Rewrite
Lead ImageNoor is wearing a shearling coat by FENDI
This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine:
At the start of the Fendi celebratory centenary show in Milan in February, we saw a couple of ghosts haul open a recreation of the doors of Fendi’s 1960s atelier-cum-boutique, situated on Rome’s Via Borgognona, to start proceedings.
They were ghosts of Silvia Venturini Fendi’s past, two actually – diminutive doppelgängers dressed in new versions of an outfit she wore back in 1967, when she was six – a fluffy little jacket, jodhpurs, boots and a fuzzy peaked cap. It was designed by Karl Lagerfeld, Fendi’s creative director then of only two years, who commandeered her to walk in the show alongside ‘mother’ and ‘father’ figures in identical looks. The 2025 versions were worn by her daughter Delfina Delettrez Fendi’s twin sons, Tazio and Dardo – double doubles of Silvia. “I always see double. I see it everywhere,” Silvia says.
Seeing double is natural at Fendi. For a while, the house adopted as an emblem the two-faced head of Janus, the god of beginnings, transitions, time, duality and endings, simultaneously glancing backwards while ceaselessly looking forwards. What a metaphor for fashion.
But, from 1967 onwards, Silvia Venturini Fendi hasn’t looked back. It was a pivotal moment for her, when she decided she wanted to work in fashion. “I understood immediately that something exceptional was happening,” she says. “I always had the feeling that I was losing my time at school – because what I wanted to learn was what they were doing here.” Here, meaning Fendi. “So, in the afternoon, instead of doing my homework – because I was stupid at the time – I would run to the atelier.” She has never really left it since, working alongside Lagerfeld as head of accessories until his death in 2019, then with Kim Jones for four years, and now leading her family’s firm solo. She is also the mind and hand behind the Baguette bag, a phenomenon that catapulted Fendi from being a sleepy Roman fur house to one of the world’s largest luxury brands and cemented its name in pop culture as well as fashion history.
Today the house of Fendi resides in Rome’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, a masterpiece of Italian rationalism that was, incidentally, also used as the headquarters for the dodgy designer Mugatu in Zoolander 2. That’s not quite as chic as the Visconti films Fendi costumed in the 1970s, but still. Around the base of the building are 28 statues, illustrating various industries, arts and trades. There’s music, agriculture, astronomy, architecture and the supremacy of navigation. Fashion is conspicuously absent – although there are handicrafts, commerce and political genius. Isn’t fashion really a combination of all three?
The building is a fitting metaphor for the house of Fendi: it looks modern but, like the brand, it originated in the interwar years. Today, it houses Fendi’s past – its archives are in the basement, literally propping the house up – as well as its present and its future, with Silvia’s office on the fourth floor, looking out over Rome. That’s where she’s plotting Fendi’s plan of attack for the next century.
Alexander Fury: I wanted to start by talking about the Autumn/Winter 2025 collection – it felt obsessive, filled with memories, recollections, recalls.
Silvia Venturini Fendi: I call those moments flashbacks. Flashbacks and fast-forwards. I listened to my memories, very personal memories, more than to a scientific approach to the history of Fendi. I selected things that are part of my fantasies of Fendi.
AF: Before the show you said it was like there were real memories and imaginary memories.
SVF: Because when you are a child the borders between reality and fantasy are very light. I really try to listen to myself, to what Fendi is to me. I wanted to do a very Fendi collection – it’s more about an attitude than about specific references. There were some. There were some that you know well, because you know our history.
AF: I remembered the quilting you used from the 1979 collection. The bustier, the jodhpurs.
“In the afternoon, instead of doing my homework – because I was stupid at the time – I would run to the atelier” – Silvia Venturini Fendi
SVF: That quilting is part of my personal memory. My sister Maria Teresa, when she was going out dancing at night, she used to wear those quilted jodhpurs in baby blue. The references there are from things that I’ve seen worn, on people I love, on women who have also been shaping the Fendi woman. Then, talking about my private personal experience with Fendi, I wanted to start with my first encounter – when I really understood what my mother was doing. That was when I was called by Karl to walk in the show.
AF: When you were six?
SVF: I was six. This is the moment when I really fell in love with Fendi. That experience, that much adrenaline. That day, I decided I wanted to be involved.
AF: And you restaged that, in this show, with your grandsons, Delfina’s children?
SVF: Exactly, with my grandchildren. They are almost the same age as I was. But now it’s two, like the double F.
AF: I never thought of that.
