Carla Fendi
One of five sisters who transformed the family’s leather boutique into a global fashion behemoth
CARLA FENDI, who has died aged 79, was for many years the public face of her family fashion house and the fourth of five sisters who transformed a small leather goods business founded by their parents into a global brand.
The history of Fendi began in 1918 when a young entrepreneur, Adele Casagrande, founded her own leather workshop in a corner of Rome’s Piazza Venezia. In 1925 she married Eduardo Fendi, and the couple opened a small boutique and handbag and fur workshop in the Via del Plebiscito, moving into the rooms above the shop. Between 1931 and 1940, Adele gave birth to five children who, to her husband’s disappointment, were all girls: Paola, Anna, Franca, Carla (born on July 12 1937) and Alda.
Carla remembered that when she and her sisters were still babies, Adele would breast-feed them while she worked. “We waited our turns in a handbag drawer – accessories were our first toys,’’ she recalled.
Fendi built a reputation for quality and craftsmanship and a new shop was opened in Via Piave in 1932. In 1946 the eldest daughter Paola joined the business at 15, quickly followed by the other sisters. Carla began working aged 17.
When Eduardo Fendi died in 1954, his daughters took over. Their mother encouraged them to think independently, Carla recalled: “She defended us when we started stripping the traditional linings and crinolines out of the fur coats – even when our manufacturers went crazy: ‘Your daughters can’t do this!’ they cried. ‘Oh yes they can,’ my mother replied.’’
In 1964 the sisters opened a new office on the Via Borgognona and the following year they commissioned an up-and-coming young German designer called
Karl Lagerfeld to design a collection of furs – with an open brief to break the rules: “Only the principle guiding the conservation of endangered species is sacred.”
Lagerfeld went on to crochet silvers of mink into sweaters, shear fur into ridges to resemble corduroy, and introduce eye-popping combinations of plastic and tulle with beaver. Subsequently he turned furs inside out, made patchwork coats out of mixed mink, sable and lamb, dyed furs in shades of purple, green, pink and orange, and succeeded in making what Carla Fendi called “poor furs” (mole, squirrel, and weazel) chic.
Over some 40 years Lagerfeld (who also designed Fendi’s black and brown double ‘F’ logo), working with the Fendi sisters, helped to propel the Fendi brand to the top of the international luxury fashion league. Carla Fendi described him as “the sixth Fendi child”.
In the 1960s and 1970s Fendi branched out into ready-to-wear, shoes and accessories and worked with film directors such as Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Franco Zeffirelli and Mauro Bolognini, dressing the likes of Diana Ross, Sophia Loren, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Liza Minnelli.
When Adele died in 1978, each of the five Fendi sisters took over a different part of the business. Paola was in charge of furs, Anna leather goods, Franca handled customer relations, Carla coordinated the business and Alda was responsible for sales.
It was Carla, as the company’s travelling ambassadress and marketing director, who was widely credited with masterminding Fendi’s expansion in the 1980s as stores and boutiques opened around the globe and the Fendi logo was bestowed on everything from sweaters to watches and home decor. A tough negotiator, it was her insistence in 1985 on Fifth Avenue window space at Bergdorf ’s for the Fendi perfume that led to one of the most successful foreign label perfume launches in America. By 1990, they had introduced their first men’s perfume and ready-towear lines.
When Fendi’s fortunes looked set to falter in the early 1990s as fur became non-pc, Carla Fendi (who took over as chairman in 1994) responded by putting more emphasis on accessories and clothing lines, a strategy which was triumphantly vindicated in 1997 when Fendi launched its “Baguette”, a dainty under-the-arm handbag designed by Anna Fendi’s daughter Sylvia Venturini Fendi. It came in a seemingly endless variety of tones, textures and embellishments (prices varied from £2,500 for a hand-beaded number to over £35,000 for a goldthread, 22-carat clasp version), and went on to win the 2000 Fashion Group International Award for Accessories, featured in three storylines in Sex and the City and became the “it” bag no self-respecting celebrity could be seen without.
But Fendi never gave up on furs. “At Fendi, fur was never ‘out’,” Carla insisted in 2005. “We never stopped using it, and have always treated fur like the most luxurious fabric. People now say that fur is ‘back’ because women want the freedom to wear whatever they want. Fur is part of their imagination. Fur makes women dream.”
In 1999, the Fendis sold a majority stake in the firm to LVMH and Prada after a dramatic bidding war. Sources at the time estimated the deal placed a $950 million valuation on the brand – 33 times Fendi’s bottom line, in an industry where 25 was considered a very high multiple. In 2001, Prada sold its stake to LVMH. Carla Fendi served as president of the company until 2008 and honorary president until her death.
Tanned a deep brown, with heavily made-up eyes, frosted fawn lipstick and a helmet of bronze highlighted hair, Carla Fendi was a walking advertisement for the Fendi style. In 2007 she created the philanthropic Carla Fendi Foundation, which, among other things, has helped to restore the Caio Melisso theatre in the Umbrian city of Spoleto, where she was a chief patron of the Two Worlds arts festival. She also helped finance the restoration of the Trevi Fountain. She was an avid collector of 20th-century art.
In 1960 she married Candido Speroni, a chemist turned Fendi sales executive, who died in 2013. They had no children but she was a revered “Zia [Aunt] Carla” to 11 nephews and nieces.
Carla Fendi, born July 12 1937, died June 19 2017