Very First It Bag.” The shape eventually came in dozens of fabrications: As with the Pokémon craze, there were collectors who had to catch ’em all.There are different ways young people prefer to wear bags now, though, as Venturini Fendi has analyzed it: not tucked under the armpit as before, but front-loaded or cross-body like a fanny pack. It’s a trend that’s been transported across from streetwear, in fact, and the Baguette has been adapted to it. She pointed out how the original mini-bag now has a long and short strap, “to wear two ways.”There was a bigger Baguette, too—the one in denim, worn center-front with a matching denim blazer and cargo pants, looked great. There were others, embossed with FF logos nestling on top of totes as well. There was plenty to take in beyond bags, too: parrot prints picked out from a carpet Lagerfeld had chosen; corset-cummerbund dresses; romantic sheer dresses embroidered with flowers. But the takeaway from this show was the rebirth of the house It bag. The swing toward ’90s and 2000s taste has a lot more swing in it yet.
20 September 2018
In the year that’s passed since Fendi’s lasthaute fourrureshow, the fashion industry has had a change of heart regarding the use of fur. Gucci announced it would go fur-free last October, and in short order Michael Kors and Versace made similar proclamations. Fendi has not done the same, to be sure, but it surely can’t be a complete coincidence that it has dropped thefourruremoniker this season in favor ofcouture. Nor that it has expanded its purview to include many more non-fur pieces.The novel idea this season was to treat non-fur materials in such ways that they resembled real fur. On the multicolored opening coat, for example, narrow strips of chiffon were frayed and stitched together so closely that the final product looked like it could’ve been intarsia’d mink. And take a gander at the skirt suit in Exit 25. That isn’t astrakhan, though it looks quite like it; rather it’s densely stitched sequins strategically placed to swirl like the fur they’re imitating. Savoir faire is savoir faire.Of course, there was plenty of the authentic article, as well. But here, too, the emphasis was on thinking differently. Coats were the exception, not the rule. And a shaved mink inlaid with shearling spirals and boasting a fox shawl collar was indeed truly exceptional. The focus though was more on dresses, like a marabou feather frock in ballerina-pink with a caged waist that was the very definition of downy. Delicate crochet and even finer lace looked spiderweb-light.As the culture shifts away from fur—the BBC reported last month that the U.K.’s Labour Party has pledged to ban all fur imports—Fendi will of necessity have to expand its materials repertoire, be it with lab-grown fur or other man-made textiles. Its artisans and ateliers are its patrimony. They represented themselves well tonight.
4 July 2018
Fendi kept it in thefamigliatoday by revealing Nico Vascellari—partner of Delfina Delettrez and de facto son-in-law of Silvia Venturini—as its artist-in-residence for Spring 2019. Delfina was backstage looking witchily mysterious (the wordFENDIstamped on her neck and a new season double-F skort above her knee-high crocodile cowboy boots), and as her mother explained: “Nico has a personality that fascinates me, and fascinates Delfina of course! Because he has this dark side yet is also so calm, sweet, and tender. So I was thinking about him both as a man and in his work; he transforms himself on stage.”Vascellari’s performance art was not part of today’s show, but his transformation via anagram of Fendi to Fiend and Roma to Amor, his illustration as Karl Lagerfeld (another side of Fendi) as the Jokarl, and his imagined alchemical symbols all provided decorative oomph. There was also a one-season-only, Vascellari-authored rework of the double-F monogram that will exert some serious magic on Fendi-heads.The models emerged from the crypt-like gloom of a vaulted arch decorated with Vascellari’s illustrations of a claw-legged frog (a bit Santa Cruz screaming hand) and a grafted-together Janus-snake and candle. There was a great deal of light and dark, whether via meshed dark suiting or line-inlaid leather blousons and bombers that revealed the lightness of the pieces worn beneath, or the flocked shearling fronted pulls that had the appearance of weight but the hand feel of—shazam!—nothing at all. The silhouettes were consistent with current-iteration Fendi: a terrace-casual dream catalog of bucket hats and fanny packs and Cuban shirts and tracksuits and sports sandals (sometimes fetchingly matched with toe socks that spelled outFENDIon each digit). I was especially taken by the checked paper-light suits and bombers that combined both crunchiness and airiness, and which looked ace too. Mixing the alchemical with the ephemeral is a proven fashion formula for conjuring commercial magic right now, but via Vascellari this Fendi-fied flirtation with the dark side proved compellingly wantable.
18 June 2018
Fendi has never shied away from eclecticism or experimentation. For Resort, the mix was peppered with soft tailoring freshened up with a sweet sense of color. Building on the Fall show’s vibe, the dynamic between masculine and feminine was given an even more energized twist; sharp-cut blazers with nipped waists were paired with cigarette-pant/pleated-skirt hybrids, which looked pretty cool in their eccentric versatility. But that was just the start of things.At Fendi, the exceptional has a feel of nonchalance. Take for instance Karl Lagerfeld’s vast collection of snow-white antique linens and linge de maison, meticulously embroidered and starched to stiff perfection. These handkerchiefs and tablecloths were mutated into immaculate collars or cuffs on ankle-grazing, delicately pleated silk dresses, or regenerated into elaborate, flowery intarsias on baby pink shaved mink fur coats, and the results were not preposterous, but rather delightfully quaint.And why don’t you . . . wear sturdy, bold cowboy boots in shiny gold leather, pairing them with a boardroom-ready, micro-checkered tailored skirtsuit in a delicate macaron shade of baby blue? Or wrap yourself luxuriously into a phantasmagoric, eye-popping lobster-pink fur coat, densely embroidered and hand-cut into tiny circular motifs, with huge patched utility pockets, as if it were the simplest, I-just-throw-it-on-and-off-I-go kind of bathrobe-inspired overcoat for the everyday? Before rushing out the door, just remember to grab the new Flip bag, practical as a tote and sumptuously pared-down as a messenger. This style of efficient opulence is not for the faint of heart, surely; but the Fendi woman is definitely powerful and confident enough to rise to the challenge.
1 June 2018
Between Karl Lagerfeld, Silvia Venturi Fendi, and whoever orchestrates the accessories at Fendi, it’s all flowing together in a hard-to-achieve way that balances high fashion and cleverly coded items with a sense of fun. At today’s show, for a start, there were the neat boxy-shouldered dresses and coats which Venturi Fendi described as “a romantic uniform for a strong and powerful woman of today.” And then there was Karl Lagerfeld, talking in a pre-chat about his vast collection of antique table linen and bed linen: “Since a boy, I always thought it was the top of luxury to have clean, white cotton sheets.” Out of that Lagerfeld treasure chest came the inspiration behind the finely scalloped-edged and embroidered silk neckerchiefs and white collars.For a general comparison, you might flick over to search Sean Young’s deathlessly chic fitted suits and dresses as the office replicant in the originalBlade Runner. That movie was released in 1982, when there was also a pop-cultural craze for the ’40s going on. Somehow, all those ingredients feel spot-on now—’40s, ’80s, a touch of film noir, a pinch of sci-fi. But it needs something else to separate it from appropriation; something to throw it a bit off the obvious—although, if you please, not something just for the sake of randomness. The job was efficiently done through the styling of classily minimal cowboy boots throughout the show. So it became a look that was not to do with costume; rather it was something contemporary.With the clarity and playfulness of the way Fendi double-Fbeige-brown logo patterns were deployed over everything from tights to fur sweatshirts to flocked trenchcoats and baguette bags, there was a lot to see—and a lot for young fashion fanatics, and the super-wealthy, to aspire to. And that has to be healthy for this brand’s fortunes.
22 February 2018
“Nothing to declare!” said Silvia Venturini Fendi backstage when questioned about what rumor suggests might be inbound changes at the house. It was the perfectly apposite answer at an excellent show dedicated to that ultimate hub of contemporary transience, the airport arrivals hall. The set was a long luggage carousel set in front of a departures board listing the next flights from FND; to Zurich, Qatar, London. As the lights went up the carousel juddered into life, transporting a mix of Fendi-stickered boxes, vintage Fendi luggage (presumably from the house archive), Fall 2018 Fendi accessories, and the occasional oversize statement piece, including a double-F, fur-clad Fendi baby carrier that went around unclaimed four times.Fendi’s frequent flyers wore a collection that made their provenance as clear as any baggage tag: logo fur blousons, intarsia shearlings, and transparent macs were all FF-abulously brand specific. Only slightly more deconstructed were the diagonally striped shades of brown and cream leather track jackets, cagoules, and intarsia fur coats that came worn over baby cords and big technical-fugly sneakers. Every piece was a two-in-one, reversible to cut down on packing, so many of the more logocentric exteriors contained less on-brand interiors. Fendi has a fine way with check and examples here included a laminated-sheen beige-on-cream topcoat and a fantastic tufted and oversize bordeaux, black, and brown–on-blue cousin. Some models pushed aluminum four-wheelers by fellow LVMH luggage specialist Rimowa and one FF-trim blue boilersuited model pushed a luggage trolley heaped with three of them: He said pre-show he’d had ample chance to practice his end-of-runway sharp corner.For the third collection in a row, Venturini Fendi collaborated with an artist: This season’s new arrival was Glaswegian graphic specialist Reilly, who Venturini Fendi first followed on Instagram after he posted a casually conceived logo clash with her house and Fila. “I thought,Uh oh, I’m going to get sued!” Reilly reported. Instead he was backstage in a raffia-fringed Fendi parka watching his capsule collection of T-shirts and collage-print mainline pieces traveling the runway. The print appeared on shearling-edged, diagonal quilt technicalwear and accessories including the hands-free, headstrap-attached mini umbrellas that were among the coolest accessories in a collection packed to bursting with finery, flair, and wit.
15 January 2018
Open Your Heart is the title of Fendi’s Pre-Fall collection. It’s dedicated to a Queen of Hearts, a seductive woman who, quoting the press notes, “is charming, magnetic, and attractive; she is fun, ironic, but always elegant and passionate about details.” Quite the full-time job.The heart motif didn’t have any romantic connotations, though; it was intended more as a graphic pattern with an artsy vibe than a sentimental homage. It graced the heart-shaped décolletage of a black cocktail dress with a tight bodice and full skirt, it was lavishly embroidered on the front of a fluid velvet midi dress with sable-trimmed sleeves, and it worked as a Fair Isle embellishment on the shoulders of a glorious dark mink coat. Elsewhere, it was inlaid as a heart padlock on a fitted, striped fur coat, and it was appliquéd on repeat in yellow mink on a hand-cut leather cape. Wearing its heart only on its sleeve clearly wasn’t enough for Fendi.The collection had a vibrant feel, thanks to a lively mix of patterns. A coat with Madras-inspired macro-checks in bright colors was paired with a feminine silk midi dress, printed with graphic motifs. The same tropical vibe could be felt in a floral pattern reproduced on a slim city coat or on a turquoise trapeze-cut opera coat, worn with cropped slim pants. It looked chic and extravagant, in keeping with the idiosyncratic Fendi spirit.
6 December 2017
Triangulation was one of the themes going on at Fendi. Karl Lagerfeld had dashed off sketches: triangular shoulders, nipping into the waist, skirts with flaring hems. It originated in thoughts about Italian Futurism—an early-20th-century art movement, which, among other things, sought to capture the dynamic speed of the modern machine age. Silvia Venturini Fendi and her team at Fendi HQ in Rome ran with the idea, concentrating on shoulders with cut-outs and adding stripes and checks, flowers, and multiple layers of transparency.The core of the house of Fendi, however, is what they’re technically able to do with fur and leather. Sometimes it’s subtly expressed, as in a green leather coat with flowers applied via a heat process rather than sewing, or fur inlaid as stripes and checks. The house is leagues ahead of others in technical expertise.Still, it was the logos that will garner the most attention from the trend-hungry. A printed Fendi fur bomber jacket and coat, and the Fendi-logo totes, will be bound to be featured in every editorial story about the new logomania come next spring.
21 September 2017
Tonight marked Fendi’s thirdhaute fourrureshow, the second in Paris after last year’s 90th anniversary celebration in Rome. The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées doesn’t hold the same place in the collective imagination as the Trevi Fountain—Anita Ekberg may never have crossed its threshold—but it’s a grand venue nonetheless. The curtain rose on a woodland atmosphere at rosy dusk, setting a scene for a collection in which designer Karl Lagerfeld conjured a field of otherworldly flowers.Otherworldly in the fantastical sense; there are no blue poppies in real life, but at Fendi blue mink versions spring from the hem of a light brown sheared Persian lamb coat. And in the visionary sense, as well. Just as marvelous as Lagerfeld’s prodigious imagination is the virtuosity of the house’s Roman ateliers. What these pictures can’t tell you is that the openwork yokes and cuffs on other Persian lamb jackets are made from tiny pieces of shaved mink embroidered one to another. The 10,000 round paillettes of an egg-shaped cape? Shaved mink. And the velvet flowers of Bella Hadid’s otherwise sheer blue dress? Yes, you guessed it, shaved mink again. Months and years of trial and error produced at least two techniques that made their stage debut tonight: sable dyed a zingy shade of coral and used for the skirt of a short dress (it’s delicate enough that it’s usually used in its natural state), and the hand-painted shaved mink of a wrap coat with storm flap wings.In keeping with the theme, some of the models carried clever flower basket bags, the construction of which created the blooms: Cinch the braided leather drawstring and the abstracted leather and fur petal shapes form the gathered bouquets—irises, poppies, or anemones. The show ended in traditional haute couture form with the bride. Vittoria Ceretti’s wedding dress, like many of the other dresses here, was embroidered in several different motifs. The most astounding was the lattice of the attached shawl, which consists of 9,000 tiny discs that took 1,250 hours to hand sew. When Lagerfeld came out from backstage for his second and third bows he and his ateliers deserved that standing ovation.