SVF: I said, “Let’s start with an allegory.” Past, future. The huge doors – that to me was the entrance of our headquarters. Because, when I was very little, I used to see those doors as gigantic. This was already a way of celebrating, where you mix up the story with the Fendi family. I think that I’m a prototype – a very peculiar prototype, nowadays – of a creative director, who is also part of the story in such a deep, linked, interwoven way.
AF: You’re family. It’s your name over the door.
SVF: I think that people expect something more than just a collection referencing an archive from me, because I am a Fendi. I am part of this incredible story. My point of view was it’s not just about the clothes, the product of this company. A huge point was the casting, the idea of characters. Because Fendi is made of people. I wanted every person to be individual, not a prototype of the Fendi woman. That question – “Who’s the Fendi woman?” – I don’t know. There are so many Fendi women. First of all, there are all the women of my family …
AF: Well, there were six Fendi women: the five Fendi sisters – your mother, your aunts – and your grandmother too. There was never just one.
SVF: It was a real celebration, without being a museum. Without being a retrospective.
Now it’s going to be very interesting to see September, which has to be the opposite. No celebration, just a vision. A vision of the future.
AF: Considering this year marks a century of Fendi, did it feel like a moment to assess what Fendi means – to you first and then to culture?
SVF: Of course. I wanted to show what Fendi is – like writing rules, guidelines. I think defining Fendi is not easy.
AF: What is your earliest memory of Fendi as a fashion house? I’m saying as a fashion house as opposed to as family …
SVF: I remember the excitement that I always felt when I was very little. Every night I used to go with my father to collect my mother from work, because she didn’t drive. It was late, dinner time – in Italy, dinner is very late. We used to enter the headquarters, which was this huge atelier, very beautiful. And you never knew what to expect, because there were always incredible people there – journalists, historians, movie directors, actors, singers, photographers. Some clients used to go there at night because maybe they were very busy or because they didn’t want people to see them. And everything was different. It was always unexpected and always ended up in very long conversations, maybe eating there, having fun. And so those nights I could be part of it.
AF: But it’s interesting because it’s wider than fashion as well. It feels quite Roman, all these different cultural figures coming together, especially for dinner.
SVF: Eating. It’s very Italian. For us this was very important because the Fendi sisters were mothers first of all. And Italian mothers – they feed. My grandmother, she was obsessed by quality, but not only the quality of the handbags or the clothes, but the quality of everything we were eating. We were going every Sunday to have lunch at her house, and when we were eating, there was always a story – every ingredient had a story. I learnt very, very early on that there are invisible differences that make things better.
AF: I didn’t quite know the dynamic of how present your grandmother was – because she gave the business to the daughters. But was she still …
SVF: Always there.
AF: I was going to say – was she micro-managing?
SVF: She was there watching. She was very interested in watching. But she could talk with her eyes. So she would never interfere.
AF: What memories do you have of your mother and your aunts working? What was that dynamic like, those strong women working together?
SVF: Well, it was five different personalities with a common goal. This made the decision-making process very long. But it made them study the problem from every aspect – it was analysed from every side. Those five women were very different. But they had to stand with one decision. It was long, but for sure the decision at the end was the right one. But that’s why they sold the company, in the end, because the process was very long. The problem – my grandmother had put all the family daughters in at the same level. For any decision, they had to vote. I remember they were working night and day. For the selection of the outfit, of the looks for the show, it was a nightmare. They were sleeping in the fitting room at night in order to start again at eight o’clock, fighting for what was to go in the show.
“I learnt that fashion is a very serious subject. We want to approach it with depth. And then I learnt that if you have an idea you have to fight for it” – Silvia Venturini Fendi
AF: Would Karl come and break the deadlock?
SVF: Yes. Karl arrived and said, “Now we do what I say.” Or he was listening and then one sister was not happy because, to her, he was listening to the others. He had a lot of fun.
AF: I remember you saying to me – which I loved – that he was Monsieur Lagerfeld in Paris, at Chanel, but he was Karl in Rome, at Fendi. This idea of the familiarity, the family atmosphere.
SVF: We had a great time. When he started working at Chanel, he had less time to devote to Fendi. But otherwise, his Roman times were not only work. Really, we incorporated him a lot into our clan. All his birthdays were here in Rome, Christmases were in Rome.
AF: Going back to your mother, your aunts, what do you feel you learnt from them?
SVF: I learnt that fashion is a very serious subject. We want to approach it with depth. And then I learnt that if you have an idea you have to fight for it. I never give up. I’m very resilient, as you can see.
AF: You have to be in fashion.
SVF: Yes.
AF: When did you know that you wanted to work in fashion? How did that manifest?
