Bringing together the ready-to-wear and couture worlds of FENDI, the hand and machine-made, evening and daywear, there is an elevation and celebration of the everyday with the arrival of the FENDI centenary this season.
Extoling practicality and the celebratory, the archetypal and the iconoclastic, the collection looks forward and back to FENDI’s history. As a house passed down through the matriarchal line, FENDI is always aware of women who do rather than just are. Movement, lightness, excellence and ease, simply the ability for a wearer to live contemporary life in a collection is key.
At once structured and unstructured, a louche insouciance permeates the clothing and accessories achieved with the highest savoir-faire. Embroideries are supremely detailed and handmade, yet light and placed on archetypal forms such as the tee and the simple slip in silk and organza. The softest of suedes and shearlings envelop the wearer in robe shapes, while the finest suede croco features in t-shirt silhouettes.
Silk tea dresses and swirling dancer’s slips are at once ordinary and extraordinary, often quite literally grounded by boots made in conjunction with Red Wing. Utilising the best of both distinct worlds, FENDI’s colour palette, supple Cuoio Romano leather and Selleria hand stitching are applied to Red Wing’s Classic Moc boot structure, a masculine mainstay of the brand since 1952.
The bags echo the collection in materials, embroideries and unstructured structure, at once seemingly effortless yet achieved with the effort of supreme craftsmanship. Eminently graspable and sensual, iconic constructions are once again softened and celebrated, particularly the Mamma Baguette taller, wider and bigger than its standard incarnation.
Here it features as a tribute to Adele Fendi, founder of the house and Silvia Venturini Fendi’s grandmother. As does a continuation of the leatherwork in Delfina Delettrez Fendi’s FENDI Filo jewellery, where the Filo is an evolution of the Selleria, initially made by Roman master saddlers and a linking thread of past, present and future. It is the motif most closely associated with Adele Fendi.