5 July 2017
This excellent collection nailed a tricky-to-pin sweet spot in the Venn diagram between conventionally wearable and perversely covetable. Silvia Venturini Fendi did this by blending banal but disparate menswear elements, zhoozhifying them via fabulous Fendi fabrication and a peppering of double-F branding, then finally adding an intriguing dusting of illustrations from the pen of “Big” Sue Tilley, the artist and once muse of Lucian Freud.Like a slow Friday afternoon spent in the office savoring a successful week’s work (and with an awesome party ahead to plan for that evening), there was a lot here to relish. Fendi’s mood board included an Andy Warhol self-portrait in executive drag; Danny Dyer manspreading in Fila short shorts inThe Business; Christian Bale scowling in suspenders inAmerican Psycho; a silver-haired granny in a pink twinset; some Martin Parrs from hisCommon Senseseries; and a wonderful set of shots of mid-’80s suits commuting in what looked like C&A ski jackets.Venturini Fendi said preshow: “Masculine executives used to be very rigid, in a box. But now it is different . . . I am very interested in normality; it is something I am obsessed by, but it is the Fendi normality.” Which was only notionally normal at all. On a set modeled after Fendi’s own executive HQ in Rome’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, the models wore a mix of luxurified casualwear and emasculated corporatewear, with double-F logo ties, suspenders, and baseball caps. Oversize suede sportswear jackets and nylon bags were reversible to offer bolder but suppressed incarnations an outlet. Wide pin-tuck pleated pants were worn under sleeveless work shirts and above slingback loafers. Oversize track jackets strafed with pink panels were cut in leather. Work macs, suits, and shorts suits were cut in sheer checked organza. The penultimate outfit, a mink blazer worn over a pair of tan shorts and slingbacks, was perhaps the crowning example of what Venturini Fendi called her “Skype looks”—respectable above the waist, cut loose and laid-back below.The contribution of Tilley, who sat magnificently backstage watching the show take shape, was a series of illustrations that came printed on silk shirting, reproduced in leather and on metal charms and tags, and inlaid onto bags. They included bananas, a lamp, a cup of tea, and a corkscrew. “Just normal things,” said Venturini Fendi.
Tilley is famous in Britain for being very “normal”—although now retired, she spent many years working in a government welfare office in central London—but also for having a fabulously rich second life. She was a contemporary and friend of Leigh Bowery, and for a few years was a model for Freud: His 1995 portrait of her,Benefits Supervisor Sleeping,sold for £17 million at auction in 2004. Since retirement, Tilley has focused on her own art, which is what, she explained, led to this collaboration.
19 June 2017
If Lewis Carroll had been a fashion victim, he would’ve had Alice catapulted through the rabbit hole straight to Fendi-land. The label’s new Resort collection would’ve delighted her, with its pops of clashing colors, its trompe l’oeil textures (like a Prince of Wales fabric that was actually shaved shearling), and its array of furs swirling with floral embroideries. The new Mon Trésor mini satchel, encrusted with humongous pearls, would’ve left even the pompous Rabbit speechless.Fendi is all about extreme, almost decadent luxury tinged with irreverence and joie de vivre, both of which infused a Resort lineup that revolved around three themes. The Sartorial Pop section featured masculine elements jolted with fluorescent colors; flashes of Schiaparelli pink and mimosa yellow gave an energetic vibe to a sleek macro-checked city coat worn with skinny pants, and to a short, boxy jacket paired with an ankle-length pleated skirt. Dreamy, softly sculptural dresses dominated the Blossoming Garden section. Cascades of bright green silk crepe were gathered at the shoulders with black ribbons on a long trapeze dress. It looked eccentric and modern, with an unrestrained feel of movement. Cinched at the waist and with full skirts, a series of hyper-feminine dresses boasted abundant frills sprouting from their surfaces as if they’d been raised in a hothouse tended by a mad gardener.Macramé lace, fil coupé, silk jacquard, 3-D knit, Shibori-inlaid and intarsia mink, and laser-cut eyelet on fabric and fur showcased the extraordinary savoir faire of Fendi’s ateliers. Which leads us seamlessly to the collection’s third theme, Ribbons and Pearls. Here, black sweatshirts boasted huge ribbons embroidered with rivulets of pearls, which also sneaked along necklines and cuffs; they also graced the edges of a sporty mink bomber whose back was emblazoned with the Fendi logo.
9 June 2017
It’s human instinct to defend what matters in times of turmoil. One school of thought among designers is that it’s the people behind the making of beautiful clothes who deserve to be in the spotlight now. Karl Lagerfeld was speaking to exactly that point before today’s Fendi show. “I am not a prophet,” he quipped when asked the inevitable question about whether fashion should be political. “To me, this is a job, a job like any other, which I’m lucky to do. I sketch—I have the easy part, I just say, ‘I want!’ But Fendi is very well coordinated, and I must say, the cutting in the studio in Rome, the way they make the toiles is formidable.”Lagerfeld was not in the mood for “fairy tale,” he added. Fendi for Fall was, if not exactly pared-back, certainly uncluttered by gimmicks; this was a grown-up underscoring of its innate classiness and house skills. The show opened with a gray herringbone double-breasted coat with deep mink cuffs circling bracelet-length sleeves. It was worn with a Prince of Wales bias-cut midi with a longer length than the coat, red pointy boots, and a slim “Lady” bag on a double-F logo handheld strap. From that point on, the silhouettes—knife-pleated midi skirts, the occasional tweed cuffed pant—were deployed to frame Fendi’s unique capabilities. Amanda Harlech, who had been circulating backstage, pointed out the vine-leaf motifs that appeared both printed in white on a beautiful cornflower blue silk dress and intarsia-ed into furs. They’d been inspired by a book of antique endpapers, she said.Stamping, printing, branding: All these were subtly handled themes. The year of Fendi’s founding, 1925, appeared in Roman numerals woven into belts and cuffs; the sleek over-the-knee boots were in what Harlech called “sealing-wax red,” and the Fendi logo appeared both in its new single and throwbacks to its original interlocking double-F form. Standouts were the slick fit-and-flare black leather raincoat, super-elegantly walked by Imaan Hammam, and the surprise tucked into the intarsia fur look worn by Sohyun Jung—a ’70s vintage-y double-F logo bag printed in the colors of a stained glass window.
23 February 2017
Fendi’s is not the most sympathetic fashion theater in Milan: This is a hard, clinical space peopled by hard, cynical security guards. The furs and shearlings may be warm and fuzzy, but the emotional warm and fuzzies are rarely aired.Which made what came down the runway this evening feel all the more surprising—this was one of the deftest, most sympathetic, and positive collections of this season. Price point alone dictates that Fendi cannot be a democratic brand, but here in-your-face sloganeering, endearingly offbeat accessories, and a carefully balanced mix of the contemporary and the constant resulted in a highly aspirational mix.Silvia Venturini Fendi had looked back to ’80s and ’90s sportswear, Buffalo (Felix Howard winked forth from the mood board), and her starting point, some inspirational lines from Ernest Hemingway about the positive strategies to try before letting the negative take hold. Mrs. Fendi said: “I want to be optimistic, need to be. These were simple words, universal words like love, listen, try. I was reading this and thinking it is so easy if you follow these universal rules.”Like so many, this collection pitched a rapprochement between sportswear and pre-sportswear. Pastel and primary color tracksuits were worn under layered check overcoats, shearlings and felt leopard-print coats that were incongruously triggered by “Fat” Pat Butcher, an emblematic matriarch from the British soap operaEastEnders(she was on the mood board, too). Fur was inserted on outerwear collars and sleeves, or in full fur pieces with colored slogan side panels. There was plenty of branding: “Trust Fendi” read one shirt, and the Fendi marque blared from slides, rectangular check shearling tote tags, headbands, beanies, neck pillows, and more. Alongside it, though, were those watchwords. “Think” was etched onto the ankle straps of neoprene loafer hybrids. “Try” was on the side of a folding camping chair (yes, really). Beanies read “Fantastic” and headbands read “Think.”Most items, said Mrs. Fendi, were reversible “because they are quite expensive pieces, so that is the value.” This was advertised by inside-out topstitched topcoats and jackets. This collection reversed perceptions, too. It made you think that Fendi might have a softer side—some warm and fuzzies—despite its stern exterior.
16 January 2017
Fendi’s spirit of sumptuous modernity is well suited to a Fall collection. It’s where the label’s blend of magnificent craftsmanship and relentless innovation can be lavished upon lineups replete with the most sensational furs. Yet in Fendi’s wonderland there’s no trace of dreamy, retro wintry visions, nostalgia being a concept banned from this landscape. Here, a sense of luxurious fun always prevails, along with an abundance of cultivated wit. Both Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi have wit in spades.The Haute Fourrure show held in July in Rome, where models seemed to float on the Fontana di Trevi’s waters, was a sensational pièce de théâtre, masterful in its illusionistic mise-en-scène. This sense of make-believe also infused the Pre-Fall collection, which was all about visual flips: Nothing was as it seemed at first glance. Fabrics mimicked fur textures, while precious furs were treated without pomposity, as if they were the humblest material, ready to be subjected to the most extreme, irreverent experiments. Case in point was a flying caban in emerald silk jacquard, whose textured surface looked exactly like Persian lamb. To further enhance the metamorphic factor, its silhouette could be transformed by playing with zippers inserted at the waist; unzip them to produce flounced cascades at the sides. An alpaca robe coat was printed to look like the most expensive lynx fur, its collar embellished by contrast with a touch of real chinchilla. A short coat in dégradé shaved mink had its hem decorated with delicate cut-out motifs; they were rigorously made by hand, not lasered. A dark sheared mink midi coat was apparently embroidered with a floral needlework motif which, at close inspection, was nothing less than a miniature fur intarsia.The conversation between feminine, almost romantic elements and the modernist edge so typical of Fendi’s vocabulary was at play throughout the collection, underlining the experimental spirit which is one of the label’s trademarks; yet translated into a softer vibe. Graphic diamond motifs were printed on linear day dresses, and silhouettes were kept balanced even when treated with opulent decorations, innovative asymmetric cuts, or illusionistic 3-D detailing. Even the new messenger bag, called Back to School, was given the transformation treatment, becoming an elegant backpack. Bows, pom-poms, fringes, studs, and furry charms were abundantly scattered on shoes, bags, hair accessories, sunglasses, and bijoux.
It all looked pretty fabulous, from head to toe.
15 December 2016
Fresh off the tremendous success of this summer’sFendicouture show in Rome—whenKarl Lagerfeldand Silvia Venturini Fendi made models walk on water across the Trevi Fountain—the pair came back to Milan with another quirkily beautiful ready-to-wear collection. Its makings sound like an unlikely mix: utilitarian stripes and sporty knitted sock booties on the one hand, grand baroque brocades and lingerie silks on the other. But it was all deftly tied together with a result that came through as calm and curiously creative at the same time.Decade collaging is a thing of the moment, but Karl Lagerfeld is the grand master of that. His way of tossing a salad of references and materials is always aimed at producing an unforeseen combination whose novelty is relevant to modern tastes. That was true again this time, as Lagerfeld ribbon-tied aprons of elaborate gilded fabric over gathered pants; applied leather flower embroidery onto a khaki jacket and a trenchcoat; and segued from a take on this season’s sheer floral-print dress to apricot ’20s-style silk lingerie-like pieces with cut-out butterflies on their bodices. Among all this there were inimitably Lagerfeldian organza blouses with scalloped edges running around the shoulders and sleeves—the sort of thing he has been designing his entire career, reprised with spot-on timing to catch the current exaggerated-sleeve silhouette.Meanwhile, all this made a great showcase for the all-important Fendi accessories. The striped opening section was an ideal backdrop for a number of little frame bags with a lot of fun on them: chunky whipstitching, brocade flower-decorated guitar-style straps, rosebuds, hand-drawn loopy doodles, and much more. The knitted sock boots also had a lot going on. Some were striped, some were athletic-seeming, and one particular pair was laced-up with scattered satin flower embroidery, a moment that veered into the 18th century—and could only have flown off the sketch pad of Karl Lagerfeld.
22 September 2016
There are anniversaries, and then there are anniversaries. Last July,FendimarkedKarl Lagerfeld’s 50th year at the Italian house with a Paris hautefourrureshow. The designer is famously averse to birthdays and anniversaries—“I don’t look back,” he’s fond of saying—but the house wasn’t going to let a milestone like its own 90th slip by quietly. With the couture shows wrapping up in Paris, Fendi shuttled guests by chartered plane to Rome for another hautefourrureshow today. They secured the Trevi Fountain ofLa Dolce Vitafame for the event, fresh off a $2.4 million, one-and-a-half-year rehab. The fountains turned on, and the models started their march over a see-through runway built on top of its pools. It will go down as one of the most majestic show venues ever; few come close, but among them was Fendi’s 2007 show on the Great Wall.If there was a drawback about this location, it was that the models weren’t nearly close enough for guests—Bernard Arnault andMaria Grazia ChiuriandPierpaolo Piccioliamong them—to appreciate the sensational workmanship that went into the show’s 46 looks. The 5,000 hand-cut holes that turned the rose-color Persian lamb of a long dress into lace. The lynx jacket that was too precious to dye, but was dyed a delicate shade of pink all the same. The absolutely miniscule squares of mink that took 1,200 work hours to stitch together mosaic-style into a magical forest scene. Crocheted dresses on a base of tulle were embroidered with swatches of long-hair mink and fringed leather, while lace dresses were appliquéd with flowers hand-cut from sheared mink. Pull them off the rack, as a Fendi rep did at a press conference, and they felt almost weightless, evanescent even. “This is what Fendi is all about. No other fur house in the world does it, or could do it,” Lagerfeld said in an interview.Savoir faire is one thing, but the spirit of the collection was enchanting, as well. Lagerfeld found his starting point in a 1914 book of fairy tales,East of the Sun and West of the Moon, illustrated by the Danish artist Kay Nielsen. Several of his illustrations directly inspired individual pieces. “It was in a way the mood of my childhood, the Northern fairy tales,” Lagerfeld explained of why he chose the book. Milestone aside, Lagerfeld doesn’t really go in for nostalgia.
