HEIR FORCE
DELFINA DELETTREZ FENDI, designer of the season’s hottest accessories and daughter of SILVIA FENDI, talks about her obsession with eyes, powerful earrings, and working with mum
It seems almost fated that Delfina Delettrez Fendi—daughter of fashion icon Silvia Venturini Fendi and famed French jeweller Bernard Delettrez—be celebrated for her fashionable jewels. Her first collaborative line of baubles for Fendi, that debuted on the ramp at Fendi’s Spring 2014 show, bears the marks of talent she has inherited from both her parents. And what a mix that is.
Growing up, Delfina (to use either one of her surnames here would be to discredit the other just a little bit) was influenced equally by the world of fashion where her mother ruled over a superbrand, and by her father’s unorthodox approach to jewellery. You could even say that her predilection for the (slightly) macabre comes from her father, whose favourite motifs include eyeballs, skulls, bones, feathers, insects, and crucifixes. Her brand, in fact, is called Delfina Delettrez, which is probably her way of reaffirming her status as a jeweller to the world (rather than the more popular—and powerful—Fendi, the usage of which would be, well, expected; and Delfina is nothing if not unexpected).
In May last year, Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Fendi (who have been working together since 1965) approached Delfina to collaborate with them on the jewellery for the season. This was the first time she had been asked. Fendi wanted to “focus a little more on their jewellery this season,” and it wasn’t surprising, she says, that they would look to her. But while it was only natural, as Delfina puts it—and she is also the heir apparent if you look at it dynastically—it came only after her brand was well over the five-year mark: Years that Delfina spent in creating a world-renowned brand for herself, and garnering her own vocabulary that ranges from MiddleEastern evil eye motifs to neon-enamelled spiders perched on silver nets.
“I had four months to design the collection,” says Delfina, who previously collaborated with Kenzo’s Carol Lim and Humberto Leon in 2012. And as her inspiration for Fendi, she picked the eye, a motif that is to Delfina Delettrez what the panther is to Cartier, or leopard prints to Roberto Cavalli. “It was the lover’s eye,” she explains. “In Europe in the Middle Ages, women used to hide eye-shaped motifs in their lovers’ clothes as a lucky charm, and I wanted to add that romance.” She also cleverly mixed Fendi’s expertise with fur into her designs, making it a collaboration in the truest sense of the word. The result: A line of jewels that are dramatic, futuristic, and practical (in most, the fur bits are detachable, making the baubles multifunctional). The pieces look like fabulously made-up, dramatic eyes where jewelled lashes are accentuated with bright, luxurious furs.
As for the eye itself, Delfina interpreted the motif through simple, geometric shapes encrusted with crystals of various sizes and shapes. The sharp angles and harsh glare of the stones are balanced by the addition of soft tufts of fur and feathers that can be attached at will. “The idea was to make it seem like exotic birds have migrated onto your body,” says Delfina. There are rings, earrings, bracelets, versatile brooches, and bag charms (the last being a carry-forward from the fall collection’s celebrated Bag Bugs: Cubes of fur designed as muppet-like characters, each with its own name) for those who want to dress up their arm candy.
Apart from all Fendi stores, these baubles will be available at all major multi-brand stores in Europe and the USA, as well as on popular shopping websites like couturelab.com, yoox. com, stylebop.com, and matchesfashion.com, among others.
At 26, Rome-based Delfina is one of the youngest jewellers in the world today, and works with varied materials like exotic woods, resin, marble, ceramics, gold, silver, iron, copper, glass, and crystal. Her work and her personal style—she prefers to dress austerely and load up on her ‘delirious’ baubles, as her website describes them—mark her out as a person who is comfortable with contradiction. She first trained as a costume designer, but dropped out after a few months because she was pregnant, and gave birth to her daughter Emma in August 2007 (by Italian actor Claudio Santamaria; the two are no longer together). In October the same year, amid the craziness of fashion week in Paris, she debuted her label at Colette, the concept store that’s as close as a young designer can get to launchpad-heaven without leaving the world of the living. At the time, she was 20.
Her Schiaparelli-esque lip motifs from her first few collections became her signature, and then came her obsession with the eye, and of course, insects. These individualistic motifs helped her consolidate her reputation as a jeweller with a difference, a designer with a new vision. Even so, the pressure of working with a Silvia Fendi can be telling. After all, here’s a woman who—in more ways than a mother usually is—is Delfina’s role model. “I had two pairs of eyes watching me this time. My mother’s and Karl’s,” she says. “And today, I respect my mother and what she does even more.” Creatively, however, she clarifies that there was little interference from either during the time she took to create this collection for Fendi. They let Delfina develop the concept entirely on her own. “So you can understand that I was a little nervous when I presented the designs to my mother and Karl,” she says, “and I’m lucky that they both liked what I showed them.”
Photographed by Lagerfeld for the Spring 2014 range, she appears dressed in Fendi’s spring collection and wearing her own jewellery. And there’s something of the mysterious femme fatale about her. Here of course, that quality is reinvented in a modern way. “I wanted to balance Fendi’s fur workmanship with an idea for jewellery that is contemporary,” she says. “And if you look at the earrings… when you put them on, they make you feel as strong as when you wear a sharp jacket.” And that’s the associative power of good design: It makes you confident and comfortable at the same time. Mix that with the advantage of growing up around Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Fendi, and you have a winner.
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