Today’s show was one of the appointments I was most looking forward to at this Milan Fashion Week. I wanted to understand where Maria Grazia Chiuri is taking Fendi after her return to the house and her debut last February. Having seen the collection, my impression is quite clear: I see a Fendi very different from the one we have known over the past decades. I may be wrong, of course, and it is still too early to tell where this path will lead, but the distance from some of the house’s historic codes seems evident to me.
To me, Fendi has always been material, color, fur, irony, sensuality, Rome. Over more than half a century Karl Lagerfeld built an extraordinarily powerful language; after him, Silvia Venturini Fendi and Kim Jones interpreted it in different ways, while keeping that thread recognizable. With Maria Grazia Chiuri I sense something different. Not necessarily better or worse: simply another register. Her debut had already shown a greater focus on silhouette, on volume and on an overall more measured image. Today that direction appears even clearer.
Chiuri brings much of her own way of thinking about fashion into Fendi: the relationship between body and garment, freedom of movement, less rigid constructions, the dialogue between masculine and feminine and, above all, the work of hands, of the atelier, of material. The clothes follow the body, sometimes revealing it, at other times wrapping it; volumes shift as the models walk, layering lightens the constructions and femininity is never declared too overtly. It is a collection seeking a balance between form and freedom.
But while watching the show I kept asking myself one question: is Maria Grazia Chiuri entering the world of Fendi, or is Fendi increasingly entering the world of Maria Grazia Chiuri? A creative director must leave their mark, otherwise there would be no point in entrusting them with a house. But Fendi has more than a hundred years of history and a very strong visual memory. It is not just a logo. It is a way of treating material, of using color, of shaping a woman, and even of playing with that particular Roman opulence that has always been part of its character.
Today’s collection has research, construction, craft and its own precise idea of a woman. That is not in question. Personally, though, in front of some looks, if I removed the Fendi name I would struggle to recognize the house right away. And this is exactly what makes Maria Grazia Chiuri’s journey interesting: seeing how far she will take this transformation, and how much of the codes we know will continue to live within the Fendi she is building.
Perhaps it is still too early to draw a conclusion. Today I clearly see Maria Grazia Chiuri’s hand. Now I want to see how that hand will manage to dialogue with Fendi’s identity.
Gallery
–
–
Alessandro Sicuro
Brand Strategist | Photographer | Art Director | Project Manager
Alessandro Sicuro Comunication
