Fendi's Wild Side
The dualist cross-reference also provided a neat solution to the arsenal of layered staples: from a sartorial standpoint, the neutral touches and their wealth of creative touchpoints remain a mainstay amid the menswear offerings, answered by the house by way of transcending trends and uniting a deep throughline that focuses on longevity. The technicalities were pleasing to see: lines from European-like appeal brim aplenty, ranging from the old-meets-new techniques such as the Casentino blanket wools and the smooth loden. “I love teaming an oversize coat with trousers tucked right into the boot, appearing almost like tights because I believe it’s an attitude that gives a new life (and shape),” she said, expanding on the fact that “coats had an important play on volume, which add a refreshing silhouette to the tailored trouser and a sense of ease too, diving into the wild side of the collection — which looks to break away from the city culture into nature-like settings.” The breezy, generous volumes conveyed across the outerwear pieces brought a new lightness of touch to a lineup that sometimes erred on the side of severity. Fisherman’s coats and waterproof wax jackets in canvas run side-by-side with opulent bombers and peacoat shapes, engineering one another with shaved trompe l’oeil shearling piping and seams.
Innocent and gently practical, Fendi’s love for deliberately fuss-free clothes runs directly counter to the prevailing art of conceal and reveal: the clean, innocent and Italian traditional sensitivity of the Fendi man is steadily meeting, as it turns out, a subtly sensual undertone. An interesting direction, which showcases the brand’s broad vocabulary in continuous expansion, which also featured washed denim and mohair textures looped and shredded. The smartly tailored pants and jackets with billowing sleeves that closed the show were partial winners, but not so the sheer shirting which were far from being winter-appropriate. All in all, the collection hit a quasi-perfect note: never dropping to the depths of flatness, but looking streamlined, poised and technically seductive.
