Fendi Celebrates 40 Years of Fashion with a Nod to the Past and a Glimpse into the Future

As we watched this collection being photographed in Rome, Silvia Fendi dug up its point of inspiration on her phone. On it was another photograph, this one of Fendi herself, that was shot (she estimated) back in 1983. “It was in Monaco, with Karl.” The image showed Silvia, her hair in a shaggy blonde crop, sitting in what resembled a boxing ring designed by Ettore Sotsass and wearing a deeply ’80s party dress patterned in monochrome polka dots and featuring a ruffled peplum. It was, she recalled, a pillar of her party wardrobe: “At Jimmy’z, Jackie O, 54…”

Fortyish years on, and Silvia is less of a clubber; in the past she has dedicated Fendi menswear collections to more genteel pleasures including gardening and a comfortable bed. Yet when one of her granddaughters dug this dress out of the wardrobe in order to head out for a night on the tiles, night fever took hold. “I remembered every time I wore that dress I was feeling so good. And as I was remembering that feeling, and thinking of updating it for now, the first thing I thought of was putting in a pocket for her mobile phone, hidden in that frill. Because people really need that today, and it gives the frill an extra purpose. And then I decided to cut it in parachute silk: nice and modern.”

Typically, Fendi shapes the house’s menswear collections, which she’s overseen since 2000, through a prism of the personal. This Fendicentenary year has afforded her the chance to stand alongside Maria Grazia Chiuri of Dior, Sarah Burton of Givenchy, and Camille Micelli of Pucci as a woman designing for women in the LVMH brand stable.

Fendi said she adapted Lagerfeld’s polka dots from the original party dress into a pattern that was “an arty, painterly animalier. The dots are irregular because I was thinking about moths; a nocturnal animal that comes alive in the night and which is drawn to the light.”

That pattern was further adapted into a richly complicated moth motif whose imagined genetic melange was integrated via intarsia in shearlings, prints into shirred shirts and pleated skirts, and embroidery into sequin party dresses. It was also integrated into an especially lush accessories offer for the season, which ran from cute dog bag charms to embroidered Baguette and printed Spy bags, as well as a new—so new it is not yet formally named—adjustable tote style. There were also Baby Baguettes, which Fendi described as: “a little pouch, more a slice of baguette.”

Elsewhere roomy tailoring played against cuffed shorts and ruffled ra-ra skirts, while the crisp silky taffeta of the season was used to cut attractive pants, dresses, and bombers featuring military-origin double zipper inserts. The Fendi double-F logo was gently overstitched into handsome, washed denim daywear, and was about as branded as this from-the-heart Fendi collection got. “I’m having a great time,” said Fendi of her current flight as the house’s womenswear and menswear pilot. That pleasure was in turn transmitted into an exuberantly expressive collection that you could see being equally joyful to wear.