Fendi designer Kim Jones: ‘No one wants to spend £150,000 on a dress and see someone else wearing it’
When you’ve scattered precious stones over your ears, throat, belt buckle, handbag and fingers, where next? A burning question for the 0.01 per cent. The answer came in the Fendi couture show where Delfina Delettrez Fendi, the scion of the house and its jewellery designer, dreamed up a pair of futuristic sunglasses made of white gold and covered in diamonds. These, like all the looks in the show, will be fashioned to fit their new owner exactly, to the nearest millimetre.
This is a frantic time in the couture calendar with awards season in full swing and competition for the right to dress Oscar nominees hotting up. Kim Jones, Fendi’s London-born creative director, set out his stall in Paris with a collection that was not only glamorous but also “comfortable”. “The client wants to be able to move, and sit down,” he explained before the show.
Perhaps, but wearability is a secondary consideration when it comes to a dress made of sequins covered with minute silver chains that took three weeks and three experts to create. The other thing that really matters, said Jones, is exclusivity: “No one wants to spend £150,000 on a dress and walk into a party and see someone else wearing it.”
So each garment is only available to one person in each region of the world – couture clients have to be quick on the draw to secure the look they want.
Elsewhere, designers have shown their collections in gilded rococo rooms and majored on ruffles and frills, but Fendi, comparatively new to the game – the first couture show was in 2017 – does it differently. The set was like something out of Gattaca with silver walls and lots of white light. Black-clad flunkeys with dusters on their shoes skated over the aluminium floor to polish off any scuff marks.
Simplicity marked the collection too. Even the floatiest chiffons in wafty white, blush pink, black and chocolate were minimalist – the skill of the seamstresses visible only in the clean lines.
There was room for some high-fashion flourishes too. Fendi started off as a Roman furrier and, though many models won’t wear mink or fox on the catwalk any more, Jones created the effect of fur, its bulk and texture, using metallic threads on a billowing brown coat and long petrol-blue dress.
There was another nod to the maison’s past in exotic skin baguette bags that came adorned with mink trim and there were some Cruella de Vil figure-hugging black croc dresses and jackets.
It’s unlikely that Zendaya, who was on the front row, will be striking a pose on the red carpet in one of those, but the body-con floor-length white ribbed knit would be attention-grabbing enough.
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