SVF: I think the day I was in the fashion show, when I was six years old, I understood. That day I decided that I wanted to be involved. It’s like now, my grandchildren, they’re already waiting for September. They’re sure they will be in the show. They’re sure! I don’t know how to tell them they’re not supposed to be …
AF: You might not be able to stop them …
SVF: Every time I see them – “Nonna, when is the show? When is the show? We are in the show, right?” I say, “Yes, yes, we’ll see … ”
AF: Did you ever question your career at all? With fashion being your family business, was there ever any rebellion against it?
SVF: A little. I tried to experience life before I started working, because I knew how demanding it was and how much they wanted me to be involved in a very serious way. So I tried to postpone it as long as possible, just having fun, travelling, experiencing life. But I didn’t try to study more than I could get with my experience. It was already there. Today I ask myself, “Well, maybe I could have been a good doctor.” Because I think I would have been a very good doctor. But otherwise, no, I am happy here. My interest in Fendi was very, very strong from when I was little. If I look at many things in the archive, I’m always there. My five-year-old handprint, they have it, because they were doing gloves. And I was in Jacques’ movie, for instance [Jacques de Bascher created a film titled Histoire d’Eau to showcase a Fendi collection in 1977]. It was August, it was very hot in Rome. All my friends were at the seaside but I was there.
AF: You never escaped it. You were always coming back, fascinated by it.
SVF: Completely.
AF: How did working alongside Karl shape you? I mean as a creative, but did it change you as a person as well?
SVF: A lot. In a good and in a bad way. It was not easy. First of all, your private life was not conceivable. You had to be devoted to him and to Fendi. If you had a boyfriend and you had to go out …
AF: He didn’t last very long?
SVF: No. Because we used to work at night – Karl liked to work at night. And he liked to be late in order to see how much people loved him.
AF: It’s a bit like Elizabeth Taylor – she would always be late but no one could be late for her.
SVF: If they want me, they wait for me. That’s what he told me.
AF: What is your earliest memory of Karl?
SVF: I was four when he started at Fendi, so the very first memory? I have no idea. For me, he was always there. But I remember I was fascinated by him. I understood that he was very important, somebody so important for my mother that when he was here, she was excited and she didn’t have time for anyone. It was just, “Karl is here.” We postponed every problem until Karl left. Also, if I had a problem – “No, Karl is here.” I understood that if he was so important to her I had to know him better. I wanted to know why. I wasn’t jealous. And then, to me, going there and watching him work, he was like a magician.
From a white page, the magic would happen. He was the fastest, but so accurate. At the beginning you would see just lines, you don’t see anything, and little by little it forms and you understand what he’s doing. And, oh my God, the process of it was so beautiful. And every line had a meaning. A technical meaning. Perfection. Construction, proportion. I can read his sketches very well. Sometimes when we remake Karl’s designs for the archive, I say, “No, no, no. This has a meaning. Follow this.” There is a way to decode them – also his handwriting, which is quite difficult to understand. To me, it’s very easy. I learnt. I can speak the language.
AF: The other thing that’s interesting is that Karl wasn’t a big name at that point. At the start, when you’re talking about him working with your mother, he hadn’t become ‘Karl’ the archetype – the superstar he became later.
SVF: It’s rare to meet those kind of people – because he was a real multitasker. But first of all he was full of irony. Normally, people who are very cultivated are very boring. No, Karl knew how to grab your attention.
[On Karl Lagerfeld] “It’s rare to meet those kind of people – because he was a real multitasker. But first of all he was full of irony. Normally, people who are very cultivated are very boring. No, Karl knew how to grab your attention” – Silvia Venturini Fendi
AF: When you were talking about food, Italian food, I remembered the Fendi handbag and jewellery from 1992 that’s shaped like pasta. I remember looking in the archive and there is a pair of earrings that look like lumps of coal but they’re set with crystals, like diamonds. Amanda Harlech said, “That is so Karl. Carbon with diamonds, that is such a Karl joke.”
SVF: Everything could impress him. Everything could turn, in his brain, to something else. He could really be inspired by the most beautiful paintings, but even from very humble and normal things. And he liked to crash them together.
AF: Are you influenced by Karl’s creative processes? Did they define your processes?
SVF: I have my own process – because I’m very fast, but he was very fast. I have different obsessions to him but the process is very similar. I’m fast in making decisions – I’m fast even in changing my mind if I need to change it. The process is similar but how we nourish this process is very different. We had very different lives.
AF: And as well, he’s part of – for want of a better term – your fashion education. He’s kind of your fashion university.
SVF: He was like a real teacher. More than that, probably, because I had a real affection for him. And he had a real affection for me. And we were very open to confrontation. Before, Karl was dealing with five Fendis. After, it was one, so it was easier.
