Introducing FENDI Couture Autumn/Winter 2022

“This season, I wanted to step away from Rome, or at least I wanted to place Rome in a global context. In this collection, we are looking at fragments of different cities, namely Kyoto, Paris and Rome. The fragmentary nature of things is echoed throughout the collection, like snatches of memory or the impression of things past, present and future.” says Kim Jones, Artistic Director of Couture and Womenswear.

Couture traditions are humanized and approachable, with a sense of luminosity, vivacity, and convenience for the wearer. The grand edifices have been replaced by a softer, more yielding sense of easiness and entity for the woman wearing the clothing. 

Kyoto, Japan's cultural capital, serves as the starting point. Pieces of kimono fabric from the eighteenth century were discovered here, laying the groundwork for future recreations and reinventions in the collection. Kata Yuzen, a hand printing and painting technique that has remained unchanged for hundreds of years, is once again used for such creations. Made in Kyoto as traditional silk panels, these floor-length dress silhouettes are usually cut and asymmetrically reformed. The fabric design's cascading Acer palmatum leaves - named Ode to Autumn in the 1700s - appear in various styles throughout, especially in the emergence of subtle intricate designs that reach a crescendo in the collection's final tulle gowns.

Throughout Autumn-Winter, parallels are derived between East and West, masculine and feminine, natural and manmade, tradition and modern. The Kata Yuzen dresses are echoed and find a continental substitute in the sinuous, shimmering crystal cages, which more closely reflect the architectonic essence of Paris in their design and fabrication, but still frame and yield to the body.

A sense of French 'Japonisme' and art deco ornament is combined with a more Italian take on the tailleur in the Vicuna, leather and fur work. Vicuna fabric suiting and cognac calf leather pieces have nods to masculine tailoring codes, with their structures emphasized internally and at times externally. There are also individual pleasures in the design of many of the items, just for the wearer - internally, traditional Japanese fabrics are used as linings and quiltings in suiting but also underpinnings in dresses. The shaved mink suiting's intarsia construction showcases the FENDI fur atelier's supreme expertise. Rope Mountain, an abstract reinvention of another traditional Japanese fabric fragment from the eighteenth century, grounds and monumentalizes the collection.