DAL 1925
COLLECTION AND SHOW NOTES
“The foundations of how women dress today and, in many ways, how we think are in the 1920s. It’s about modernity in style and attitude,” says Kim Jones, Artistic Director of Couture and Womenswear. “1925 has so many milestone moments. It is the founding year of FENDI, but also the year of the Art Deco exhibition in Paris – The International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts – from where the name is taken. Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs Dalloway and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby are also published. There’s modernism in dress, design, decoration and thought. We approached the collection with these things in mind, as an amalgam of epochs, moods and techniques – then and now.
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.
“Quality is the number one point besides the beauty of design. I am always thinking about the connection between fashion and time – I think quality is the defining feature. It is the timeless testament to what has been achieved in our hundred-year history. As the founder of FENDI, it was also my grandmother Adele’s obsession, both personally and professionally: quality.” Silvia Venturini Fendi, Artistic Director of Accessories and Menswear.