“I called the show Legends and Fairy Tales,” he went on, “because it’s a collection that doesn’t relate to everybody like ready-to-wear, this is very special for people who have a special kind of life.” He’s made princess coats for princesses—quite literally in the case of a mink with a princess intarsia on its back. It’s a testament to Lagerfeld’s talent, and that of the Fendi ateliers, that the results are so absolutely winsome.
7 July 2016
Pablo Picasso was clearly one of the great artistic forces of the 20th century, as well as being an enthusiastic pursuer of passion. His third important yet-often overlooked attribute was his fondness for terry cloth. Pictures of Pablo wearing his favorite scarlet towelling shorts on the Côte d’Azur were central to Silvia VenturiniFendi’smood board inspiration today, as were shots of Dalí, Hockney, and Albert Einstein also enjoying their holidays. Einstein, in particular, had genius resort game: he wore his polo rucked up just so, his terry shorts mid-thigh, and a pair of devastating peep-toe sandals.All of this added up to an overwhelmingly easy collection shot through with eureka moments of eclectic quirk. That terry, or “sponge” as Fendi termed it, came through in some marvelous cabana coats, striped tees, and Picasso tribute shorts. It was used as the white lining in a blue and brown paint-striped jacket that appeared to be shearling but wasn’t. Conversely, the inserts at the shoulder panel of a blue and yellow deckchair striped trucker jacket looked like terry but were fur. These sleights of hand reflected the more pragmatic reversibility of brown leather and white silk jackets and coats that could be worn one way or the other. Accessories included beefy bags with Dalí-esque but Fendi-fied face pattern patches. The patterns were rich: Some nylon pieces near the end with multicolor waves that ran a spectrum from yellow to purple via green and violet were, said Fendi, “like after a drink.” Woozy, boozy, but shot through with focused creativity, this collection made as much of a splash as the painting its set was built to remind you of.
20 June 2016
Does creative energy decline with age? Looking at the majority of the 7.4 billion people living on planet Earth, the answer is a predictable yes. But not forKarl Lagerfeld, whose prodigious talent seems to be in an unstoppable morphing flux. His sources of inspiration are encyclopedic and maddeningly diverse, and he blends them in surprising ways. Take Fendi’s latest Resort collection, where the references spanned traditional American red-and-white quilting motifs to rare, exotic florals of Japanese antique wallpapers. Did it make any sense? Actually, it did.Fendi’s aesthetic is about innovation and experimentation—state-of-the-art technologies fused with next-level artisanal skill. It’s also about a sense of play, a twist that gives an unexpected spin to rigorous, graphic shapes and volumes. That spirit was very much in effect in the new lineup, where various themes from the Fall collection were given a summery, feminine aspect. A romantic flair infused ankle-grazing dresses in printed chiffon or crepe de Chine; skirts were pleated and billowy. A vibrant, undulating graphic graced off-the-shoulder blouses and short ruched skirts, and it had a real “wow” factor on a short fur jacket on which shaved mink and fluffy hand-trimmed fox waves were suspended on tulle netting. When it comes to fur, Fendi has nothing to prove, but Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi went all out anyway with a spectacular pièce de résistance in the form of a duster coat on which shaved mink was pierced into a macro netting and lavishly decorated with a furry Garden of Eden, replete with blossoming flowers and twirling butterflies. It’ll have throngs of celebrities swooning in delight.
26 May 2016
Karl Lagerfeldoffered up a lightheartedly trenchant quote before theFendicollection set foot on the runway: “Voltaire said, What needs an explanation is not worth explaining.” Teasing those who make intellectual pronouncements about fashion collections with the words of a philosopher is a typical Lagerfeldian flourish. So let us swiftly dispense with cogitating over the source of the waves inspiration behind Fendi’s show. Sound waves? Electricity, magnetism, something scientific? No matter. There’s a perfectly good set of fashion terms for what we saw here: a timely creative streak centered on things to do with ruffles, frills, and flounces. “We don’t overintellectualize—we just do!” declared Lagerfeld. “And we don’t suffer doing it!”The show briskly spun out ideas on the trends du jour: thigh-high boots with undulating frills around the tops and the shoe uppers, and ruffled, yoked blouses and dresses. There were wavy stripes set into furs and printed on midi dresses. A short navy cocoon coat was cut into 3-D concentric circles, like ripples on a pond. Somewhere along the wavy line, Silvia Venturini Fendi and Lagerfeld started having fun, too, making costly pastel fox fur coats mimic the playful appearance of girly fake furs.It looked unforced, contemporary—and exactly what girls would want to wear now.
25 February 2016
Forget personalization,Fendihas spearheaded the personification of luxury product. And it’s cute and yes, please. This evening, there were plenty more faces on stuff that inspired instant anthropomorphized affection. There were eyes on a black shearling bomber whose nose was partially defined by its zipper. Faces on totes and faces on backpacks and half a face on a furry disc sticking out of the breast pocket of an olive overcoat. It’s not a particularly sophisticated idea—there was a picture of a pair of Mr. Potato HeadToy Storyslippers on the Fendi mood board—but it works. The features of this post-Monster show were hollow, expressionless, and knowingly primitive. They captured your attention.Vibewise, the main thrust of this collection was ironically bump and grindy: luxury lounge. On the soundtrack the Walrus of Love bassooned of his passion for Baby Blues as the models came down a fur-clad spiral staircase in a series of grandpa robe coats in check or gray wool. The pants were thick and had the slightest kick. There were slippers: fur. Two checked robe coats were fashioned from shearling strips. Our love god got ready to leave his temple by elevating his look, but not far. He slipped on Jamiroquai-reminiscent elongated bucket hats and some candy-accented outerwear—a black hide jacket with a pink fleece collar or a chambray coat lined in yellow fluffed shearling. There were pajama suits under layered leathers, a sweater that bonded tartan wool and black shearling, some great wooly suits. It was a pretty gorgeous collection full of wild impracticalities—and lots of clever accessories.
18 January 2016
Karl Lagerfeldand Silvia Venturini Fendi always manage to see furs through the prism of total style. ForFendi’s Pre-Fall collection, they presented a louche ready-to-wear lineup inspired by haute bedwear. Clearly, these were not robes to be worn while making breakfast in the morning. Indeed, these were robes that had shed their boudoir air—mink taking the place of marabou (or possibly flannel)—courtesy of one of Lagerfeld’s ingenious injections of street. The result was revitalized outerwear that will fit into the lives of a younger generation of shoppers who have little interest in luxurious furs as an indicator of wealth.Many of the bathrobe-style coats and vests in bobcat, mink, sable, and fox were worn over trousers and elevated platform slippers or trekking shoes decorated with strips of shearling. The slim pants came in terrific colors like teal, blush pink, and terra-cotta; some had a quirky trumpetlike ankle detail. Asian influences came into play, too, in a series of pieces inspired by the ancient hand-dyeing technique of shibori, Japan’s answer to tie-dye. Geometric and organic patterns painstakingly reproduced in nuanced color combinations lent an artisanal aspect to the collection and an ineffable sense of cool.The bedroom mood continued from beginning to end: There were rich-looking shawl-collar pantsuits rendered in a graphic diamond print, and a standout velvet jumpsuit that was evocative of a smoking suit. Tracing a line between parties outside and gatherings inside the home, a few evening dresses took their cue from nightdresses.A myriad of new accessories accompanied the looks. There was an emphasis on exotic skins like silver python and supple lizard, and a multitude of interchangeable straps in leathers, shearling, and fur ensured there was nothing sleepy about this offering.
1 December 2015
Sick, although in quite agoodway. That’s the only possible response to the coral leather mini-bloomer playsuit that proceeded fourth in the Fendi collection today. Coral. Leather. Bloomer. Playsuit. Such a thing could no doubt cause ridicule, offense, or even pity if viewed on the everyday street. Yet when seen with our fashion glasses on, we can instantly perceive that this garment has precisely the right number of attractive-repulsive features to qualify it as ideally avant-garde. It has the puff-shoulder sleeves, the ’80s-yet-not yoke, the gathering into a high-neck nearly-but-not-Victorian collar. While below, it provides exactly the correct amount of photographer-attractor leg exposure to satisfy girls who congregate at and outside fashion shows. Fendi is a serious Roman fur and leather house of long standing, but recentlyKarl LagerfeldandSilvia Venturini Fendihave been having some fun with it all. “There are no references,” remarked Lagerfeld as he moved through the roiling postshow throng. “Retro is over, no?” Still, even when he’s supposedly designing against the mainstream, Lagerfeld’s antennae can’t help transmitting a sense of the fashion news that is running through Spring. It was there in the silhouettes—the big-sleeved, high-neck, high-waisted, and pleated midi thing that’s currently going on. In Fendi’s case, they provide the backdrop for ultra-luxurious house materials and skills: summer furs in a rattan-basketwork open-weave technique, cropped jackets in whipstitched patchwork python and braiding and smocking effects. Fendi x Karl Lagerfeld may be 50 years old as a collaboration, but in some ways it’s still ridiculously, friskily young. Again, in agoodway.
24 September 2015
The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where Karl Lagerfeld showed his first hautefourrurecollection for Fendi tonight, has a special meaning for him. It was where Igor Stravinsky premiered hisRite of Springin 1913, causing one of the greatest scandals in theatrical history. A similar uproar might have been anticipated tonight from the anti-fur lobby, but security kept PETA at bay. Still, even without their provoking presence, there was a surreal quality to the extravagance of the catwalk display.It got an enormous boost from the backdrop, a huge simulacrum of one of Giorgio de Chirico's most famous paintings. The building he depicted could have been Fendi's new Roman headquarters. The connections such an image made between past, present, and future seemed wholly appropriate to a show that was celebrating Lagerfeld's 50th year designing for Fendi. He is so anniversary-averse that it was scarcely a milestone he wanted to acknowledge, but the collection he offered up couldn't help but be a summation of everywhere fur has been during his tenure, from the lady mink coat to a technical feat that turns fur into one more fabric in a designer's repertoire. Without a detailed guide, it was all but impossible to nail what it was we were looking at. Chinchilla, sable, and mink seemed like the very hoi polloi of fur compared to the rarefied compositions that shimmered past over moon-age daydream jumpsuits of gold and silver.The cape worn by Julia Nobis at the very end of the show may have been feathers devolving into a silver-tipped skirt, which set one's mind on a cross-species category search. But Fendi inevitably draws one to the incontrovertible conclusion that nothing is what it seems, so conjecture was futile. And if that casts Karl as a master of illusion, then you can color him perfectly content.
8 July 2015
The essence of Fendi is illusion. Silvia Venturini Fendi has often counseled that nothing is what it seems with the stuff her family's business makes: the fur that looks like fabric, the fabric that looks like something else. Today there was a catwalk that appeared to be pebbles suspended in puddles of water. Silvia gleefully told of her models taking tentative steps, expecting to sink into sludge, only to find they were walking on resin. But the clothes themselves actually had less eye-teasing trickery than usual. In fact, they were as straightforward as an oversize polo over baggy Bermuda shorts, the kind of outfit Dad would wear on the weekend—visor optional. (ItwasFather’s Day yesterday, after all.) Silvia said that her background in accessories makes her more appreciative of functionality in clothes; and her new men's collection was certainly functional. Nothing remotely formal, just lots of big tops and comfy pants. And no theme to speak of. "You won't ever see a mood board backstage," Silvia said wryly. "I like to do something where you always want to know more."So what was there to learn about this particular outing? It wasn't really as basic as it seemed. Fabrics were rich. Plush T-shirts gleamed with dull gold or silver. Drop-shouldered coats were cut from python, suede, and leather. Thegranitopattern was carried over from women's Resort to provide some poppy visual interest, and the bag bugs that have become such a sensation for Fendi were dissected to create cult pieces. One patched together from leather and stitched with metal looked like an artisanal relic of the Renaissance. Silvia liked that idea because it hooks the present to the past, something very much in Fendi's Roman roots. Same with the red in the collection—papal, she thought. So not straightforward. ThisisFendi, and Silvia herself has always liked to inject a perverse little tease into her men's collection. This time? "It's the sophistication that's perverse," she said. Perhaps because it was so seductively casual.
22 June 2015
After poking its scrawny neck out of the bags in Fendi's Fall show in Milan, the bird of paradise became the fierce ruling motif for Resort 2016. It's not a romantic flower, like the orchid that was Karl Lagerfeld's previous fleeting fancy at Fendi, but its hard-edged beauty was the perfect expression of the duality that makes this house Italy's most fascinating. The bird of paradise has points and edges that were nature's complement to the collection's architectural severity. (Fendi's new headquarters in Rome are the inspirational gift that keeps on giving for Lagerfeld and his design team.) It loaned itself to a literal, beautiful print on a silk sundress and a full-skirted smock. Abstracted, it made an angular graphic on a full-skirted, white-collared schoolgirl dress. Printed on the cotton matelassé of a coat or jacket, the bird of paradise was almost anintrecciatoweave. And it reproduced strikingly as a mink appliqué on a cashmere top."Pleasant aggressivity" was the chord that Lagerfeld wanted to strike, soft but graphic. The bird of paradise went there. Another route was his reinterpretation of denim. Looks tough, feels soft—didn't we already mention duality? So there were silk dresses printed to look like denim, and shearling (Fendi's new passion) with a denim look, and jackets and blouses woven from silk with the hardy hand of denim. And there wasrealdenim bonded to the denim-dyed mink of a little reversible jacket. That is, of course, the consummate illusion of Fendi's fabric technologists. How often can we say it? Nothing is ever what it seems. Hence a jacket woven from leather that looked entirely tweedy. Or a richly patterned coat woven from mink, 29 hours on an antique loom.Lagerfeld has been at Fendi for 50 years. The company was founded 40 years earlier. That's a huge weight of time. In one way, it was embodied in a newgranitoprint in a bag or a blouson. Substance. But next up was a sweatshirt with a huge shearling lightbulb attached.Idea!—Fendi's new motif. That surreal levity permeated the accessories: the new dot.com bag, the micro monster bags (i.e., Lilliputian versions of Fendi classics), the bird-of-paradise high heels. But there is also a real canniness to Fendi, and here it was most evident in a color palette that highlighted ochre, saffron, and army green.
