FOUNTAIN HIGH
Fendi celebrated its 90th anniversary with a cascade of fantasy and high fashion.
“THIS IS WHAT FENDI IS ALL ABOUT. NO OTHER HOUSE IN THE WORLD COULD DO IT”
Chartered planes with Fendi-branded seats and special luggage tags hardly raise an eyebrow among the media guests who accompany me to Rome for Fendi’s “haute fourrure” (high fur) show in July. But then this is couture season and we have just experienced four days of the most expensive and astonishing fashion seated beside some of the wealthiest women in the world, so the real world has subsided from view. Fashion houses flying guests between cities by chartered jet to attend a show is also quite normal on the international fashion scene. What is not normal, however, is a show staged on a Perspex runway atop the Trevi Fountain. The setting was majestic, not least because it is one of the most famous landmarks on the planet, of La Dolce Vita fame, but also because the fountain has just undergone a $3.1 million renovation, thanks mostly to the Fendi family, which has left it gleaming and the purest white imaginable.
And yet this truly spectacular, defining fashion moment almost didn’t happen. According to Fendi’s CEO Pietro Beccari, the final “si” to stage the show on the fountain was only granted by authorities at 1am on Thursday morning, just 18 hours before the models were to walk on water – proof that when in Rome, even the Fendis are beholden to Roman time.
The show, titled “Legends and Fairytales”, thrilled the 600 guests. Lagerfeld was inspired by the illustrations of Danish artist Kay Nielsen, and specifically his fantastical images for the 1914 book East of the Sun and West of the Moon. As for the models, Fendi looked to favourites such as Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Lineisy Montero, who looked like goddesses walking on water wearing feather-light couture made with all manner of fur, patched or embroidered into flowers and woodland scenes. It was magic. You had to be there to appreciate the teary reception Silvia Venturini Fendi and Karl Lagerfeld received when they took their bows together to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the house, and also the longest working relationship of any house and a designer: a staggering 51 years. In keeping with tradition, Lagerfeld threw coins over his shoulder into the fountain for good luck. And yet, even if you were there you couldn’t fully appreciate the beauty of the pieces until you saw them up close, as we did the following day at the “re-see” (fashion-speak for the appointment at which press revisit a collection after the show to get a closer look and speak with the designer). Pieces that I thought were made of lace were in fact fur latticed into a lace look, care of the extraordinary workmanship. “This is what Fendi is all about. No other fur house in the world does it, or could do it,” says Lagerfeld, who engaged Lemarié – the Chanel-owned Parisian atelier that specialises in feather work – to create the detailing.
Afterwards, Lagerfeld and Venturini Fendi were showered with congratulatory hugs from guests such as Kate Hudson, Mario Testino and president of LVMH (Fendi’s owner), Bernard Arnault, and his son Alexandre. We were then all transported to a dinner on the terrace at Pincio Gardens with a view over the Eternal City. As Rome sparkled below us, and trees and candles twinkled around us, real life became invisible. Now back with my feet firmly on real-life ground, memories of the Fendi show remind me that it is possible to live the dream. And maybe we will again. Beccari says Lagerfeld looked at the Trevi Fountain and said: “For Fendi’s 100th birthday, what are we doing to do as an encore?’”