How to come off a roaring centenary celebration of everything Fendi was, is and could be? A resolute vision of the future seemed to be Silvia Venturini Fendi’s answer for Spring/Summer 2026. Last season, the show opened with her grandchildren in Bambina Silvia drag – based on a look she wore back in 1967 – hauling open a reproduction of the Fendi Palazzo’s monumental doors. This time, the set was a modernist, pixellated landscape by the designer Marc Newson; blocks of pure colour designed, he said, to evoke a patchwork quilt – “its rich history rooted in intergenerational craft and commemoration.” To those familiar with the dial-up internet connections of yore, it resembled a slowly downloading JPEG. To the eyes of another generation – Gen Z, Generation Alpha – it probably looked like a Roblox landscape. Perception transforms thought, time and experience.
Which was very much the mood of this Fendi collection – duality, multiplicity, ever-changing viewpoints, and existent history becoming something new. That was there in the soundtrack by Frédéric Sanchez, patching together snippets of the voices of Marcello Mastroianni and Anna Magnani from Italian cinema with operatic arias, all electronically fused. And, of course, it was present in the clothes, in Fendi reconsidered, like the embroidery that normally embellishes the outside of the house’s elaborate, precious bags instead smothering the interior, glamorously revealed with a bag – fittingly, the Peekaboo – left nonchalantly open. That’s an idea that Venturini Fendi feels is fundamental to her family house – an ease, a casualness, even with the most valuable and treasured. A familiarity with the exceptional, which probably comes from living surrounded by history, both in Rome generally and at the Palazzo Fendi specifically.
How about remembering the very recent history of the Autumn/Winter 2025 collection – because this show, in contrast, shifted everything on. The colour then was muted, subtle, as if shaded by a patina of time or rose-tinted glasses. For spring, it was zinging and vibrant, hyper colour – cerulean, scarlet, a tart limoncello. “A future summer, seen through a fantastical Fendi lens,” was Venturini Fendi’s big idea, and that lens was definitely of the now, or maybe the next. Full-bloom flower motifs – florals, for spring – were cut into clothes rather than embellishing their surfaces, a shift into the very surface and material of the garments. Even when applied to the surfaces, the embroideries, too, had a digital, hyper-modern feel, overlaid palettes resembling Ben Day dots, sure, but also a hyper-zoomed-in image on an iPhone screen. Slightly blurred patterns on organzas seemed to glow and shift, while intricately patched and interwoven textures – echoes of the set – again resembled fractured photographs, like resolutions of resolutely modern life.
That, after all, is what fashion’s about. For all the respect for the past – and the value – you have to move it on.