The clothing and accessories that borrowed these shades were a subtle counterpoint to the bird-of-paradise extravaganza, but they'll likely be the pieces that continue to seduce when resorts around the world have folded their tents and stolen back into the night.
26 May 2015
It was only after Karl Lagerfeld had designed the latest Fendi collection, featuring a new kind of construction based on panels of leather, that it occurred to him he'd been once again inspired by the architecture of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, the masterpiece of Fascist architecture that is Fendi's new headquarters in Rome. The same style of building surrounds the empty, eerie piazzas in the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. He got a name-check, too.The panels were strange appurtenances, molding the legs of the models like an abstract apron (actress and erstwhile farm girl Noomi Rapace was reminded of a blacksmith), but Lagerfeld was very taken with them as a way to communicate a longer, more linear proposal. He wanted to move well away from the tendency toward girlie-ness that he'd been bothered by in Fendi's Spring offering. There was no sign of soft, romantic orchids. Instead, every model's bag spouted a hard, beaky bird-of-paradise flower. "Pleasant aggressivity," said Lagerfeld with a smile.But at the same time, he talked about the idea of protection, one more designer to acknowledge the toughness of the times. The panels certainly reflected such thinking. So did the substantial, spectacular coats, tucked at the waist to give them a full-skirted flare, and falling to mid-calf. There were also tabard tops (Lagerfeld compared them with the safety vests worn by policemen) and a clutch of oversize padded pieces that looked like repurposed duvets—looks you could truly live in. Their puffa-ness was a smart counterpoint to the elongated theme, but they were also a reminder of how rarely a Fendi collection relates to anything else that is happening in fashion. The walls of the show space today were lined with enormous reproductions of abstracts by the early-20th-century Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp. (They were also used as prints in the collection.) What Lagerfeld has always loved about Taeuber-Arp's work is that, even though she was painting during a time of great artistic ferment in Europe, there wasn't a trace of influence in her pictures. They were, in other words, completely original. In his admiration you could, perhaps, recognize aspiration.
26 February 2015
Silvia Venturini Fendi's daughter is attending university in London, and when Venturini Fendi goes to see her, they often end up meeting in a nearby park. While she waits, Venturini Fendi watches faculty members taking some time out from their day. Enough of them are wearing corduroy that she can safely assume—cliché aside—that corduroy is indeed the cloth of choice for educators.So Fendi's catwalk tonight was a dream for academics everywhere. Corduroy for days. Venturini Fendi was wondering if it was that park in London that triggered her appreciation. It was certainly some place similar that inspired Fendi's latest Bag Bug: an apple. It dangled fetchingly off suede or pony backpacks, which also had net pouches that held a ball. "You take a break in the park, eat an apple, play ball, reconnect with nature," Venturini Fendi explained. Hence the collection's earth tones and fabrics as organic as Harris Tweed.There is something equally classic about corduroy, which made it a logical way station for Venturini Fendi's ongoing exploration of a man's wardrobe. Besides, it gave her all those lines to play with. Alongside the needle and whale variations of the fabric itself, the shearlings and leathers also had trompe l'oeil cord grooves.That's a typical Fendi effect. Nothing is quite what it seems. This collection pushed the notion further by making every jacket and coat fully reversible. For a moment, Venturini Fendi even considered sending the collection down the catwalk one way, flipping it inside out, and sending the whole thing out again. "The collection looks completely different when it's reversed," she said. "It's like the peekaboo effect in clothes." Or like the brown suede coat that flipped to gray leather. You'd have to be a pretty rich teacher to walk away with such an item, but there was an ingenious utility in more accessible pieces, like the huge scarf with pockets big enough to hold an iPad.
19 January 2015
From one tiny germ of an idea—a sketch of a vintage scarf—Karl Lagerfeld created a symphony of stripes for Fendi’s Pre-Fall collection. Testament to his protean imagination, his stripes tapped a multitude of associations. A shift banded in leather, suede, and wool evoked the old college stripe. In black and white, the bands could have been piano keys or something dreamed up by a Russian Constructivist. There was a coat arduously put together from strips of intensely toned, precisely trimmed mink that looked like a mind-blower a witch doctor might don for his ultimate communion with the great beyond. And then, an elongated pleated dress composed of strips of silk and organza, as supremely elegant as anything from Bertolucci'sThe Conformist, but zipped and collared like a baseball jacket and delivered in the lurid coloration of a test pattern from a 1980s TV set.That particular piece was a perfect articulation of the fundamental tension that loans Fendi its irresistible fearlessness. Decades of heritage infused by moments of iconoclasm mean that Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi can draw on the atelier's extraordinary craftsmanship to create pieces that marry the substantial and the throwaway. Nothing made that more obvious here than a huge puffball of fox, exhaustively graded light to dark in its natural shades but so weightless it could be rolled into a ball and packed away like a T-shirt.The same train of thought was surely behind an outfit composed of the sweetest cocktail dress in pink organza (decorated with bug-eyed Little Monsters, Fendi's favorite leitmotif, here in mink with a fluffy fox mustache) topped by a biker vest in pink mink lined in gold leather, like the foil on a Ferrero Rocher. Really? Resistance is surely futile in the face of such frippery. Same with a flapper dress in silk tattered to look like fur.There is a giddiness to Fendi that suspends judgment on issues as mundane as good taste. Reinforced this season as a house code alongside the Bag Bugs and the orchids was the crocodile tail, composed of baguettes as a necklace or as a closure on a new backpack. It was Karl's reminder that one of the F's in Fendi's FF logo stands for Fun.
2 December 2014
If it's no longer true that all roads lead to Rome, the two-lane highway that ran down the Fendi catwalk today was definitely headed back there. Fendi's new Roman headquarters is the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, built under Mussolini. Its "Square Colosseum" configuration was the inspiration for today's set, and when Silvia Venturini Fendi talked about the collection being "on the road," she meant the high velocity that is sweeping Fendi into the future. Or was it "high frequency," a new technique that managed to inset strips of fabric without stitching (or something of that sort) to create the kind of seamless, streamlined effect you might get when you look out the window of a fast-moving vehicle?Movement was everything in this collection. Skins were finely slashed vertically to create an optical quiver; tattered organdies floated like feathers. There was a subtle shimmer to the film of what looked like perforated plastic that coated a patchworked fur shift. (One way to waterproof your furry finery.)But it was less the craftsmanship—never in doubt with Fendi—than the attitude on the catwalk that distinguished today's show. Karl Lagerfeld has become paterfamilias to a whole tribe of bright—and very excitable—young things, like Cara Delevingne, walking exclusively for Fendi in Milan. "She's a completely new sort of girl," he said postshow. "Not like anyone who's come before." And in response, the collection that he and Silvia do together has taken on a character not like any Fendi that's come before. In a word,young.Oh, so young. Jackets were cropped, pants were slouched, skirts were hiked. There was denim for the first time on a Fendi runway. And Lagerfeld has come up with a new leitmotif for his girls: the orchid. First introduced in Fall 2014 in corsage form as the romantic echo of another era, it is now printed, woven, embroidered, appliquéd, and even sculpted from suede for Spring 2015. Like time, Lagerfeld waits for no one.
18 September 2014
Silvia Venturini Fendi is the crown princess of surprising subtext. "Nobody gets it," she said after her latest men's show. Was she pissed off by that? Was she pleased? One of the most attractive things about her is that she's almost as unreadable as her collections. Silvia is, for instance, obsessed with Bob Marley. Who knew? "He was so elegant in his jeans and T-shirt," she rhapsodized. "I used Jamaican colors in the accessories as an homage to him."Nothing is ever what it seems at Fendi; the knack for creating ambiguity is something Silvia shares with Fendi's éminence grise, Karl Lagerfeld. The fact that today's lineup was ostensibly about the straightforward everyday—basics like blousons; macs; sweaters; jean jackets; Bermuda shorts; and, the signal look of the Milan season, suits with sandals—was surely a red rag to Silvia's bull. That distressed jean jacket? Honey, it was bonded leather. The jacket of a thousand pixels? A basket weave of leather so intricate the eye couldn't pick it apart.It was as though the real world Silvia was reflecting on the runway existed simply so she could make a statement about escaping from it. Create yourownreality, in other words. The instrument of escape she chose was headphones, created in tandem with Beats by Dr. Dre, that company's latest fashion collaboration (with, promised creative marketing officer Omar Johnson, more on the way). Fendi wrapped the Beats in bold shades of its signature Selleria leather, with croc at the top of the line. When thisverylimited edition becomes available at the end of the year, the waiting list will be taking no prisoners.
22 June 2014
Is there anything else like Fendi? What Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi have done with that huge fur ball of luxury and tradition beggars description. Primal barbarism meshes with decadent sophistication, palazzo and gutter fuse in one elusive but alluring package. Credit Rome, as anyone who's seenThe Great Beauty, winner of this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, will recognize. "Fendi Roma," read the new labels, as the business places a greater emphasis than ever on its roots. For the new Resort collection, Lagerfeld revisited a motif from 1988 and spread a little "Fendi Roma" graffiti around. It was the most visible expression of a hyper-sporty thread: cropped, rah-rah short, lean, piped, meshed. A bra and trackies combo was paired with a little white mink bomber, with sleeves in a mink mesh. A motocross jacket, banded in racing checks, topped a skirt in perforated black leather that was decorated with discs of orange shearling, like 3-D polka dots. It was a technological feat, for sure, but it was also as playful as a plushie.That's one of the most appealing things about Fendi. Its artisans are capable of ne plus ultra craftsmanship, but the hand is lighter than ever. Just look at Fendi twenty-five years ago to fully appreciate the evolution. Back then, "capital L" luxury was queen. Now, nothing is sacred, and all the better for it. On Fendi's Fall catwalk, the sprays of fresh orchids pinned to fur were a romantic, surprisingly soulful flourish. Here, the orchids came back as splintered, abstracted, exploded floral motifs, inlaid on fur, embroidered on a mohair tank, or as a ghostly print on pale pink silk organza. The abiding impression was urban energy—a lot of it.And yet the most striking piece in the collection was the quietest. A strappy shift in navy-trimmed black flared at the back into tiers of pleats. Yes, there was energy in their movement, but it was more the masterful construction that stood out. You mightn't look first at such an outfit, but you'd look longest. So you can add that dress to the list of Rome's enduring fascinations.
27 May 2014
Today's Fendi show provided one of the most poignantly incongruous images that this season is likely to offer: a fresh spray of orchids pinned to a wild fur stole belted around Georgia May Jagger's shoulders. A Neanderthal's attempt at flower arranging? Not at all. Karl Lagerfeld was inspired by Billie Holiday's song "Violets for Your Furs," and he'd been thinking about the charming old tradition that dictated a woman's husband or lover would pin her with a floral corsage as she set off cross-country by train. That led to travel being the theme of his new Fendi collection—travel for the sake of travel, the journey being more important than the destination, romantic notions that were reflected in Michel Gaubert's blend of Shostakovich and Philip Glass on the soundtrack. And yet there were sci-fi drones hovering above the audience today, recording the event. The handful of evening-ish outfits at the end of the show looked like star maps printed on stygian velvet…the multiverse, the ultimate journey's end. So past and future melded in typical Fendi fashion.The collection was rather prosaically titled Made in Italy because, said Lagerfeld, the quality of workmanship is so far superior in Italy than anywhere else that it merits a constant reminder. Perhaps that's why the construction of garments seemed more emphatic than usual, especially with the pixel patchworking. And the show opened with fitted dresses in earnest bourgeois colors and shapes that were literally erupting into tufts of fur at their seams. Lagerfeld punned that the effect was a "fur escape" (geddit?). It was irresistibly ridiculous when the shoulder of a sober loden coat-dress exploded in a green-tipped Mohawk.It may have been the notion of travel by train that inclined one toward thinking of the elegant, elongated lines of the collection as thirties-inflected (it's a decade that is everywhere at the moment anyway—maybe the trumpets of economic recovery haven't been enough to dispel the sense of incipient collapse lurking on society's margins). But Lagerfeld is always fiercely nonliteral, so zippers and athletic mesh dissected the silhouette. When things got too sleek, there was crocodile as armlets or collars and half belts on coats to inject a flavor of the primal. And humor too—Cara Delevingne paraded down the catwalk dangling the latest update of Fendi's Little Monsters: a Bag Boy, a simulacrum of Karl himself, expertly fashioned in fur.
Ultimately, it was impossible to pin the mood to any one time and place, just as Lagerfeld intended. He had a nice term for it:couture universelle.
19 February 2014
For her Spring show, Silvia Venturini Fendi imagined sunshine coming through an open door. For today's Fendi presentation she was thinking about the wind blowing through an open window, stirring the goat fur that ran for what seemed like half a mile down the catwalk and up the back wall, making it ripple like grass—or like some eerily serpentine monster. (After the show, she reassured anxious guests that this extravagantly decadent effect would be repurposed as carpets for the Fendi Casa business.)"We're making a connection between the Fendi man and the primitive, organic nature of Fendi's raw material," Silvia explained. It's often been the way with Fendi collections: the tug between the atavistic nature of animal fur and the linear, vaguely futuristic nature of the clothes. (The pixel print on a poplin shirt looked like twenty-second-century Liberty.) Tame and wild, urban and natural—Fendi can point to a long history of duality. And it didn't stop there. There was maybe more fur in its…er…furrystate than usual, but the collection's strongest pieces lay in a different take on duality, that between real and fake. "We were the first to combine the two in the eighties," said Silvia. "It's like surprising people with a magic trick." That crocodile biker jacket, for instance? Stamped leather. And the panels of crocodile on a coat? Neoprene. Needle punching might have been invented for Fendi the way it morphed fine knit and shaggy shearling together to create a discombobulating hybrid.Silvia insists she approaches menswear with the same attitude she applies to the design of Fendi's accessories business: The first rule is functionality. Hence, presumably, the abundance of somber-toned tailoring in today's presentation. But her wayward sense of humor has always been Fendi's secret weapon, and she let it loose with a couple of items that will stand among Fall 2014's most memorable. She translated the Little Monsters, the furry-bag bugs that now dangle from purses the world over, into shearling vests. Come Fall, they'll be glaring from manly chests near you.
