Fendi launches a collection of high-end perfumes

After more than ten years, Fendi is returning to the fragrance market with a new and original project. For the first time, the Roman luxury house owned by LVMH is launching a collection of seven very high-end fragrances. It’s an opportunity to tell the story of its world and its history through an olfactory narrative, as it prepares to celebrate its centenary next year. A bit like playing cards with the 7 families, each fragrance evokes a character, a place, a key phase in the family saga.

It began in 1925 with the creation of a fur and leather goods workshop that Adele Casagrande opened in Rome with her husband Edoardo Fendi. In the post-war period, the company expanded to include the couple’s five daughters. With Karl Lagerfeld, recruited as creative director in 1965, the ready-to-wear range expanded, as did that of accessories. With the arrival of the new millennium, expansion accelerated, supported by the company’s entry into the LVMH galaxy in 2001.
 
This olfactory project, which the label worked on for two years, was carried out in-house with the support of the luxury group’s perfume division. Nose designers Quentin Bisch, Fanny Bal and Anne Flipo created the seven fragrances dreamt up by Fendi’s creative directors, “all three of whom were very present and involved in the entire artistic concept,” Fendi points out. These are Kim Jones, in charge of haute couture and women’s ready-to-wear since September 2020, Silvia Venturini Fendi, in charge of accessories and men’s fashion, and Delfina Delettrez Fendi, Silvia’s daughter, representing the fourth generation of the family, who oversees jewellery.

“The fragrance collection tells the story of Fendi from a different point of view, expressing what the house is in a different way and telling its story in a different language. Today, we can say that we have used all the senses at Fendi,” Silvia Venturini Fendi commented in the press release. Everything has been meticulously thought out, from the evocative names of the fragrances, which are almost all Italian, to the bottle, which discreetly takes the shape of an arch, a symbol of Roman architecture, while the cap bears the house’s two FFs.
 
The palette of the collection is made up mainly of highly concentrated (18% on average), natural and artisanal raw materials, such as orange blossom from Tunisia or bergamot from Calabria, cedar from the Atlas mountains, patchouli from Indonesia, iris from France, vanilla from Madagascar, and so on. The fragrances are positioned at the top end of the range. They will be sold exclusively in the brand’s boutiques and on its e-shop, from June 20, at a price of around 300 euros per fragrance.

A collection dedicated to Fendi women

In this family story, women take centre stage. Starting with founder Adele Casagrande, through the fragrance Casa Grande (big house), which symbolises “the link between Rome and the Bosphorus where her husband Edoardo is from,” with spicy myrrh, amber, vanilla and tonka bean. Then there’s Anna Fendi, the first of the five legendary Fendi sisters, and Silvia’s mother, evoked through the fragrance Dolce Bacio (sweet kiss), and then Perché No (why not), a fresh fragrance with a hint of spice dedicated to Silvia Venturini.
 
Two other fragrances are dedicated to his two daughters, Leonetta Luciano Fendi with Ciao Amore and Delfina Delettrez Fendi with Sempre Mio (always mine). Last but not least, the collection includes a reference to La Baguette, the famous Fendi bag created by Silvia Venturini Fendi in 1997, which gives its name to a fragrance that blends floral, powdery iris and gourmand vanilla in “sensual, velvety leather”. For her part, Kim Jones has created Prima Terra (first earth), with woody notes of mandarin and rosemary, inspired by the scents of her youth in Africa.