“Fendi reminds me of the future.” Those were the words of Silvia Venturini Fendi, kicking off celebrations of the house that bears her family name in its centenary year. They’re unexpected, which is also very Fendi – it’s a house that has always confounded expectations and turned ideas upside-down, whether by deconstructing luxurious furs in the past, ripping out their linings and treating them with nonchalance, or by offering a supreme riposte to minimalism through the richly decorated surfaces of the squishy Baguette, a little bag that made the company very big indeed.
That said, however there were echoes of the past to be found in the brand spanking new Spazio Fendi, the brand’s Milanese headquarters and lavish show space. The clues came in a tiny, Selleria-stitched and leather-bound photo book, like a keepsake, sent out to every guest at their Autumn/Winter 2025 show. Unfurl it, and one picture amongst many was a well-appointed salon, studded lounging sofas – it’s a shot of Fendi’s boutique on Via Borgognona in Rome in the 1960s, reproduced almost ad infinitum as the décor for this show. At the very front of the book, there’s a shot of a seven-year-old Silvia modelling chic jodhpurs and a striped fur jacket and hat – an outfit reproduced for Dardo and Tazio, the seven year-old twin sons of Delfina Delettrez Fendi and Nico Vascellari. Like little ghosts of Fendi past, they darted out at the start of the show to haul open a pair of vast, Romanesque wooden doors - opening Fendi up to the future. Then the show started.
Venturini Fendi has a deep, rich and intimate knowledge of her family brand. She started working there age six, she says, when she first met a young designer called Karl Lagerfeld, whose record-breaking, 54-year tenure at Fendi would transform the fashion landscape. She was hooked – indeed after the experience she was constantly bored in school, ruined by knowing the excitement that awaited her at home. So this collection was an undeniable, unavoidable and heartfelt homage to that name, to not just a history and heritage, but hers. “My personal memories – real or imagined,” was what Venturini Fendi cited as her inspirations, and accordingly although there were nods to Fendi greatest hits, nothing was exactly as it seems. Fittingly, for Fendi, that story was told through fur – although, actually, it wasn’t. Rather, shearling was elevated, using intricate honeycomb and Gheronato patchwork techniques traditionally applied to precious skins. It was also specially treated to resemble those – look-alike for fox, mink and sable whizzed by, modern takes on age-old emblems of luxury, dazzling examples of artisanship. And more patchwork techniques were applied to eel and lamb leather, nodding to Fendi’s first emblem, its Pequin stripes, as well as the geometric patterns of its signature interlocking FFs.
Fendi is always a house firmly anchored in the present – if there’s a history, it’s one that lives and breathes. Which is also perhaps why Venturini Fendi cast her show with an awesome selection of models drawn from the house’s past. In a sense, these Fendi women had become part of the family, too – models such as Eva Herzigova, Karen Elson, Liya Kebede, Edie Campbell or Lindsey Wixson, who featured in Fendi campaigns and shows across the decades. Here, they prowled in Fendi once again, handsome and confident women embodying the spirit of the house in hardy tweeds, slick leathers, fluttering silks. Because Fendi, really, has always been about femininity. Sure, it was founded by a couple, Edoardo Fendi and Adele Casagrande Fendi, back in 1925 – but Adele was the power behind the throne, a matriarch if ever there was one, whose legacy was carried on by her five daughters, Paola, Alda, Franca, Carla, and Silvia’s mother, Anna, who all joined the company and helped catapult it to worldwide fame. The key silhouette of the collection was the hourglass, cut into shapely jackets or curved into clinging dresses. Hourglass, leads us back to time. Geddit?
In all, this was a rousing journey through the meaning of Fendi – respectful, but never retro, simultaneously looking forwards and back. Backstage after the show, you could hear a roaring swell of approval - and that erupted into a standing ovation for Venturini Fendi herself, and for this stellar act in leading her family’s house into its next 100 years.