12 January 2014
The essence of Fendi was perfectly distilled into one look from the label's Pre-Fall collection. A lustrous leather jacket—stitchedin a croc texture, when the easy way out would be to print the pattern—was tightly belted over a long, elegant skirt, from which peeked legs covered, like the satyr of Greek legend, in tiny tufts of fur. The extreme craftsmanship, the sleek sophistication, the pagan finishing touch—nobody bakes that recipe better than Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi. But those hairy legs aside (they were actually kneesocks), this wasn't really a Fendi collection that dressed to thrill. If Spring offered a superb take on lightness, what we got here was more earthbound, with the heft of masculine tweed and shearling cut into solid silhouettes, and a prevailing somber seriousness, even if it was interrupted here and there by odd patches of color applied in a process called thermo-pigmentation. It seemed appropriate that the bag of the season had a sturdy four-in-one functionality. With a little manipulation, it converted from clutch to handbag to shoulder bag to messenger.But opposites have always attracted at Fendi. The future always arrives with the past. So it seemed logical that Spring's lightness should surrender to weight. And here there were masculine and feminine, hard and soft, the linear and the asymmetrical, plus a strong feeling of hard-edged precision softened and blurred by the shearling and fur collars and trims.The technique was, of course, still stunning. One striking coat was composed of bands of leather, bouclé, and shearling shaved into a 3-D effect. Another coat had a dip-dyed ombré look that was actually composed of little morsels of carefully graded fur, an effect that took a grand total of 1,050 hours to achieve. Too bad the collection left you feeling the weight of that time, because the coat itself was featherlight.
1 December 2013
"Inspired by the world of informatics." Karl Lagerfeld's reduction to essence of his latest Fendi collection sounded so drily off-world that it scarcely induced a warm rush of anticipation. But Karl is a past master of the undersell, always so ready to shrug off his achievements as the paid-up obligation of some journeyman designer. And isn't that enough to make a cat laugh? (Especially if the cat is the now-famous Choupette.) Especially in the light of collections like the one Lagerfeld showed for Fendi today.Self-deprecation aside, Lagerfeld is mesmerized by the opportunities that advances in fabric technology have offered him. That took two directions today—the unstiffening of organza, one of his favorite fabrics, and the leavening of fur, to the point where it was almost as light as the organza with which it was combined. "A coat weighs grams," enthused Silvia Venturini Fendi backstage.That lightness was the collection's leitmotif. Laser-cut organza was layered in spectrums of color, inspired, said Lagerfeld, by light passing through water. A waterfall cascaded down the backdrop, a reminder that Lagerfeld and Fendi worked onThe Glory of Waterexhibition in Paris in July. Somewhere underneath the layers of fabric, the fountains of Paris and the fountains of Rome were inspirations.Equally, there was Lagerfeld's attachment to anything that isaboutto happen. Hyperlinking was his key to the collection's modular quality, to the way that a leather jacket was carved into articulated panels or digital circuitry created motifs for jackets and skirts. Still, the irrevocable truth is that Fendi is a fur house, and fur is just about the most primordial material known to humankind. Which is why Lagerfeld's innate iconoclasm infected today's presentation with plastic. A crocodile handbag, half real, half fake? The very notion had a subversive tang, especially from one of the most counterfeited fashion houses in the world. Fake a fake? Fendi is streets ahead.
18 September 2013
One word that echoed down the men's shows in Milan was "utility." Even at Fendi, longtime hub of artisanal Roman luxury, Silvia Venturini Fendi was extolling the virtues of multifunctional items with reversible this and detachable that to enhance their versatility, as in pockets taped onto coats and jackets.In the past, there's always been a peculiar, sly twist to a Fendi men's collection. This season? Not so much. "I'm more confident, so I'm less perverse," said Silvia. Her confidence was clearest in a truly seductive color palette that took its cue from the desert: sand and saffron, terra-cotta and brick, the deep lilacs and cyclamens of a sunset sky over the Sahara. The Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro was filled with an inescapably massive sand dune made of powdered, dyed rocks—the aim, according to Silvia, being that, "everyone goes home and finds a little bit of sand in their shoes." The perfect souvenir of a presentation that celebrated a climactic extreme that was literally poles apart from fall's deep freeze of a show. Here, there was a leather parka textured like mud dried out and cracked by the sun, prints that looked like swirling sandstorms, and shoes that had been sand-blasted. If that was the window dressing, the guts of the collection was an athletic ease. Even the most tailored pieces had a casual slouch. The men's collection rarely has a significant presence in Fendi stores around the world, but it was easy to imagine this one connecting with a new breed of sharp-dressed man.
23 June 2013
A showroom appointment is a particularly satisfying way to see a Fendi collection. At a show, there's no brushing your hand against the sheared and sculpted mink of a bomber jacket. On the runway, a patchworked python T-shirt and skirt would stomp by too quickly for you to truly appreciate the intricacy of their mosaiclike design. The level of craft here was as mind-bending as ever. Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi seemed to have purposely chosen patterns and motifs that would put the ateliers to the test—zebra stripes, zigzags, the signature interlocking Fs.If anything, silhouettes like the aforementioned tee and track pants looked more conventional than you'd find on a Fendi catwalk—but that's not all that surprising given the season in question. Resort is on the shop floor for months before it goes on sale; by nature, it's the hardest-working collection of the year. And on the other hand, the workmanship produced some true moments of wonder. The shift dress beaded in a patchwork of pythons is a true piece of art, its simple shape notwithstanding. And as for the mink capelet sheared in a geometric design that evoked the Art Deco era, it will be a collector's piece a hundred years hence.
28 May 2013
Fendi's FF insignia was originally a sixties thing that stood for Fun Furs. Somehow it became codified as the corporate logo. Today, with his 96th (!!!) collection for the house, Karl Lagerfeld restored that original inflection. Which was simply one more testament to his unerring ability to mount, master, and extrapolate the merest flicker of modernity.Admittedly, he has a brilliant consort in Silvia Venturini Fendi, a woman whose iconoclastic attitude to the verities of her family business inclines her to the extreme. So, with the fashion world surrendering this season to fur in every possible way (it's as though it could resist for only so long, just as compassion fatigue sets in in the world of charitable works), it was the moment for Fendi to boldly go where no man could go before—or after. Or even in between. Simply because, as Lagerfeld so crisply declared, nobody does it better.The fun was in the function. The Fendi show rolled by in a farrago of fur, detailed by Lagerfeld in a press-kit illustration that had fur on bags, bangles, belts, booties, and sunglasses. Sam McKnight attached Mohawks of colored fox to the models' heads. Silvia hung fur owls off her bags. "Strange creatures on the catwalk," she mused. "Like little birds." By the time Julia Nobis closed the show in a fur coat woven in shades of pink and black and framed in barbaric shag, Silvia's "little birds" had evolved into a new subspecies in fashion: an elegant, extravagant, techno-barbarian riposte to the realities of everyday dress.It wasn't just pelts. Karl conspiratorially communicated the properties of something called "leather feather fur." We took that to mean the skins fringed and/or trimmed to look like an exercise in pure texture. Because the collection's attention to leather was just as persuasive as its focus on fur. The notion of the natural mutated into something entirely artificial seemed to embody the essence of FF Fendi. Hybrids—they are the "strange creatures" that Fendi has made. And today they ruled.
20 February 2013
Humor isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Fendi. But a quick perusal of this season's lookbook, in which the models prop themselves up on giant fur-covered blocks (themselves echoes of the fur-covered doodads that hang from the handles of some of the house's bags), suggests that if nothing else, Silvia Fendi and Karl Lagerfeld don't take themselves, or the brand, seriously all of the time. To be sure, there was astounding workmanship on display in the label's pre-fall collection, specifically on a striped fur painstakingly constructed from small pieces of the fuzzy stuff not much bigger—no lie—than theo's in this sentence. And again on the pelts that were fused with knit, part techy, part craft. As for the humor, it could be subtle, as in one fur that looked faux, and another that looked like velvet. Or it could be loud: see the trio of shaved-shearling bombers in Crayola brights with bags and stiletto boots to match. Fendi's practical side deserves a shout-out here, too. Pre-fall has shaped up to be a season of great outerwear, and the house delivered on its reputation in this regard. A shearling aviator looked great, as did the army-green parka with a deep fur hem.
27 January 2013
"The world is heating up and I need to feel a little bit cold," Silvia Venturini Fendi mused. It's not exactly the "heroic human needs for life in extreme conditions" that the notes for her show exalted, but Silvia has been feeling Scandinavia lately. Or, to be more specific, Iceland, even if its place under the Scandinavian umbrella is not exactly secure. No matter, it's the relationship between the people and nature that Silvia loves, as well as the scorn for materialism and the discerning taste that evolves when you learn to value the little you've got. Educated palates might have discerned that the drinks and canapés served during the presentation tasted well and truly foraged in the wild. Everyone else was merely flummoxed.Fortunately, the Icelandic subtext didn't impose itself on the clothes quite so divisively. In a season of oversize coats, a fisherman's cape was an exotic option, especially when rendered in a patchworked astrakhan, or yeti shagginess. The wildness of those pieces was tempered in the heavy knits, the raw felts, the coarse nubbles of a topcoat, the way a sweater was patched into an argyle pattern, or oiled leather was fused with wool in a hoodie. Hoods were actually a leitmotif, inspired, said Silvia, by Icelandic fishermen's coats. The translucent soles on the shoes were intended to evoke slivers of ice. The fur boots were clearly closer to the collection's cold heart.As is often the case with Fendi, the concept pieces were surrounded by a collection of artfully normal items such as slimly tailored suits and some splendid topcoats. Scarcely the kind of things that would appeal to a man who scorned materialism. But he might like the context: the foraged food, and the live soundtrack by electronic musician (and Björk collaborator) Matthew Herbert, who mixed rhythms very economically out of the sound of the models as they marched, like a surreal step class, up, down, and sideways through the stairway-ed set. And our man might also find a curiously kindred spirit in Silvia herself. The walkways of the Fendi show space reminded her of the bridge on a fishing trawler, but she also fancied those walkways crowded with doctors and scientists. "Science is the next big thing for me," said she. "Scientists are going to be the next rock stars."
13 January 2013
The Fendi show today began and ended with a big bang: the first a huge balloon popping to allow the models onto the catwalk; the last an explosive print that dissolved into an infinity of starlike sparkles. In between came a meditation on modernism courtesy of Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi, who never stop putting futuristic spins on the 87-year-old house's traditions. Here, for instance, the duo were "doing modern our way, with our techniques" according to Fendi. "There are no machines; it's all by hand." This rare feat was obvious in coats composed of a marquetry of fur or fabric. Almost as impressive, though not as showy, was the fact that the collection was seamless, usingsaldatura,or some kind of electrical welding, instead of stitching. It guaranteed that the leathers and fantastic crocodile napas looked feather-light. The iconic Baguette had also been transformed, somehow stripped of all its metal parts and turned into a testament, said Fendi, "to the power of perfect proportion."The designer mentioned the perspective of the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel as a reference point for the way that dresses were multiple lengths—or shorts had pannierlike pockets— so that your eye was drawnintothem. Same effect with the black and colored borders that "framed" the clothes. The idea was apparently three-dimensionality. That's why the referencing of Anish Kapoor made a little more sense, given that there was something more sculptural than painterly about the silhouettes. And if all of that sounds a bit much for a fashion show on a Saturday morning in Milan, you should also know that the clothes in this particular Fendi show were a lot of fun. Lagerfeld's crepe silk Big Bang shift was Milan's best cocktail dress; the leather coat with the upside-down F for Fendi was the cleverest piece of Russian Constructivist branding we'll see all season; and the bags and shoes should keep kids entertained for hours. One pair, for instance, arrives with a set of uppers that will allow you to compose your footwear at will, Lego-like. And by hand, of course.
21 September 2012
Thirty-one stories above street level, Silvia Venturini Fendi created her laboratory of menswear. Two snaking lines of mannequins in her men's collection embodied, according to the designer, cloning and duplication; evolution with variation. "This is to me a place that talks about the future," she said. "The idea is that the clothes—they're not about decoration, they're about needs and function. Everything has a purpose, an answer to a function."It was hard to see the function that a damier-patterned T-shirt and matching shorts in stitched eelskin answered. They seemed purely luxe for luxe's sake. Does a man need an eel? "Yes, you need," Fendi insisted, "because you need to be connected to your primitive roots."So the way to the future is through the past; so the route to function goes via the luxe. Fendi doubled rules on rules in her cosmology of menswear. The clothes themselves? Unavoidably, symptomatically odd. There are blousy pleated shorts in crocodile on one hand and a kind of four-piece suit of silk nylon—coat, shirt, jacket, and shorts—on the other. Damier check showed up not only among the eels but also as a woven jacquard and on a printed cotton suit where it appeared in an "exploded" version: beginning tight and checkerboardish, ending loose and diffuse. The key colors are teal, chocolate, and blue; the key bags small, slightly purselike cubes.Fendi herself is cheerfully direct about even the odder bits of her apocalyptic visions. (Why not? She's often right. Her shorts are shorter than they've been in the past, she said, because the future will be about heat. And this just moments after admitting she'd cut her own hair.) She's so to the point that it becomes churlish to insist on evaluating the clothes by standards other than hers. Better simply to appreciate that, in an obscure tower of the empire It-bags built, a mad scientist is hard at work, or at play.
24 June 2012
What do Legos and Leopold Stolba, the Vienna Secessionist artist, have in common? Fendi, of course. Karl Lagerfeld, polymath that he is, put both to work for him in the label's new Resort collection. He also referenced his 1970's self with a graph paper print he used back then. It could be that Lagerfeld is waxing nostalgic. More likely, it's just something in the air: The seventies have been a popular decade this season so far. Here the graph print appeared on a button-front blouse and matching skirt with double thigh slits. This was a leggy lineup all around, with shorts doing the work of pants and skirts and dresses dominating. The Fendi woman is no seductress, or at least she's not an obvious one. There's something decorous about these clothes. That said, a couple of little numbers in a beaded Stolba motif came finished with long strands of fringe. And there was more fun to be had on the accessories front. Many of the bags came with accessories of their own in the form of multicolored fur-covered cubes, like luxury versions of rearview mirror fuzzy dice.
