From flashback to fast forward, Silvia Venturini Fendi activates memories playful and profound, celebrating 5 generations and 100 years of the house of FENDI founded in Rome by her grandparents, Edoardo Fendi and Adele Casagrande Fendi, in 1925. “FENDI reminds me of the future,” she says, as the FENDI Women’s and Men’s Fall/Winter 2025-2026 Fashion Show ushers in this centenary year with great fanfare. “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.”
The new Spazio FENDI in Milan becomes a mirage: revisiting the historic salons of the FENDI boutique and atelier on Via Borgognona in Rome where the 5 Fendi sisters – Alda, Anna, Carla, Franca and Paola – worked and played. Through its wood-paneled double doors, a world of lush carpets, divans and chandeliers played host to the clients of alta sartoria by day, and the glittering jetset of the Cinecittà at night. Secrets and stories were passed down from generation to generation as the heightened sense of glamour, now synonymous with FENDI, flowed freely.
Born as a purveyor of fine stoles and handbags, the origin story of FENDI is wrought anew by Silvia Venturini Fendi, reflecting on a century of the House as an exercise in figuration. The collection radiates with ideas of FENDI-ness: where irony and humour mingle with sobriety, and sensuality is instilled with a Roman rigour. Clothes become characters, and characters become their clothes, as the Women’s and Men’s collections are intertwined with sartorial traditions and subversive takes on Italian sophistication.
From the opening silhouette, primal textures trick the eye. A flared coat is worn as a dress – its collar high and waist cinched with a fine gold belt. Once reserved only for the most noble furs, here intarsia, honeycomb and Gheronato patchwork techniques are applied to shearlings that resemble fox, mink and sable, yet are not. The conceit continues as the hourglass — a nod to infinity — manifests in satin balza skirts, flounced corolla jackets and a rounded sleeve. Marbled plissé and ribbed knit dresses dissolve into curled lettuce hems, eel and lamb leather patchworks flare in A-line chevron skirts, and raw-cut menswear coats cocoon with a hidden martingale to operatic effect. Throughout, a crescendo of colours incites the shades of Rome at dusk – laurel and forest green, graphite, chocolate and petrol blue – to the blazing hues of its eternal sunsets in cinnamon and terracotta, bubblegum, buttermilk, scarlet and dusty rose.
Considering 100 years of style, the prowess of FENDI tailoring achieves its apex in bracelet-sleeve blazers and stovepipe flares, as boiled wool coats are deconstructed with a prominent satin revers. Trench coats, an ode to Italian power-dressing, are cut large in lambskin or with a scarf collar in plissé taffeta, as men’s cabans appear in powdery shades of compact wool. On women and men, the FENDI shearling stole is layered as a tailored collar over jewel-tone cardigans, precious lingerie dresses or a georgette blouse, proffering the grandeur of a greatcoat or the ease of a shawl. Elsewhere, the leather workmanship of the FENDI ateliers triumphs in a pair of fluted Selleria coats in reversible deerskin and suede, and dazzling Op-Art coats finished not in print, but as plush geometric intarsias.
The allure of Roman evenings continues in games of matte and shine, from satin skirts quilted in waves and duchesse draped as a bishop’s sleeve, to mirror and crystal embroideries scattered over checked bouclé. Chantilly lace plays the battle of the sexes encrusted in a cashmere twinset or a man’s pinstripe chemise, whilst a fringe of tulle and fingernail sequins frames a triptych of evening ensembles in a millefoglie of FENDI workmanships: forever opulent, yet light as air.
