Silvia Venturini Fendi Highlights Artisanship, Menswear Freedom With Tuscan Show
“FF could easily be ‘Fendi Firenze,’” said Silvia Venturini Fendi a few days ahead of the luxury brand’s show at its factory in Capannuccia, Bagno a Ripoli, a 30-minute drive from Florence as this season’s Pitti Uomo special guest.
The connection with Florence is strong, said the Fendi scion and accessories and menswear artistic director. She revealed that her grandmother, Adele Fendi, founded the house in 1925 in Rome but that a few years earlier she had learned the craft from cousins who were leather goods artisans in the Tuscan city.
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“We are about to celebrate our centennial and so it’s inevitable to reflect on what’s been done, and also in terms of transparency, which I think is going to be an important asset for the future, it’s great to show where things are made, who makes them and how,” Venturini Fendi said about showing at the facility, decamping from Milan where the brand usually stages its shows. “It’s like in food — we all want to know, there’s widespread conscience and consciousness so [it’s great to] be able to open up our headquarters, the heart [of the company],” she added.
The state-of-the-art facility in Capannuccia, dedicated to the production of Fendi’s most iconic bags and small leather goods, is nestled in the Tuscan countryside and inserted into the landscape where an abandoned kiln lay, the Fornace Brunelleschi.
Punctuated by nine glazed courtyards that shed light on interior spaces, the complex is surrounded by seven hectares of greenery scattered with a 700-olive tree grove, allowing the production of oil from the factory itself of up to 900 liters a year.
“There was no overbuilding here,” Venturini Fendi said. “It’s like a diamond nestled in the hills…we’ll make our own olive oil one day,” she said, emphasizing the thoughtfulness that went into the factory’s revamp.
The site, which obtained the LEED Platinum certification this week, won’t serve just as the backdrop for the collection. As the place where the house’s craftsmen turn leather hides into the “It” bags Venturini Fendi helped propel to global fame, Capannuccia triggered the designer to celebrate work — most notably Fendi’s handiwork.
“The collection is very much inspired by workwear, uniforms and work in general,” she said. “In the collective imagination, [artisans] evoke the idea of an old man bent doing a repetitive job, but today advanced artisans are also engineers, because of machinery. Today our job is humans and machines [working] together,” she said. “Handiwork and savoir faire are no longer sufficient, one needs to have an open mind, very mathematic, engineered and creative.”
Fittingly, she will be putting artisans on the catwalk and make them come to the fore in the director’s cut video the house will release after the show.
After exploring many characters in her most recent collections — from the Fred Astaire-ish type in his tailcoat tuxedo to the hippie-nodding surfer guy in crafty tropes — she characterized her spring men as young executives sporting pristine striped shirts layered under tabliers, or pinafores, as short as miniskirts but equipped with pockets for tools.
They wear roomy and oh-so-comfy trucker jackets and pants in an ivory white canvas that the workwear-loving generation would buy into, as well as intricately woven overcoats blending suede, leather, shearling and cotton threads, with the occasional meterstick — crafted from leather — accenting a tailored coat.
“There is a sense of great freedom [in menswear], which is amazing. I think that has been one of the most interesting things that happened in the past decade. I always ask them [models], ‘Would you wear it?’ and they say ‘Yes’,” she said gesturing toward a smiling model donning a denim apron.
Of course, given that it is Fendi, the show will feature bags galore, too.
As the woman who in 1997 masterminded the iconic Baguette bag, Venturini Fendi is the one at the house with more say on the overall accessories landscape and trends, which have seen not only a spike in the use of handbags by male customers but even an inclination to don bags traditionally intended for women.
“Almost every look will come with a bag. We had to go full in and show what these men and women [artisans] created,” she said.
From the Fendi Rex embossed, crocodile-patterned Baguettes and backpacks to Peekaboos bearing the same graphics that appear on patternmaking paper, as well as the new Chiodo, or spike, messenger bag with oversize metal hardware on the side and raffia and leather beach-ready duffle bags, Venturini Fendi is serving up options aplenty.
There is even an FF-patterned, lunchbox-inspired handkerchief bag and an office gadget, a leather coffee cup holder with three recycled plastic, Fendi-logoed cups.
In keeping with Fendi’s commitment to highlight global crafts — also key in the Fendi “Hand in Hand” project focused on the Baguette bag — Venturini Fendi has invited celebrated architect Kengo Kuma to chip in and select an artisan to rework the Peekaboo design.
“I think he’s the greatest architect when it comes to blending natural composition with engineering and architecture,” Venturini Fendi said. “I like him because he represents this new art form [combining] old savoir faire and new technologies.”
Kuma conscripted a Japanese artist known for her work on washi paper, which is crafted into a sculptural version of the Peekaboo bag. The same material was employed for garments including tailored blazers and bottoms that even up close one could mistake for linen.
“The project evolves and becomes more composite, combining Fendi, artisans and creatives,” the designer said, gesturing toward another bag conceived by Kuma with front panels made of birchwood.
She’s very keen on sustainability, a subject she said the company has been tackling “silently” for a long time now. “We’re very advanced,” she said, mentioning how the Fendi-logoed canvas is now entirely made from recycled jacquard and leather goods in the Selleria range jumpstarted by her grandmother are all metal-free. The collection also features bio-based dyes employed for woolen yarns used in tailoring and knitwear.
“I think goods should come with a passport….There will be rules, more and more, because people are looking for transparency, they want to know what they buy and who makes the goods. Since after COVID-19 runway shows’ livestreamings have drawn huge audiences, so it’s going to be beautiful to showcase and see how these people [artisans] work, which is very different from what happens in fast fashion [companies],” she said.
Launch Gallery: Fendi Men's Spring 2024 Preview
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