17 June 2012
Browsing the racks before the show today, Silvia Venturini Fendi claimed that life as a Roman means living with layers of history, from distant yesterdays to pell-mell tomorrows. There those layers were on the Fendi catwalk—hair that looked like a lift from classical statuary, skirts that were futuristically spliced, a dozen contrary ideas in between. Tying them all together was the signature notion of the hybrid: uniting leather jacket and wool coat in one piece; combining shine and matte, kilt and skirt, cape and shirt; bringing together plant and animal in a fur coat that vibrantly captured the colors of a wild orchid. Fur looked like candy-hued synthetic, wool looked like nubbly multicolored fur. A bag that appeared to be cut from animal hide was actually rubber; another handbag—the most significant in the collection—was an iPad carrier, reflecting Silvia's addiction to the information-gathering possibilities of the Internet. "I'm always checking things at dinner," she said.Technology's influence on Fendi also comes courtesy of noted digitalist Karl Lagerfeld, who was saying that there's no need to refer back to the past when the online world is awash with late-breaking info. Nevertheless, there was a curious and charming retro edge in the Fendi collection, evident in details—a puff sleeve, a fichu, a bustle—that could almost pass as folkloric were it not for the fact that they were delivered in such an incongruous way. That bustle, for instance, bunched from navy blue croc or antelope hide. Incongruity may, in fact, be even more of a Fendi signature than the hybrid. It guarantees that this label's collections will always defeat expectations, in the best possible way.
22 February 2012
Duality, according to Silvia Fendi, is at the heart of her label's new men's collection, the first it has shown in presentation during the menswear week in two years. The shapes and barely varying colors said "restrained." The unbridled luxuriousness of the fabrications said "run riot."The entire collection traveled a short spectrum from blue to gray, arrayed on a long line of mannequins. (Stillness in excelsis, surrounded by video footage of Milan by night—dualism again.) And the silhouettes were not of the path-breaking kind. But Fendi has been pushing the envelope with craft. An Italian television series has even been created to showcase its craftsmen and document their innovations. The company has been investing heavily in new technology, needle-punching fabrics together, like felted wool fused seamlessly to mink, and creating new ones entirely, like denim poplin whose blue is actually fifteen different shades of blue thread."It's really a moment where we have contrasting forces," Sylvia explained, "a moment of big changes. I think all of us feel this dualism of past and future, about a way of life that probably will change in the future." There were gorgeous pieces that glanced at tradition, like a Selleria leather jacket whose pick-stitching echoed that of Fendi's iconic handbags. You didn't see a jacket and shirt without a tie. "The tie ties you to the past," Fendi reasoned.Still, if the future looks chic, it also looks dark. Fendi said she disliked historical references but admitted she'd been watching Woody Allen's thrillerMatch Pointwith its seductive antihero: "very controlled, but then he's a serial killer." Surely she didn't mean the reference literally? "When I look at him," she said of the Fendi man, "he's very controlled, but he's fighting a little bit." Dualism incarnate.
14 January 2012
Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Nobel Prize-winning neurologist centenarian who played muse to Silvia Venturini Fendi and Karl Lagerfeld for Spring, has left the picture, but something of that show's weird scientist vibe lingered for pre-fall. A scholarly green turtleneck sweater, for example, came with a black patent panel on its front, while a shift dress was constructed from fine black wool bonded to crisp white cotton. Playful experimentation defined the house's famous furs, as well: See the black knee-length coat with the white cowboy shirt-style yoke. Another strange yet compelling combination: a glittery green, white, and black evening top worn with drawstring-waist sweatpants. Then again, some looks were 100 percent glam, the show-closing white and black spotted gown and its matching fur coat being the prime example.
6 December 2011
Rita Levi-Montalcini is a 102-year-old Italian neurologist who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1986. She is also the unlikeliest fashion inspiration of Spring 2012. Silvia Venturini Fendi felt she was the perfect embodiment of the very particular type of Milanese woman she wanted to celebrate with the new Fendi collection: serious, practical, possibly academic. As far as Karl Lagerfeld was concerned, the woman he had in mind wasn't so much all that as simply, quintessentially Italian. Monica Vitti, perhaps. It was her voice we could hear on the soundtrack, in snippets from Michelangelo Antonioni's definitive portrait of urban angst,La Notte.Either way, this woman wasn't the va-va-voom Italian sexpot of Loren and Lollobrigida lore. Lagerfeld wanted a solid emphasis on daywear, as an antidote to what he sees as countless collections of cocktail dresses. There was a studious, masculine-feminine interplay in an outfit such as the elastic-waist skirt in the striped cotton of a businessman's shirt, paired with a white blouse down the front of which ran a silk ribbon of trompe l'oeil tie. Box-pleat skirts, A-line jackets, and a navy coat that looked like something a chic researcher might wear elaborated on the notion.But then we were into the ur-Fendi zone, where a certain madness takes hold. There were ensembles that could have been lifted from the closet of an unhinged housewife—the skirt with huge patch pockets trimmed with piecrust frill, the apron-front tops—then there was an evening passage that suggested a wound-up-tight academic looking for Mr. Goodbar while she was harnessed into swirly, sheer black. She was clutching a rather gorgeous fur-trimmed bag, which, said Silvia, was intended to look like a painting.At this point, it may pay to note that the models' bouffants had been somewhat disordered to evoke Albert Einstein's hair. And, under their frameless sunglasses, their eyelids were caked with gold leaf. OK, this is the world of science as viewed through the prism of fashion, but one still feels compelled to sign on as a mature science student at the nearest university.
21 September 2011
Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.
23 June 2011
Karl Lagerfeld insisted that the painterly, Dadaist backdrop at Fendi's show today had little or nothing to do with the collection, but his co-conspirator Silvia Venturini Fendi had already described a picture of the woman whose spirit dominated the show: a buttoned-up-to-the-neck art teacher who was still wild enough to wipe her paintbrushes in her hair and unleash the animal within. Nice. If she was the raison d'être of the collection, kudos to her, because this was one of Fendi's strongest showings yet, in an escalating series of convincing fashion performances. Teach's style was strict but lived-in. She wore Mary Janes; her woolen tights bagged slightly at the knee. A decorous yet bold frill was pinned to the front of her blouse. She had incredible taste in cloth coats, one of which was appealingly detailed with a bow in the back. She valued comfort, as in the elasticated waist and cuffs of a skirt and pants. And her highly developed color sense was obvious in her layering of a rich blue coat over a teal skirt and yellow tights.But this woman was also uncaged in her soul. There are seasons when Fendi's artistry with fur is devoted to suggesting the opposite. This wasn't one of them. Today's teacher wigged out on shaggy wildness. Sable, fox, chinchilla, and mink were collaged together to make an altogether new beast, in the same way that the leather of the new Fendi Chameleon bags was treated to lend an element of ever-shifting unpredictability. This unrestrained, unpredictable spirit guided the trompe l'oeil of an apparently sober dress that matched a navy cotton blouse to a felted wool skirt—and spun to reveal that it was slashed open at the back. Anja Rubik's finale number also had a standout sobriety—high-collared, full-sleeved, floor-length—but it too was bare behind. In fact, Rubik's outfits in the show marked the trajectory of the collection, from her opening hike-in-the-country coat to a navy leather-and-fur construct to that final look. From prim to pagan and back again (or sage tosauvage, which was the suggestion of the show notes), there was an emotional arc here that even the ever-matter-of-fact Lagerfeld couldn't deny.
23 February 2011
For a Roman house, the most Roman of references:La Dolce Vita—the movie as well as the state of mind—gaveFendi's pre-fall collection its luxurious glamour. As befits a transitional season, though, this was glamour of a beautifully easygoing kind. Anita Ekberg would find something here to wear, all right—but it might be jeans.Chunky knits, in jewel tones like emerald and sapphire, appeared in the form of skirts and sweaters, and most hemlines hit at the knee or below. The waist was emphasized in high skirts and nipped-in dresses worn with belts. And the palette, favoring cool blues—sapphire, cerulean, cobalt, and sky—was light without heat. (Though one is honor-bound to mention the spangled harem pants, for all the glitter effect you could want.)Fendi being Fendi, the fabrications were exquisite, the details just so. They made the basic special, as in the multicolored enamel buttons marching up the front of a prim skirt. The special they made—well, you get the picture. Vide the treated jacquard that was used in a few evening options, covered in tiny dots of metallic sheen that sparkled like stars —the kind you'll find twinkling in the Roman night sky or, if you like, splashing in the Trevi fountain.
8 December 2010
Karl Lagerfeld has never been one for romance or nostalgia. Color and geometry were his two pillars for the Fendi collection shown in Milan today. Still, many of the clothes had the airy volume of outfits for an ideal summer holiday, an impression compounded by the pressed-flower souvenirs incorporated as a subtle woven detail. And further underscoring that notion was the singed backdrop; the effect extended to the first few outfits, which looked like they'd been kissed by fire. The heat of the sun? The heat of desire? Either way, it was clearly the hottest holiday Fendi's ever had, hotter even than the summer Lagerfeld just enjoyed at his house in Saint-Tropez, where the mercury hit 100-plus for weeks on end.At the same time, there was such an easy informality in the smocks, drawstring tunics, and paper-bag-waisted skirts that the Fendi woman could have been taking a stroll through a breezy wildflower meadow. When Iris Strubegger appeared on the catwalk three-quarters of the way through the show in a tailored blue suit with squared shoulders and a pannier-ed waist, it was almost a shock: a glimpse of Fendi then versus the Fendi now we were seeing all around.But then, duality is this house's way. It starts with the joint stewardship of Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi, and in this collection it played out in ways both subtle (the wrap skirt that incorporated angles and curves) and obvious (the all-important bags combined the softness of napa and the hardness of Roman leather). Maybe that's why Silvia talked about "clothes for connoisseurs," i.e., people with an eye for those contrasts. Connoisseurs of Karl might note the touches he added for his own edification, in particular the tiny holes, edged and darned, that looked like flowers. Fendi? Darned? Such a homespun flourish spoke to the humble heart of this particular collection.A footnote: One of the minor irritations of recent Spring/Summer collections has been the way the notion of seasonless dressing has edited the sun out of fun. How refreshing to see some of Milan's biggest names paying such unambiguous homage to old Sol.
22 September 2010
To describe Fendi as verging on reserved and sober when there was a white lynx coat right there in the middle might seem fashion-delusional, but even the Roman home of superdeluxe furs has indeed caught the season's mood of restraint. In this winter, when all leading designers are concerned with calming and reshaping the silhouette, Karl Lagerfeld seemed less interested in showcasing the furriers' storied technical fireworks than pulling back to work on swing coats; soft, billowy blouses; mid-calf dirndls; and a slightly countrified, muted palette of gray, navy, beige, and mustard. Even the footwear was a play on the sensible and utilitarian. Not teetering statement platforms but high-heeled booties detailed with ribbed rubber toe caps and top lacing akin to Wellingtons or the muckers that horsey girls wear in the stable yard.It's all relative, of course. Backstage, and close up on the racks, there was more state-of-the-art fur expertise in evidence beyond the patchworked coats and vests (and that exceptional lynx) visible on the runway. The passage in what could pass as camel hair was actually shaved beige fur. The velvety nap of the eveningwear was constructed from ribbon strips of organza and fur, too. Still, from the point of view of the current drive toward chic practicality, it was the least showy coats—the simple, narrow, collarless suede cardigans with shearling on the inside—that could turn out to have the greatest fashion appeal in reality. Which is what it's all about now.
24 February 2010
It's the season of wispy fabric, ivory and ecru, off-pastels, and fraying edges. At Fendi, all that was going on, with an added Parisian lingerie twist. It looked as if Karl Lagerfeld had drawn from his French vocabulary to make a cream silk high-necked playsuit (part classic blouse, part romper) and a dotted tulle shirt with a frilled triangle bra beneath. Thankfully, it didn't slip completely into the clichés of boudoir (hypersexy is not the mood). That's because of the more rough-hewn elements—say, a pale blue linen sarong, wrapped like a simple piece of raw-edged fabric around the body—and the incredibly luxurious Fendi craftsmanship.The latter was apparent in a couple of pairs of chamois-fine pants and the puffy, feathery collages of leather on the shoulders of a tulle jacket. As for bags? There were a lot of wood-handled ones that came with the odd device of a snap-on fabric cover—could be linen with a flower-embroidered edge, could be needlepoint. If it was hard to see the utilitarian value in those, that's nothing to the two evening clutches made of completely transparent Perspex, with beveled edges. They were, of course, empty, because it would ruin their beauty to carry anything in them. Nevertheless, they were almost the most eye-catching thing in the show.
26 September 2009
With their towering vertical, square-shouldered demeanor, Fendi's women looked like an elegant army of survivors who might have walked through an apocalypse and out the other side. Their clothes, mostly dark, were cut with narrow flying panels, oddly textured with what looked at a glance like worn-through or dust-spattered fabrics and frayed edges. Of course, it wasn't that at all. Close up, the raw threads were minute dustings of mohair or fur, and the semi-destroyed materials proved to be advanced treatments of cashmere, burned-out chiffon, and flannel. Somewhere in designing this collection, Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi arrived at a dynamic balance between confronting the current mood and creating a modern proposition for that problematic wordluxury.Experience and technical expertise count here. Lagerfeld, after all, has navigated Fendi through many periods of Sturm und Drang when showy luxury has fallen out of favor, and he knows how to calibrate a response. Some of the devices used this season—like a fur cut to look like a shearling flying jacket—use disguise as a tactic. Yet Lagerfeld also knows this is no moment to fall back on grungypoverinostyling. If women are going to be persuaded to buy, there has to be a compelling reason. His way is to infiltrate innovation into the mix: a strong silhouette with a subtle undercurrent of glamour. The furs, of course, are as extraordinary as ever—technical feats that merge sable and fox, or use technology to make white gold cling to mink. On the other hand, this collection has moved far beyond being a mere foil for Fendi's craft skill as a furrier. Its fashion appeal as a ready-to-wear collection is now so clear, its reach has gone well beyond the core product.
