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The hot ticket of Milan fashion week was a family birthday party first, a catwalk collection second. The Fendis celebrated 100 years in fashion with a show that began with a cameo by Dardo and Tazio, 7-year-old great-great-grandsons of house founders Edouardo and Adele. The twins’ jewellery designer mother, Delfina, designed the snake chain bracelets and shimmering fountain earrings in the show; their grandmother, Silvia, artistic director of accessories and menswear, presided over the evening as master of ceremonies.
Fendi is now owned by LVMH. “So I’m not here because I own it – I don’t,” said Silvia backstage before the show. “But nothing changed for me when we sold. This is still my home.”
This night was both business – over a thousand guests, more than a hundred new outfits which will soon be on sale, a stellar cast including iconic British models Yasmin Le Bon, 60, and Penelope Tree, 75 – and sentiment. The role of womenswear designer is now vacant, after the departure of Kim Jones last year. Recruitment for his successor has been is on ice during the centenary to give the Fendi family their flowers as they celebrate their milestone.
Silvia Venturini Fendi is no ordinary nepo baby. In 1997, three years after she joined the family business, she designed the Baguette handbag. So named because of a svelte profile which allowed it to be tucked under an arm like a French loaf being carried home from the boulangerie, the Baguette became Fendi’s foremost icon, namechecked in Sex and the City. Sarah Jessica Parker was at this show in honour of that pop culture moment.
The anniversary collection was steeped in the codes of the 1960s and 1970s, soundtracked to Barry White. The catwalk was carpeted in the brick red shade that Silvia remembers from the Rome atelier where her mother, Anna, worked when she was little. “I went there a lot because my mother was working very long hours, and she didn’t have a driving licence, so I would go with my father in the car in the evening to pick her up.”
“We call it the Fendi-ness,” was Silvia’s name for the spirit of the show. “ It’s something alchemic. An obsession with quality. Luxury, a bit of fun, and a lot of incredible women.”
The clothes were steeped in fashion history to reflect a grand heritage. Eduardo and Adele started out selling handbags and fur stoles, and the house still sells fur. There were grand greatcoats and precious lingerie evening dresses, soft Chantilly lace and tiny fingernail sequins. Ribbed knit dresses dissolved into lettuce hems.
Silvia Fendi said she wanted a collection rich in memories, not a forensic trawl through the archive. Invitations for the show came in the form of exquisite accordion-style leather-bound, saddle-stitched photo albums, with tiny black and white portraits showing a five-year-old Silvia , and a 1960s snap of her mother, Anna, and her four sisters Paola, Franca, Carla and Alda, magnificently beehived in the Rome atelier.