AF: Karl always talked about never looking back – he never wanted to look at what he’d created. But what is your relationship to the past and the idea of legacy – and also this archive? Because you’ve shaped the archive. How do you relate to it?
SVF: I love the archive, because it reminds me of many things. Maybe I see a dress and I remember my mother wearing something similar. I see a coat and I remember the day we went out and she was wearing it. I have a very different reaction to our archive than my design team. I remember the emotion.
AF: We have touched on the idea of Rome already, of course. I wanted to talk to you, as a Roman, what do you feel it is about the city that shapes Fendi, that shapes your approach to fashion?
SVF: It’s the freedom of creativity. It’s the freedom of putting things close that don’t have any common denominator, to find a new kind of accordance. You see the Egyptian obelisk close to the gothic church, which is quite bizarre. It’s the most holy city, but if you know Rome, it’s the most profane city in the world. It’s the contrast that’s interesting. It makes you very open-minded, very open to the unexpected.
AF: Speaking of the unexpected, I think it surprises people when you say that Fendi is 100 years old. How does it feel to you? What does the 100th anniversary of Fendi mean?
SVF: It makes me think about time. It makes me think about the relevance of time. It makes me think how the test of time is a real witness of creativity and that if something is important, that stays. Some things we have to forget. Fendi is something that has to stay. I think there’s a beautiful story. I am proud of the people that I have known – because I knew all of them, except my grandfather. I never met him. The rest, I knew them all.
The strong commitment, the passion. Sacrificing a lot of personal life for their vision, for fashion. You always pay a bit, on a personal level. It’s a big history. It’s a big story. But I also felt that I was missing a real family model – I was seeing what all my friends experienced. Yet, in reality, I had the most fantastic and wonderful family. I like the open-mindedness that I can see today in my children. It’s thanks to all of this.
And the value, that aesthetic beauty can be substantial. It’s not ephemeral. I really think that Fendi makes clever fashion, with meaning. If you look at Fendi, at the history of these women, starting from my grandmother, you can read so much of the changing role of women in society. You can really read Fendi in so many aspects. It’s not just a double F.
Hair: Alex Brownsell at Streeters using BLEACH LONDON and KEUNE. Make-up: Thom Walker at Art + Commerce using MAKE UP FOR EVER. Set design: Emma Roach at Streeters. Casting: Julia Lange at Art Partner. Model: Noor Khan at MIKAs. Photographic assistants: Simon Wellington and Cordelia Ostler. Styling assistant: Emma Govey. Hair assistant: Ronke Abonde-Adigun. Make-up assistant: Martha Inoue. Casting assistant: Anna Pkhakadze. Set-design assistant: Rhys Floyd. Production: 360PM. Executive producer: Chris Cowan. Production co-ordinator: Gillian Panuncialman. Production assistant: Alice Young
This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine, on sale internationally on 25 September 2025. Pre-order here.
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Lead ImageNoor is wearing a shearling coat by FENDI
This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine:
At the start of the Fendi celebratory centenary show in Milan in February, we saw a couple of ghosts haul open a recreation of the doors of Fendi’s 1960s atelier-cum-boutique, situated on Rome’s Via Borgognona, to start proceedings.
They were ghosts of Silvia Venturini Fendi’s past, two actually – diminutive doppelgängers dressed in new versions of an outfit she wore back in 1967, when she was six – a fluffy little jacket, jodhpurs, boots and a fuzzy peaked cap. It was designed by Karl Lagerfeld, Fendi’s creative director then of only two years, who commandeered her to walk in the show alongside ‘mother’ and ‘father’ figures in identical looks. The 2025 versions were worn by her daughter Delfina Delettrez Fendi’s twin sons, Tazio and Dardo – double doubles of Silvia. “I always see double. I see it everywhere,” Silvia says.
Seeing double is natural at Fendi. For a while, the house adopted as an emblem the two-faced head of Janus, the god of beginnings, transitions, time, duality and endings, simultaneously glancing backwards while ceaselessly looking forwards. What a metaphor for fashion.
But, from 1967 onwards, Silvia Venturini Fendi hasn’t looked back. It was a pivotal moment for her, when she decided she wanted to work in fashion. “I understood immediately that something exceptional was happening,” she says. “I always had the feeling that I was losing my time at school – because what I wanted to learn was what they were doing here.” Here, meaning Fendi. “So, in the afternoon, instead of doing my homework – because I was stupid at the time – I would run to the atelier.” She has never really left it since, working alongside Lagerfeld as head of accessories until his death in 2019, then with Kim Jones for four years, and now leading her family’s firm solo. She is also the mind and hand behind the Baguette bag, a phenomenon that catapulted Fendi from being a sleepy Roman fur house to one of the world’s largest luxury brands and cemented its name in pop culture as well as fashion history.