1 March 2009
Exactly who started this season's trends for transparency, pale color, and bouncy crinolined skirts, we may never know. All that's certain is that it takes a practiced eye to handle all three of them at once—but if anyone can get away with it, it's Karl Lagerfeld. On the Fendi runway, he made bell-shaped dresses—with their accompanying three levels of sheer fabric in the skirt—look molded in a graphic way, rather than ingenue-cute or dubiously sleazy (pitfalls that have been encountered by others who've gone the way of see-through).With that, Lagerfeld established a modernist, cinch-waisted silhouette, further de-cloyed by up-sprouting quiffs, that ran throughout the collection—and he cleverly dispensed broderie anglaise, tablecloth lace, and laser cutouts as he went along. It made enough of a statement to carry the show, but, as always, the real news-making content was the shape of the Fendi bags. This season, it's the "kangaroo pouch"—vaguely similar to the Hermès Birkin, but with one side draped open.
24 September 2008
"I just couldn't resist," Silvia Venturini Fendi said when she was asked about the wedge-heeled shoes in the latest Fendi collection for men. What she meant was that she's partial to perversity. In exactly the same way, she dedicated a collection from Fendi, a house whose name is a byword for luxury, to poverty, or at least the ingenuity that comes from people who must make the most of the little they have. So she started with "poor" materials (actually, the simplest, most natural fabrics) and decorated them with plain ideas like cotton topstitching. What looked like a tufty Fendi fur jacket was really an artful mélange of leather and cotton. And a quilted blouson and waistcoat looked like Chinese peasantwear—if you think about it, adapting the idea of artisanal, traditional garments is where Fendi itself began. A knit tabard, for example, was a new version of the waistcoat. And the collarless shirts paired with the pants with the slightly dropped crotch could have been Sunday best for workers from another time and place.Exactly when and where that might be didn't particularly interest Silvia, but her impressionistic approach actually produced clothes with a certain shabby dignity. (Okay, the snakeskin jacket was a little more rock star than that.) And there is always a guiding intelligence in this collection that gets you thinking about what kind of thoughtful type might wear these outfits.
23 June 2008
Clearly recognizing the importance of this ever-growing season, Fendi almost quadrupled the size of its resort offering for 2009. Still, Karl Lagerfeld and co. did so without losing an iota of sophistication. Wide-legged jeans and other items nodded to the seventies, but—aside from a pair or two of Woodstock-worthy embroidered shorts with coordinating platforms—the collection deftly avoided hippie territory. Yachting references (a navy suspender-backed jumpsuit, for example) added to the sense of confident ease.
11 May 2008
When Karl Lagerfeld began designing for Fendi—that would be 1965—there were no other furriers (at least in Italy) who had the ambition to put fur at the forefront of fashion innovation. So much has gone around since then that it's almost unimaginable—fur has been "in" and "out," markets have surged and crashed, and now we find ourselves in the unprecedented position where there's another economic wobble at exactly the same time that practically every fashion label is showing fur coats, gilets, chubbies, bags, you name it. The upshot is that it takes some oomph to keep Fendi in pole position, not just regarding ready-to-wear, but in streaking ahead with the extra extras in the furs, pushing the luxury to points that are out of reach of the common manufacturer.This season, Lagerfeld kept the baseline of the clothing short, with a lot of action going on around the upper body: caped coats, poufed sleeves, high Elizabethan-influenced collars, and something of an autumn-woodland theme popping up, by the by. That's kind of enough to keep the clothes warm, but the real heat now has to be generated by the fur. So how about gilding it in 24-karat gold? Just about everyone is using fox these days, but when it appeared on the Fendi runway it turned heads—the tips of its hairs seemed to be illuminated with a golden glow. How's it done? Legendarily, Fendi has the handcraft no one else can muster, and now they've co-opted twenty-first-century science, using a secret process in which the fur is put into a molecular chamber that deposits gold particles onto the pelt while allowing it to remain silky. As it turned out, all the mink, fox, and astrakhan in the show that had a gold hue was treated with this technology, which, depending on the length of time spent in the chamber, gives the effect of an aura of light through to a thorough drenching. Fendi has tied up an exclusive on this—just as the price of gold is skyrocketing. All to the good of company prospects, of course: When a superrich lady comes to place her fashion investments, she'll be wanting something of proven exceptional value. Just watch the oligarchs flock.
20 February 2008
"Normality is the new eccentricity." That's the kind of definitive declaration that makes us love Silvia Venturini Fendi, because she so instantly set about deconstructing it with the clothes she showed. Sure, the catwalk was a banal brown, and the building blocks of the collection were the essential elements of a very traditional man's wardrobe. And there is no disputing the commercial truth of Silvia's conviction that luxury has to have a shelf life beyond the whims of one season. But at the same time, she can't help herself when it comes to menswear. She just wants to unhinge every male certitude.Take that legendary Fendi bag. Silvia is perversely proposing that a man carry a tiny clutch purse. (Okay, there's a sense of humor at work—she also sent sturdy messenger bags and a valise or two down the catwalk. But we know Fendi's heart is in the weirdness.) Getting back to those elements of tradition. A gray flannel coat was spectacularly deconstructed with an asymmetric swoosh of fabric, like an attached shawl thrown over one shoulder. The same principle governed a loose suede coat that swung open in a pagan sweep. Ranked against such exercises in excess was a fur-collared navy coat with neat little epaulettes, so classically precise as to have stepped straight out sixties sci-fi. Likewise, a camel blazer, or a military cape, the very essence of restraint, draped over brown slacks and croc loafers.DJ John Gosling's soundtrack only added to the proposition, particularly Supermayer's take on Rufus Wainwright's "Tiergarten," a remix so decadently gorgeous that it injects an outré quality into every item of clothing it accompanies. It's hard to escape the suspicion that, despite the luxe connotations that attach to the name of Fendi, the label's menswear is just Silvia's merry sandbox. But we're happy to play.
14 January 2008
It's been ten years since the Fendi Baguette lit the touch paper on the explosive—and still booming—market for It bags. That was why it turned up again today—in a new manifestation as a squishy oversize clutch, casually clamped to the sides of a few of Karl Lagerfeld's Spring looks for the house. This wasn't really a grandstanding statement, though, because Fendi has long since segued into new fields, and Lagerfeld never goes in for anniversaries anyhow.Thanks to his constant forward motion, the image of Italy's foremost fur house has, over time, transitioned into a ready-to-wear label that is now bought by stores year-round. There's always something to be found here that jibes with the subtexts of current trends. This season, it's all in the drapey jersey dresses in barely-there blues and _eau de nil_s. These long flyaway numbers with their handkerchief-point sleeves and trailing scarves bring to mind the romantic cult that surrounded Chloé in the seventies. That may be a reference point for several other designers for Spring, but aficionados will savor the fact that these Fendi versions are, in one sense, originals. After all, they come from the very hand that started the whole thing in the first place.
26 September 2007
Short and sweet—that's Karl Lagerfeld's message for Fendi resort. Working in shades of brown, white, and black with jolts of electric hues, he did hip-skimming cover-ups, the briefest of shorts, and swingy trapeze dresses, many decorated with little extras like fluttery flounces or eye-catching pleats (courtesy of the house's innovative, high-tech ateliers). Of course, leather and accessories are what the girls love Fendi for, so there was no shortage of outerwear—a snug jacket with a kicky peplum was a stand-out. (Cuffed leather shorts, on the other hand, looked less convincing.) And there was a bag, or two, for every look. The strongest? A group in multicolor patent leather laser-cut for an effect that might be described as Mondrian crossed with a computer chip.
9 July 2007
Silvia Venturini Fendi has been working on a special menswear project for a few seasons now. Baldly stated, she wants to play up a man's vulnerable side, to emphasize his eccentricity and ambiguity over his straight-ahead masculinity. Inevitably, this is not the kind of project that draws wide acclaim, but it is producing some of the most provocative menswear in Milan. For spring 2008, Venturini Fendi adopted the principle that "less is more": She proposed outfits composed of layers at times so light they were almost invisible. Sheer linen knitwear was laid like a veil over a shirt and tie. Nylon organza made see-through blousons in white or pale yellow. Believe this if you will, but it was Venturini Fendi's way of acknowledging the apocalypse of global warming. She is about to become a grandmother, so obligations to the future were on her mind and, without the wherewithal to make the necessary structural changes, she was doing her bit for individual solutions (as in, it's hot/cold, I need less/more clothes). By that same token, the collection offered roomy totes composed of leather and recycled Fendi canvas woven together.Small gestures perhaps, but mighty oaks, etc. More in keeping with the house's artisanal roots were a tiny Ali Baba-like waistcoat and blouson in leather with Byzantine embossing. And the very particular brand of decadent male glamour that Fendi excels at was well represented by pailletted tops and evening pants in a silky, translucent black nylon.
25 June 2007
Although Fendi has been steadily building up a roster of regular fashion clothing, in winter it remains the one and only place to turn for the ne plus ultra of what can be done with fur and leather. So this time there were few distractions from the coats, which Karl Lagerfeld updated with all the news from the fashion vanguard. The first had almost every keynote compressed into it: the big collar, belted waist, full skirt, and wide sleeves; the black-and-white chinchilla stripes contrasted with voluminous fox. There followed a geometric patchwork jacket—another trend—and then caped suits and the ultimate example of the shaggy goat story of the season: a spiky cream belted coat-jacket with giant shoulders, sported by Carmen Kass.That dealt with the out-and-out luxe side of things, but Lagerfeld also knowingly played with another subject du jour: the blurring of the line between natural and synthetic. That was visible in some of the leathers, but only on second inspection: A jacket that looked like a deconstructed quilted puffer that had been stitched together with rustle-y black trash-bag plastic squares was, of course, actually something else—the rarest handmade innovation of Italy's most advanced tanneries. Otherwise, the collection, with its brightly contrasting cartridge belts and turquoise and orange platforms, read as one of Lagerfeld's quick-minded summaries of all the trends so far, from major coats to accessible accessories.
21 February 2007
Imagine if Cristobal Balenciaga had designed menswear. That's some kind of crazy pipe dream. After all, Balenciaga couldn't even stand the notion of ready-to-wear. But down Fendi's catwalk came a drop-shouldered, three-quarter-length-sleeved coat that wouldn't have looked half bad on Audrey Hepburn (the most famous client of Balenciaga's most famous assistant, Hubert de Givenchy), and suddenly, it was a moment for pipe dreams. "Everyone's looking at couture for cuts and volumes," Silvia Venturini Fendi said backstage, but she also acknowledged the essential perversity of that thought as it applied to menswear.Still, transgression has been the spice in Fendi's menswear for at least as long as stylist Alister Mackie has been working on the collection with Silvia. This time around, the willful spirit prevailed in a juxtaposition as stark as a tuxedo jacket top and a jogging pant bottom, or a shaggy fur poncho/coat that looked like a prop fromGrey Gardens. Fendi's long track record with luxurious illusion meant that there was fur that looked like fabric and fabric that looked like fur—sheared Persian lamb made a shirt, a blouson, even a trenchcoat. The ribbing on a tunic was actually marmot, while the furry fuzz on a coat was in reality angora. A self-assured style hound might feel comfortable with a male twinset comprised of a rollneck and cardigan dotted with tiny old gold coins, while those more at home in the realm of the familiar would likely gravitate toward a lean pea coat or sharply tailored double-breasted suits that had aGattacaedge to them. But there was something so enthrallingly over-the-top about the whole collection that even these straightforward items were touched with fever.
16 January 2007
Trust Karl Lagerfeld to tweak a trend just enough so that it takes you by surprise. Like other designers this season, he worked couture details into his clothes for Fendi; but lace, rosettes, and the kind of hyperfeminine frills that have become commonplace on the spring runways weren't on his agenda. Instead, he employed high-tech materials such as black silicone, silver leather that was laser-cut to resemble athletic mesh, and holographic paillettes. "I wanted to use the most traditional craftsmanship with the most futuristic of fabrics," he said.Restricting himself to a palette of black, navy, white, silver, and shocking pink, and keeping the silhouette Edie Sedgwick–short, Lagerfeld came up with a graphic collection in which the space-age sixties and the sexed-up eighties played equal parts. There was a metal micro dress with a bow tie at the neck and an iridescent puff-sleeve shift, but alongside those were several looks—a batwing-sleeve number, for example, or a knit fur jacket—that came with wide, waist-defining belts.Having introduced the concept of craftsmanship, Lagerfeld also said that he wanted to make it modern, easy, and light. It didn't always work that way. A long, strapless tube dress nearly tripped a model up. Still, how welcome to encounter a designer in Milan for whom high concept trumps commercialism—not that there weren't plenty of best-seller candidates here, including a spot-on fringe bag made from splices of that futuristic silicone.
27 September 2006
Karl Lagerfeld nailed a condensed synthesis of at least two crosscurrents at Fendi: short volumes à la the sixties, and militarism with a touch of the medieval. If that sounds awfully complicated on paper, the show's abbreviated gray flannel coats, rounded at the shoulder and cinched with cummerbunds, made it seem almost simple. He pulled things off by styling the show with black tights and astrahkan boots with huge folded-over cuffs, accessories that neatly knitted together such apparently diverse pieces as a starship-trooper-uniform coat and a cape-shoulder, sculpted-waist mink jacket.A fashion historian nonpareil, Lagerfeld took bubbles as a theme and connected the dots between renaissance puffed sleeves, Fortuny puffballs, poufed Poiret-esque lines, and Cardin-like ovoid cabans. Still, the main action at Fendi is in the furs and bags, and among the former, there were some great pieces. A fierce, shaggy fox with huge shoulders made a big statement, as did a nipped-waist honey-and-gray mink with exaggerated braided sleeves and a curvy foulard collar. A slim white reversed fur coat with vertical seams in black was simpler, but no less memorable.The house's new black and gold-trimmed bucket bags, meanwhile, were inspired by the Romanesque architecture of Ravenna. Silvia Venturini Fendi also stamped a rendition of the Fendi palazzo in Rome onto the big rectangular belt buckles that were an unmissable part of this strong collection. Unfortunately, however, the show may be equally remembered for the events preceding it. Part of the photographers' stand collapsed, causing several injuries that required medical attention—a sobering reminder to all present of how frequently audiences at tightly packed presentations are put in the way of serious accidents waiting to happen.
