Four elephant handbags cast their long shadows across the Fendi catwalk on a windy Wednesday as Milan Fashion Week kicked off.
They loomed – white and sculptural, like altars to a great consumer civilization – over Kate Moss, sitting in the front row, and Linda Evangelista and Demi Moore, all coming to pay their respects in the temple of Santa Baguetta.
Why not? After all, The Baguette was a guest star on the most recent season of “And Just Like That”; Carrie’s (aka Sarah Jessica Parker’s) love affair with her bag turns out to be her longest love affair of all. It’s no secret that it’s often bags that drive the brand’s engine of desire, more than skirts, dresses or jackets.
Moreover, Kim Jones, Fendi’s womenswear designer, walks past the towering remains of the empire every day to work in Rome. He simply called it a shovel, or a profit center a profit center. Whatever the label, the irony is: its recognition seems to have given him the freedom to make great clothes.
On his catwalk, clothes overshadowed bags for the first time.
Over the past three years, since he became artistic director and delved into womenswear, Mr. Jones has struggled to define Fendi beyond its bags (which were created by Silvia Venturini Fendi) and its furs, the other former tentpole of the brand. product (fur has fallen out of fashion because it has fallen out of favor politically). To be honest, he didn’t have much to go with it, other than a few F’s and a taste for brown; even his long-time predecessor, Karl Lagerfeld, treated Fendi more as a laboratory for experimentation than as a building block of personality. But this season, Mr. Jones has finally figured it out.
He makes clothes that are essentially a serenity mantra for the busy brain.
Knitted dresses and leather skirts and jackets linked the blocky paths of the capital F to Mondrian and the de Stijl movement via color blocks in bright orange, cream, chocolate and slate blue, with a hint of butter yellow. Some were wrapped with an imaginary obi belt, one end of which could dangle in the wind, or mixed with a comfortable men’s garment. The arms of the vest were tied at the ribcage or around the waist, creating layers without bulk. Some banana-shaped pants or shorts had one side of the waistband folded down for breathability.
They looked mature without looking stuffy; comfortable but also streamlined, echoing the holistic hybridization of clothing genres that began at the New York shows. Printed sleeveless silk shirts were sprinkled with small Fs that transitioned into a python pattern, a nod to the house’s past expertise in skins and (perhaps) the future without them. Or at least with less.
The same way you put your life in a handbag and feel contracted, you can put yourself in these clothes and feel equipped to make some margin calls.
In our time of short attention spans, there is a tendency for fashion observers and employers alike to write off a designer after a season; even to terminate a contract. This collection was a good argument for why it’s worth giving creative directors the time to figure out a brand for themselves.
Most models held a shrunken handbag, as if it were a Chihuahua or a toy poodle, in the crook of one arm, or swung an even smaller envelope bag on a long chain – accessories were given their rightful place. As Brunello Cucinelli said before his presentation of athglam (think tennis wear, his signature sequin knitwear and silver-painted cargo pants), “We need to bring back the balance” – when it comes to fashion, and all things.
Mr. Jones did that.
