Heritage Comes Alive in Fendi’s Centenary Collection

Silvia Venturini Fendi’s centenary collection unfolds like a living family album, where every

coat, bag and jewel is both character and heirloom.

At Spazio FENDI in Milan, wood-panelled double doors swing open on a mirage of Via

Borgognona’s original salon, setting a theatrical stage without dusty vitrines. The show

invitation itself is part of the performance: an accordion-folded passe-partout photo album

bound in Selleria-stitched Cuoio Romano, filled with black-and-white snapshots from 1964 to

1977. Seven-year-old twin sons, Dardo and Tazio Delettrez Fendi, tip aside the heavy doors

they themselves helped design, signalling that this isn’t museum travail but a rite of passage

for Roman couture.

Primal textures trick the eye: honeycomb intarsia and Gheronato patchwork conjure fox,

mink and sable without fur, while a flared coat worn as dress cinches at the waist with a fine

gold belt. The hourglass silhouette repeats in satin balza skirts and rounded-sleeve corolla

jackets, dissolving into curled lettuce hems, marbled plissé and ribbed knits. Colour unfolds

like dusk upon the Tiber—from laurel and forest green through graphite and petrol blue to

cinnamon and dusty rose—so each look reads as a shifting skyline rather than a static

tableau.

Tailoring reaches its apex in boiled wool coats deconstructed to reveal gleaming satin revers

and in bracelet-sleeve blazers paired with stovepipe flares. Trench coats—an ode to Italian

power dressing—are cut large in lambskin or edged with plissé taffeta collars; men’s cabans

in powdery compact wool ground the line in sober rigour. FENDI shearling stoles toggle

between grand overcoats and casual wraps when draped over jewel-tone cardigans, lingerie

dresses or georgette blouses.

Accessories enter as full-blown characters: the Modernist Giano purse twists from clutch to

shoulder in two-tone calfskin stamped with a squirrel emblem on one side and Janus’ double

face on the other. Spy and Peekaboo bags return deconstructed in sorbet shearling and

disco sequins; the Baguette and Mamma Baguette reemerge in shearling intarsias or

mirrored embroideries. Trompe l’œil boots perch on hooked heels, while peep-toe slippers

play in satin and eel, underlining FENDI’s subversive edge.

Jewellery by Delfina Delettrez Fendi shimmers like fireworks; snake chain collars, bracelets

en tremblant, obelisk pendants and FF ball-chain necklaces embed fur-like textures in metal

and gems. In FENDI 100, personal memory and Roman savoir-faire fuse into a blueprint for

tomorrow, proving that heritage need not fossilise but can blaze new trails from threshold to

catwalk.