22 February 2006
There is sometimes a sense with Fendi's spring collections that the house is treading water before Karl Lagerfeld's exuberant imagination truly lets rip for its highly furred, inventive fall shows. This fresh collection, however, seemed to signal a new creative energy for the season.The overscale lace patterns that filtered the backdrop's glowing pink light and shadowed the length of the runway, together with the influence of Lagerfeld muse Amanda Harlech, who was dressed backstage in a turn-of-the-century Irish lace bolero (which the designer found in a vintage store in Biarritz), pointed to a new light touch. Blooming tulip and poodle skirts, and blouses with built-in fichu capes, were made in crisp white piqué, eyelet, lace, and dotted Swiss cotton and given a pastry chef's flourish of spiraling ruffles or lettuce-edged flounces. Less-conventional treatments included laser-cut doily decoration on gleaming white patent, three-dimensional honeycomb appliqués,tremblantembroideries like clusters of wisteria blooms, and, this being Fendi, after all, dresses with their hems cuffed in pastel-colored fox, worked to seem as light as powder puffs.And there was a reason for those gigantically buckled belts that cinched dresses high under the bust or skirts low on the hip; they mirrored the buckles on the new B. Fendi bag. Whence the name? "B for buckle, b for belt, b for bag—B. Fendi!" laughed Harlech backstage.
28 September 2005
Trust Karl Lagerfeld to make a witty reversal of a fashion cliché. Where once Fendi made headlines by hiding fur discreetly on the inside of casual coats, now he's done the opposite: smoothing pelts onto the outside of extravagantly oversize down puffers. That made a dramatically chic and witty opener for a collection that brought Fendi back in from the cold of its so-so fall season last year.The other news was in the color: a darkly vibrant palette of aubergine, wine, bottle green, and browns, with which Lagerfeld worked to make fur, suede, fabric, and knit blur together so eye-deceivingly that the materials can only truly be verified by touch. Take a loden jacket, playfully extracted from Lagerfeld's Germanic past, but reshaped into a body-hugging leather-bound form, with a big collar. Part of it was apparently suede, but what of the zones that looked like dense bouclé wool? In this house, it's more likely to be some extraordinary clipped, tightly curled fur. But even from two steps away, it was impossible to tell.As always in this ultraluxurious ready-to-wear collection, there were many stand-alone items for women who want to invest in an extraordinary fur piece rather than a slice of a theme. They included a slim military coat, unembellished except for horizontally shaved stripes and epaulets; a semisheer cardigan jacket of white Mongolian lamb; and several full-skirt coats with nipped waists. The accessories, too, had a random charm, apparently unrelated to any grand overarching theme, yet all the better for it. One pair of boots, jeweled in a kind of flowery William Morris pattern, had nothing at all to do with another that came smothered with black lace. But there was one thing they all had in common, and it's something that women can read in a flash: an off-the-scale go-get-'em factor.
23 February 2005
Karl Lagerfeld turned his Fendi collection into a statement about print, color, and jersey dressing. He worked two separate palettes simultaneously—one a slew of rich, muddy, purplish darks, the other, rainbow streaks of acid yellows, electric blues, and greens—for everything from swimwear to vaguely forties day dresses to long, slender, scarflike gowns.Fendi's famous furs got the same painterly treatment, in multicolored fluffy cardigans and hippie deluxe perforated-fur vests. The house's new Spy bag, designed with secret pockets to stash lipsticks, sunglasses, cash, and cell phones, showed up in variations ranging from Deco-patterned velvet evening clutches to oversize brown squashy leathers.The collection looked best when Lagerfeld turned his attention to the possibilities of a new, longer length—a trend that's emerging strongly. Backstage, for those still puzzled about his color palette, the designer said that he was inspired by a recent exhibition of work by the Spanish painter Joan Miró.
28 September 2004
Sitting in a freezing, inhospitable industrial space waiting for the Fendi show to begin, the huddled, goose-pimpled audience was craving a major fur moment in more ways than one. When Karl Lagerfeld's slick-haired futuristic amazons began to stalk out, bristling with armfuls of metal jewellery, the knitted furs they dragged behind them did have an enviable survival-blanket appeal. But these surprisingly restrained offerings were hardly the kind of explosively creative pieces expected from the house that rewrote the rule book on skins and pelts.There were no obvious references for the tight, sometimes hobbling silhouettes and aggressively hard-edged look Lagerfeld created (except, perhaps, for a touch of the sci-fi movieGattaca). His army of women teetered the 100-yard runway in round-toed wedges, brandishing the new Fendi bags like totems (one with a shiny metal handle reminiscent of a transistor radio's, another a jewelled and mirrored minaudière). To be fair, Lagerfeld should get some credit for taking an anti-vintage stance this season—somebody had to do it, after all. "It was not about any past," he declared. "Certainly not my own." That said, his drive to modernism had a dispiriting joylessness about it. Luxe fashion like Fendi's, which speaks in the details of incredible craftsmanship, doesn't necessarily shine in such cold and impersonal surroundings.
25 February 2004
Forget last year’s fierce, sci-fi/medieval maidens; they’re history. Now that fashion has turned 180 degrees away from winter’s aggressive, angst-ridden armor, the ever-quixotic Karl Lagerfeld has gone back to the drawing board to sketch an alternative version to summer’s main theme of softness and femininity.The collection was informed by the idea of circle-cutting, which showed up in the construction of jackets with flounces emphasizing the shoulder line; in petal-shaped skirts; and in cummerbunds. Lagerfeld traced out that soft geometry with contrasting piping, making clothes with an experimental feel that somehow also evoked the work of Bill Gibb and Jean Muir in 1970’s London.Focus at Fendi is always on showcasing the company’s state-of-the-art developments in treating fur and skins. The latest how-did-they-do-that technology has produced an extraordinary transparent leather and a perforated ultra-fine suede, both of which trick the eye by narrowing the distinctions between fabric and animal by-product. It wasn’t all about science, however. Lagerfeld wrapped up the show with some cloudy, watercolor chiffons that floated on the general breeze of the summer trend.
3 October 2003
Blade Runnermerged with the medieval. That’s where Karl Lagerfeld took Fendi for fall, and if it sounds a tad heavy, don’t be misled. That futuristic story line strung together some of the most high-spirited feats in fur and leather to be witnessed on planet fashion.Lagerfeld began by cutting all his lengths short, concentrating on sculpted shapes to emphasize the body. His version of the season's ubiquitous down parka was a cross between a tiny formfitting ski jacket and a Renaissance doublet. With the addition of iridescent oil-slick leather, collars and cuffs done in sheared weasel, and zippers implanted in fuchsia satin, the generic turned super extraordinary.Showstopping coats were fielded against a palette of petrol blue, purple, lavender and a slew of reflective metallics. Natalia Vodianova stepped out in ribbed silver leather that sprouted quivering tufts of white fox. Neat coats in gray Persian lamb came with laminated zones textured with embossing. Curly cascades of Mongolian lamb spilled out of a skeletal framework of cloth. One inside-out fur with a vast drooping collar was sewn from a single, enormous circular patchwork.In all, the collection showed Lagerfeld's conviction that haute luxury needs to be pushed to the limit in order to stay compelling. That doesn’t necessarily mean over-the-top freakishness, either, which he proved with a lean, mean sable-lined chocolate crocodile coat, picked out in copper topstitching. It simply looked the epitome of sophisticated modernity.
2 March 2003
To enter the arena of Italian fashion is to take a ringside seat at a gladiatorial contest between luxury brands. That, at least, seemed to be the impression Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi were intent on creating as they sent out a posse of glam warrior girls, dressed for battle in skimpy body-skimming chiffons and leathers, and armed to the hilt with killer accessories.Lagerfeld opened with dark-blue two-piece swimwear, lashed together with strips that crisscrossed the body and paired with high—veryhigh—Roman sandals in metallic leather. Everything he showed from then on emphasized the honed body, whether in light, tightly seamed tailoring, sheer, lacy knits or short, asymmetrical goddess dresses finished with matte silver sequins. The combat theme extended through cutout-metal armlets, chokers and even filigree-encrusted sunglasses.Spring’s major assault, though, came in the shape of the Biga, a soft, exotic shoulder bag named after a Roman chariot. The gold-and-silver-mesh version, studded with Swarovski crystal, together with a rich-looking leather style embossed to look like feathers, seem primed to emerge victors in the next round of the epic 21st-century handbag wars.
26 September 2002
Call it barbarian deluxe. Fendi's women are a tribe of warrior goddesses storming in from the woods with the season's most-prized fur trophies slung about their shoulders. At first sight these furs, with their raggedy raw edges, wild textures and sprouting tufts might look primitive, but the techniques lavished on them are the ultimate in sophistication."We cut the fur to shreds and then knitted it to treat it like a fabric to give it lightness and movement," explained Karl Lagerfeld, about a series of shrug-on coats and huge one-armed stoles, devised to be flung around the body as easily as blankets. A fur bolero, worn back to front with pieces flying behind, was worn by Frankie Rayder; a piebald cross-bred knitted mink bobbed on the shoulders of Devon Aoki, and a vast knitted fox stole trailed dramatically from the neck of Jacquetta Wheeler. Inventing new mixes of pelts and casual ways of wearing fur was the Fendi sisters original big idea, and Lagerfeld has kept their expertise at the leading edge of fashion since the 60s. At a time when many houses are marching forward by retrieving a sense of their own past, Sylvia Fendi said,"it was a very emotional show. We wanted to go back to our roots."
1 March 2002
In sharp contrast to the girly aesthetic that has prevailed during these collections, Karl Lagerfeld presented the Fendi woman as strong, confident and even, at times, aggressive.Banishing delicate pastel tones, Lagerfeld clad his nomadic warriors in every shade of brick, mauve and brown, better to complement their choppy braided hairdos and tribal tattoo eye makeup. Layers were key. Sheer smocks and subtly printed shirts wafted over fitted trousers cinched above the knee with tie-straps; trailblazer skirts, worked-leather frontier vests, ruffled frocks and minutely embellished sheer tunics were all piled atop each other with abandon.These dramatic ensembles may not be the most practical everyday staples, but Fendi's accessories are sure to be among the season's best sellers. Lagerfeld's then-and-now studded oyster bags, tooled leather boots and distressed woven sashes all looked like they could have been transported by mule from the outback to the Via Sciesa showroom.
1 October 2001
It takes a talent like Karl Lagerfeld to channel 1960s street style, reinterpret it using only black and white, and get away with it.Fendi's Fall mod squad stormed the runway in zip-up short furs, white leather trousers and perky minidresses with Courréges-like cutouts that revealed a circular flash of skin; large contrasting zippers served as functional embellishments that ran along the back. Black coats were piped in white, knit turtleneck tops morphed into little leather skirts and silver lapels gave white jackets a bold touch. Lagerfeld only strayed from his two-tone palette to show a couple of gray sheared-fur suits, and aSpace Odyssey–silver dress that turned model Devon into a time-warping visitor from the future.Accessories included strict Victorian brooches, flat patent- and ostrich-leather boots, and thick, metallic belts that will be among the season's most coveted items.
3 March 2001
Gone are the days when punk was synonymous with grungy streets and economic hardship—Karl Lagerfeld showed that metal spikes, black lipstick and hard-core leathers are perfectly proper sartorial alternatives nowadays.Fendi women will replace fall's candy-colored furs with black zip-up biker jackets, aggressively ruched one-shoulder tops and draped, shiny dresses in body-hugging jerseys. The look is strong and powerful—leather minidresses slashed way above the knee, gathered billowy tops and voluminous, asymmetrical skirts. Dangerous-looking accessories include gold weightlifter belts, thick neck cuffs, spiked shoulder straps from which to hang a gilded purse, and stilettos dazzling with gold chain link.Now that Lagerfeld has delivered a luxurious, highly stylized interpretation of haute punk, it's official that this will be a key style next spring.
4 October 2000
This season, opulence reigned supreme on the Fendi runway. Over the past few years, Fendi has become the ultimate word in high-end luxury and this collection didn’t disappoint. Any of the optical dresses, A-line leather skirts and color-splotched furs would have been just the thing on the maiden voyage of the Concorde—of course, they all look perfectly fabulous right now. Printed chiffon dresses, patent leather jackets and tweed suits—most cinched at the waist with gaudy gold belts—added to the sumptuous mix. The all-out decadent mood was reminiscent of the eighties, several prints were inspired by the sixties and the glamorous attitude was all seventies, but the spirit of the collection was anything but retro. The irreverent mixing and matching of references, and the skillful way in which colors and fabrics were treated, was absolutely of the moment and nothing short of brilliant.
23 February 2000
Karl Lagerfeld presented one of the strongest collections of the season, propelling Fendi once and for all into the center of the fashion limelight. Their trademark accessories--snakeskin baguette purses, acid-colored totes and luxurious foulards--were impeccable as usual, but it was the clothes that took over the stage and captivated the audience. Lagerfeld toyed with the interaction between soft, flowing fabrics in feminine colors and shapes, and the hard-edged glamour of a Halston-clad Studio 54 diva. The result was an innovative, perfectly balanced silhouette. One-sleeved cocktail dresses, shiny patent leather with lace detailing, logo-emblazoned suits, sexy chiffon dresses, enormous driving sunglasses and futuristic metallic heels make up the wardrobe of the modern Fendi woman--a sophisticate who feels equally at home sipping cocktails at a garden party in Milan, attending a gala in New York or nightclub-hopping until dawn in Los Angeles.
29 September 1999