Silvia Venturini Fendi

Artistic director Kim Jones dedicated his autumn/winter 2023 Fendi collection to a muse: Delfina Delettrez Fendi, a fourth generation member of the family who serves as the house’s creative director for jewellry. Anders Christian Madsen shares five things to know about the collection.

The show set featured a tunnel of lights
Photo: Getty

There was something celestial about the tunnel of laser-like lights Kim Jones projected through Fendi’s mile-long runway room in Milan this season. The house’s Roman relationship between the ancient and the futuristic is an ongoing treat for Jones, a sci-fi fan who revels in analysing and interpreting this instinctive culture of the Fendi family. “Delfina is a muse for me,” he said in a preview, referring to Delfina Delettrez Fendi, who also serves as creative director of jewellery at the house. Once again, he dedicated the collection to her wardrobe. And as his models arrived through the illuminated tunnel – to the opening theme from Twin Peaks – they felt like his Roman sci-fi goddesses.
Kim Jones dedicated the collection to Delfina Delettrez Fendi
Photo: Getty
Jones described Delettrez’s look as a combination between chicness and perversity, a pairing he expressed in twisted classics – literally and figuratively – like knitwear, blazers and pleated skirts. If they had a certain sex appeal, it was amplified by plenty of strict leather pieces, from little dresses to lace-up boots and kilts. “It’s looking at little twisted things that are kind of perverse,” Jones said, gesturing at a trouser with a buckle strapped across its crotch. Asked how he practically approaches the adaptation of the heiress’s clothes, Jones said a visit to her private wardrobe is on the agenda. But so far, “She comes in with stuff, I just steal it.”
The collection drew on details from Fendi’s haute couture
Photo: Getty
Jones imbued his collection with elements from his haute couture: an everyday mac lined in not-so-everyday sequins, or shirting morphed with lace camisoles that nodded to his January show. “It’s really clear Fendi codes and that’s what it’s about. It’s capturing that elegant, chic, sophisticated Fendi woman,” he said. “I’m thinking about the future and looking at the things that work for us, which are tailoring, knitwear and dresses. It’s taking all those elements and putting them into a collection.” Sometimes he code-switched those components, like in dresses constructed in very light tailoring fabrics that contributed to an overall sartorial atmosphere throughout the collection.

Jones took inspiration from a 1996 Karl Lagerfeld dress

Photo: Getty

In May, the Metropolitan Museum in New York will unveil its Karl Lagerfeld spectacular. But while Jones is involved in proceedings, he said his approach to Fendi is becoming more and more family-focused: “The next three collections, there’s not really any Karl in them. It’s there but it’s ever-present. You have to think about the Fendi family. They are the people who really count in the end.” This time, only one archival Lagerfeld dress inspired the collection: a knitted column dress from 1996 with a single stripe down the side. “I thought it was nice to have that line,” Jones explained.
There were two new bags
Photo: Getty
The collection introduced two new bags designed by Silvia Venturini Fendi: a multipurpose bag named, well, Multi, and the handbag C’Mon. “I think what is really nice is the movement of the bag, that it can be two things in one. That duality is very Fendi, as is the idea of something which appears simple but, in reality, is very complex,” she said of the former. As for the latter: “The idea was to create pieces that were very pure in order to match the sophistication of the collection.”

Photo: Courtesy of Fendi
In celebration of the new Peekaboo Petite and Micro handbags, Fendi has joined forces with Italian film director and friend of the house, Luca Guadagnino, to create a short film starring former Vogue Arabia cover star Adwoa Aboah. The campaign film created by the Call Me By Your Name director features the top model soaring through Rome over through its rooftops before eventually landing on Fendi’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana.
Photo: Courtesy of Fendi
“With the DNA of Fendi being Rome, we, of course, talked about Rome – but instead of being in Rome, being above Rome,” says Guadagnino of the film’s concept. “We had this idea of levity – of the Peekaboo bag, at the center of the movie, being the magical driver behind Adwoa flying over the ancient city.”
Photo: Courtesy of Fendi
Aboah was chosen by the Italian fashion house for their shared values around women empowerment and independence. The film sees her depicted as a “fashionable incarnation of superwoman” flying over Rome’s skies in a dreamlike fantasy before touching down on Earth to determine her fate, claiming her own autonomy. “I think that carrying a Peekaboo says something about a very strong, powerful, and empowered person who is not afraid to hide,” says Silvia Venturini Fendi, creative director of Fendi. “It has its two compartments — one you can keep close to you and closed, and the other where you can choose to reveal something of yourself to the world.”
Photo: Courtesy of Fendi
“I feel part of Fendi,” says Guadagnino of working with the fashion house. “I am very close friends with Fendi – as a brand for sure but, most importantly, as a friend of people who are pillars of the company. I feel a very deep connection with the brand – and my mother used to wear Fendi back in the 70s and 80s so the logo, the type of materials, the quality and the design of Fendi have always been part of my imagery.”
Photo: Courtesy of Fendi
Read Next: 5 Things To Know About Fendi’s Soft-Meets-Hard Milan Fashion Week Fall 2022 Show

Fendi “The Baguette Dance” is the next edition in the Baguette Friends Forever series. Photo: Courtesy of Fendi

For the latest installment of the Baguette Friends Forever series, Italian fashion house Fendi presents its new video project, titled “The Baguette Dance” featuring the brand‘s iconic It bag.
The video sees five rhythmic gymnasts, all wearing Fendi gymnastic uniforms, celebrating the Baguette bag that is passed between each of them as they dance and move across the room. The rhythmic dance encapsulates the curves, edges, accents, and unique movement of the bag, in what is described as “more than just a tribute to the Fendi Baguette in name” but a tribute to the “Fendi Baguette in its purest form”.

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The Baguette bag features the Italian label’s hypersoft, signature FF logo-embossed leather, and is presented in the video in five distinct colorways: black, yellow, pink, light blue, and red. It was originally conceived by creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi in 1997, and its continued success has seen Fendi‘s signature accessory regarded as one of the most iconic fashion creations ever made. The bag also gained popularity from its frequent appearance in the television show Sex and the City, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as the accessory of protagonist Carrie Bradshaw, who is famed for the line “This is not a bag, it’s a Baguette!”.
Fendi “The Baguette Dance” is the next edition in the Baguette Friends Forever series. Photo: Courtesy of Fendi

The small, compact bag is often cited as one of the first “It” bags and was relaunched in 2019 with a legendary comeback campaign with the slogan #BaguetteFriendsForever. The return of the bag symbolized Fendi’s testament to women supporting women and the value of friendship.
Earlier this year, another short-film in the Baguette Friends Forever series was released, featuring model Winnie Harlow and her best friend, Jamaican influencer Shannon Hamilton, that saw the pair explore the glamorous sights of Miami with their Baguette bags in tow.
Read Next: Kim Jones Will Present His First Fendi Couture Collection January 27