Fendi Celebrates 100 Years, Looking To The Future

A SET OF enormous Roman palazzo doors are what awaits the eyes as the lights come up on Fendi’s FW25 runway in Milan on February 26. A pair of small children, clad in matching white faux mink coats and hats, run up to them and pull them open. And just like that, in the year marking 100 years since Fendi’s founding, they — the seven-year-old twin grandsons of creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi — open the door to the House’s future.

In celebrating a century of the illustrious Roman house, Venturini Fendi turned to the staples that have defined it throughout the years — from sumptuous (faux) mink coats to lust-worthy bags (the Baguette and Peekaboo making prominent appearances, of course) and dazzling embellishments, not just in the form of playful jewellery but also as bedazzled adornment on the clothing itself.

But while there were those nods to the past, there was also a sense of timeless contemporaneity — a deft hand shaping pieces that feel of the moment without being too temporal. Certain details come to mind: fuzzy pumps and fuzzy Peekaboo bags, animal print sets, a ridiculously oversized beanie-fascinator hybrid, tweed sets with sparkling embellishments cascading from the neckline, glossy leather sets paired with glossy leather boots, lettuce hems, glorious outerwear, sleek neutral colour palettes punctuated with vibrant bursts of party-girl colour and sparkle.

“Fendi reminds me of the future,” Silvia Venturini Fendi said of the runway. “I didn’t want to spend too much time dwelling on the physical archives. For me, Fendi 100 is more about my personal memories — real or imagined — of what Fendi was and what Fendi means today.”

There’s an immense confidence to the collection — a feeling of being lived-in, but not in a way that suggests boredom, or a lack of imagination. It’s more a sense of knowing oneself intimately and firmly, in such a way that allows you to look forward without forgetting your heritage. You could see that in the garments, in the cool-girl lineup of models selected to walk the runway — a selection of rising and established faces including Paloma Elsesser, Penelope Tree, Gabbriette, Karen Elson, Angelina Kendall and Alex Consani — and the equally chic front-row attendees, from famed Baguette-bearer Sarah Jessica Parker to Elizabeth Olsen, Naomi Ackie and Ashley Park.

Not just a milestone for the century celebrations, the runway marked the first collection since Kim Jones stood down as creative director. But the sleek, glamorous, effortlessly and shamelessly luxurious collection proved that there need be no panic about the future of the house. In the hands of Venturini Fendi, the granddaughter of Fendi’s founders — and maybe one day in the hands of her own grandchildren — the legacy is safe.