One of the most anticipated high fashion shows this year was that of Fendi. It marked the debut of Creative Director Kim Jones for the Women’s Couture and Prêt-à-porter collections. As she told Olivia Singer in her interview for Vogue Uk, “This first collection seems almost autobiographical to me. The things that inspired me are very personal”. Kim Jones has transformed the lockdown into an opportunity to look inside oneself, and these dresses are proof of this.
Trails and capes. This is how Kim Jones‘ debut can be summarized. It was a precious collection, even very classic, regarding pure romanticism, thanks to the prevailing capes in every style and the 1920s. Precisely the 1920s by Virginia Woolf, who inspires the collection with her Orlando and the Bloomsbury circle animated by her. A club frequented by the time’s best English intelligence, such as Vanessa Bell, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, and E.M. Forster. On the one hand, a Couture collection is very feminine and sensual, made of slippery dresses and transparencies, on the other androgynous, in homage to the character of Woolf, who crosses the centuries by changing sex. Androgyny translated not so much in the models wearing women’s clothes, as in a dress made up half by a gray jacket and the other half by an evening dress.
Kim Jones also took inspiration for this creation from an old sketch by Karl Lagerfeld. Because we must never forget who occupied that position before you and because reworking the archive is the way Jones works. The show was staged at the Palais Brongniart in Paris in a digital version.
Having won the most important prizes in the fashion sector, the creative has brought the Roman Maison a marked sensitivity that does not give up on audacity. Qualities are already appreciated by models such as Bella Hadid, Naomi Campbell, and Kate Moss and present at the haute couture Spring / Summer 2021 fashion show.
Fendi was one of the few Italian fashion houses that presented the show in Paris, as tradition dictates. Oh yes, because in the pandemic, Dior opted for a fairy tale villa in Tuscany; Valentino has decided to present the defile in Rome, at the Galleria Colonna; Giorgio Armani instead of his beloved Milan.
