Fendi’s new creative director of women’s wear forges the Roman house’s future
Words by ELIZABETH VARNELL
Former C Magazine cover star Christy Turlington Burns at the FENDI Spring 2021 Couture show. Photo by Brett Lloyd.
As Kim Jones, previous head of menswear for Louis Vuitton and currently the creative director of Dior Men, sent out his first looks at Fendi’s Spring/Summer couture presentation, endless speculation swirled around what the British designer’s vision for women’s wear might be. When his friend Demi Moore emerged clad in a sleekly curve-hugging black silk suit, a fluid androgynous sensibility began to take shape. Informing his first collection as artistic director of women’s wear and couture at the Roman house — and present in Moore’s hands during the show — is Jones’ personal copy of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, one the author herself gave to her lover and the book’s muse, Vita Sackville-West. Moore, her look and the book also made the cover of April’s Vogue Italia celebrating creative communities in fashion — which Jones guest-edited. Clearly Woolf’s bohemian Bloomsbury set and the novel, whose namesake character first appears as a man in the Elizabethan age and shifts gender over the centuries before finding herself in 1920s Britain, informs both the couture collection and Jones’ new vision for women’s wear at the Roman house after its 54 years under Karl Lagerfeld.
Photo by Brett Lloyd. Model/actor Cara Delevingne.
Kim Jones embraces sculptural androgyny and his California cohort in his couture debut
Beaded sculptural dresses, marble-printed caped suits and hybridized gowns fitted with shirt or blazer sleeves — worn by 19 models including a contingent with California ties: Christy Turlington Burns and her nephew James, Bella Hadid, Cara Delevingne and Moore — all nod to Jones’ deft melding of conventional codes of masculinity and femininity. Ever innovative, Jones even translated his debut Fendi looks into a crisply edited monochromatic ready-to-wear spring capsule collection of striped shirts with elongated sleeves, tailored suits and elegantly draped satin dresses that offer an even clearer look at what’s ahead for the house under his direction. 195 Grant Ave., S.F., 415-820-2090; 201 N. Rodeo Dr., Beverly Hills, 310-623-3420; 3333 Bristol St., Costa Mesa, 714-751-1111.
Model Bella Hadid.
Feature image: Fendi’s new creative director of women’s wear, Kim Jones.
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of C Magazine.
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