DIAMOND YEAR: Fendi will kick off its centenary year with a coed fashion show during Milan Fashion Week next February, WWD has learned.
Silvia Venturini Fendi, artistic director of accessories and menswear collections, is leading the design effort.
It is understood Fendi chief executive officer Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou informed teams about the tentpole event earlier this week.
The runway event will also coincide with the reopening of Spazio Fendi on Via Solari in Milan, the Roman brand’s longtime runway theater and showroom, which has been undergoing renovation.
Milan Fashion Week is scheduled for Feb. 25 to March 3.
Fendi has so far been mum about its plans for its 100th anniversary amid a flurry of changes, including the exits of longtime Fendi CEO Serge Brunschwig and British designer Kim Jones, who earlier this month stepped down after four years as Fendi’s artistic director of haute couture, ready-to-wear and fur collections for women.
As reported, Jones is to continue in his role as artistic director of men’s collections at Dior in Paris.
Fendi and Dior are both controlled by French luxury giant LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
Angeloglou succeeded Brunschwig effective June 1 and reports to Sidney Toledano, adviser to LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault.
Venturini Fendi is perhaps best known as the woman who in 1997 masterminded the iconic Baguette bag, and as the designer of Fendi menswear since 2000.
She is the granddaughter of Adele Fendi, who founded the family business with a leather goods and luggage shop in Rome in 1925.
Awaiting the appointment of Jones in late 2020, Venturini Fendi soldiered on as the main creative force and media figurehead following the death in February 2019 of Karl Lagerfeld, the German designer who had created furs and women’s rtw for the Roman house since 1965.
She also collaborates with her daughter Delfina Delettrez Fendi, jewelry creative director at the Roman house, whom Jones considered a key muse.