f I look back at pictures when I was a little girl, I was
always dressed in black,” reflects Silvia Venturini Fendi
of her first fashion memory. “And I remember one day
we were at the seaside on holidays—my mother worked,
so I was on holidays with my nanny and my sisters—
and this lady stopped us and said, ‘Oh, I like those girls, are
they orphans? They are always dressed in black.’” Not an
unfair question considering that in Italy, where Venturini
Fendi was born and raised, wearing black for an extended
period of time is a traditional mourning ritual. But this
wasn’t the case, and her nanny quickly quashed that theory
with her to-the-point response, “No, they’re from fashion.”
No further explanation needed.
The granddaughter of Adele and Edoardo Fendi, who
founded the label that bears her last name in Rome in 1925,
Venturini Fendi is as “from fashion” as you can get. Her
mother, Anna, also worked for the brand, and while Venturini
Fendi recalls questioning why Anna never dressed her
in the type of frothy-pink
creations that can light up a
little girl’s eyes, she adds,
“But then I understood
that she was right, because
she never put me in a box.”
Now the brand’s creative
director of childrenswear,
menswear and accessories,
this helps explain why
Venturini Fendi—and the
label generally—is so adept at crafting fashion that can’t be
pigeonholed. The designer is, after all, the mind behind
the wildly successful Baguette bag, in all its embellished,
bright and logo-adorned variations, as well as the clean-
lined and classic Peekaboo bag, which celebrated its 10th
anniversary last year.
“We like to mix things that normally wouldn’t go together,”
says Venturini Fendi, summing up the dualism that lingers
within the label’s work—a concept she sees grounded in its
rich Roman history. “It’s a city that is always struggling to find
a balance between its heavy past and the future. And I
think this brings you to always look at the back and [to] the
front at the same time.”
If past and present meet at Fendi, so does another set of
opposing forces: man and woman. Venturini Fendi is the only
Fendi family member who remains working for the label,
which was acquired by the LVMH group in 2001, but before
her, the designer’s mother and her four aunts were integral
to transforming the brand into the globally recognised luxury
powerhouse that it is today.During that feted period of Fendi’s history, the five
matriarchs were joined by a man whose enduring influence
on the world of fashion can’t be denied: Karl Lagerfeld.
In fact, the ubiquitous designer held the position of creative
director of womenswear at Fendi from 1965 until he passed
away in February this year—a record-breaking 54-year
tenure. “It really means that this company has been shaped
by all those women and him,” says Venturini Fendi.
In Shanghai, on the day of Fendi’s very first co-gender
runway show in May this year, Venturini Fendi explains
why she chose the Chinese megalopolis for the marked
occasion: “This city for me represents the future. It really
[says] a lot about tomorrow more [so] than yesterday.” It
certainly felt futuristic when models started their descent
down a four-level runway inside the Powerlong Art Museum
later that night. The spiralling space had been stripped
bare for the occasion, glowing optic white under fluorescent
lights, and rumbling to the beat of bass music.“Fendi is a
brand that has
a long history. Ahistory made of
strong womenand strong men”
A FASHION
PARTNERSHIP
Karl Lagerfeld and
Silvia Venturini Fendi
(pictured in 2015)
share a story that
spans five decades.
OPPOSITE:
Venturini Fendi
at workI
SEPTEMBER, 2019 INSTYLE 91