The catwalk is one of many platforms in Fendi’s grand strategy to align itself with the great names of Italian art and culture. Under this ambitious brand positioning – or “communion of intent”, in its CEO Pietro Beccari’s more elegant phrasing – Fendi has become a generous patron of the city of Rome, where it is based. The house paid the £2m bill for the recent restoration of the Trevi fountain, and staged a fashion show upon its reopening.
Plans for the Caravaggio Research Institute, to be founded by Fendi in partnership with Rome’s Galleria Borghese, were announced this month. “This is a very interesting project for Italy and Rome and for Fendi to bring the beauty of the Italian capital and of Caravaggio around the world,” said Beccari. He described the painter as “very modern and an innovator”, adding that “these are values shared with Fendi”. In November, Caravaggio masterpieces will travel from Rome to LA for an exhibition at the Getty Museum.
On the Milan catwalk, Fendi’s arthouse persona showed up in the asymmetric kingfisher blue fringes and bold stripes of eye makeup sported New Romantic-style by the models. Sheer, striped midi dresses in moss green and petrol blue were worn with decorative flat sandals with stretch surf straps – a luxe take on the utility walking sandal, which is emerging as a trend for next summer.
The Max Mara catwalk is notable on the Milan fashion week schedule for focusing on the down-to-earth business of clothes real women want to wear. The brand’s British creative director, Ian Griffiths, has an eye for the subtle updates that make a wardrobe modern, while the formidable infrastructure of Max Mara ensures top-notch Italian tailoring and fabric.
Photograph: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
The first six outfits on to the catwalk were all head-to-toe caramel, a capsule wardrobe of chic monotoning designed to appeal to Max Mara’s clients, busy women who do not have time to assemble maximalist montages each morning.
A trench coat came in organza, which perhaps makes more sense in the Italian climate than the British, but which was seductive in its showcasing not just of the ribbed bodycon dress underneath but also in its own immaculate seams and tailoring. The trends emerging for next season were ticked off as models emerged: the trouser suit; a fitted “body” tucked into a long-line skirt, and a ribbed vest with a ”carwash” skirt. (Think of a long skirt cut into the vertical ribbons of a drive-in carwash, and you get the idea.)
Collection notes described these clothes as being for when “business and pleasure blur”, which is fashion week speak for outfits that you can wear to the office, and then to dinner. A ribbed racer-back top with flat-front trousers and a blazer looked, crucially, like an outfit that would transition effortlessly from the catwalk to the real world.
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