Today the house of Fendi resides in Rome’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, a masterpiece of Italian rationalism that was, incidentally, also used as the headquarters for the dodgy designer Mugatu in Zoolander 2. That’s not quite as chic as the Visconti films Fendi costumed in the 1970s, but still. Around the base of the building are 28 statues, illustrating various industries, arts and trades. There’s music, agriculture, astronomy, architecture and the supremacy of navigation. Fashion is conspicuously absent – although there are handicrafts, commerce and political genius. Isn’t fashion really a combination of all three?
The building is a fitting metaphor for the house of Fendi: it looks modern but, like the brand, it originated in the interwar years. Today, it houses Fendi’s past – its archives are in the basement, literally propping the house up – as well as its present and its future, with Silvia’s office on the fourth floor, looking out over Rome. That’s where she’s plotting Fendi’s plan of attack for the next century.
Alexander Fury: I wanted to start by talking about the Autumn/Winter 2025 collection – it felt obsessive, filled with memories, recollections, recalls.
Silvia Venturini Fendi: I call those moments flashbacks. Flashbacks and fast-forwards. I listened to my memories, very personal memories, more than to a scientific approach to the history of Fendi. I selected things that are part of my fantasies of Fendi.
AF: Before the show you said it was like there were real memories and imaginary memories.
SVF: Because when you are a child the borders between reality and fantasy are very light. I really try to listen to myself, to what Fendi is to me. I wanted to do a very Fendi collection – it’s more about an attitude than about specific references. There were some. There were some that you know well, because you know our history.
AF: I remembered the quilting you used from the 1979 collection. The bustier, the jodhpurs.
“In the afternoon, instead of doing my homework – because I was stupid at the time – I would run to the atelier” – Silvia Venturini Fendi
SVF: That quilting is part of my personal memory. My sister Maria Teresa, when she was going out dancing at night, she used to wear those quilted jodhpurs in baby blue. The references there are from things that I’ve seen worn, on people I love, on women who have also been shaping the Fendi woman. Then, talking about my private personal experience with Fendi, I wanted to start with my first encounter – when I really understood what my mother was doing. That was when I was called by Karl to walk in the show.
AF: When you were six?
SVF: I was six. This is the moment when I really fell in love with Fendi. That experience, that much adrenaline. That day, I decided I wanted to be involved.
AF: And you restaged that, in this show, with your grandsons, Delfina’s children?
SVF: Exactly, with my grandchildren. They are almost the same age as I was. But now it’s two, like the double F.
AF: I never thought of that.
SVF: I said, “Let’s start with an allegory.” Past, future. The huge doors – that to me was the entrance of our headquarters. Because, when I was very little, I used to see those doors as gigantic. This was already a way of celebrating, where you mix up the story with the Fendi family. I think that I’m a prototype – a very peculiar prototype, nowadays – of a creative director, who is also part of the story in such a deep, linked, interwoven way.
AF: You’re family. It’s your name over the door.
SVF: I think that people expect something more than just a collection referencing an archive from me, because I am a Fendi. I am part of this incredible story. My point of view was it’s not just about the clothes, the product of this company. A huge point was the casting, the idea of characters. Because Fendi is made of people. I wanted every person to be individual, not a prototype of the Fendi woman. That question – “Who’s the Fendi woman?” – I don’t know. There are so many Fendi women. First of all, there are all the women of my family …
AF: Well, there were six Fendi women: the five Fendi sisters – your mother, your aunts – and your grandmother too. There was never just one.
SVF: It was a real celebration, without being a museum. Without being a retrospective.
Now it’s going to be very interesting to see September, which has to be the opposite. No celebration, just a vision. A vision of the future.
AF: Considering this year marks a century of Fendi, did it feel like a moment to assess what Fendi means – to you first and then to culture?
SVF: Of course. I wanted to show what Fendi is – like writing rules, guidelines. I think defining Fendi is not easy.
AF: What is your earliest memory of Fendi as a fashion house? I’m saying as a fashion house as opposed to as family …
SVF: I remember the excitement that I always felt when I was very little. Every night I used to go with my father to collect my mother from work, because she didn’t drive. It was late, dinner time – in Italy, dinner is very late. We used to enter the headquarters, which was this huge atelier, very beautiful. And you never knew what to expect, because there were always incredible people there – journalists, historians, movie directors, actors, singers, photographers. Some clients used to go there at night because maybe they were very busy or because they didn’t want people to see them. And everything was different. It was always unexpected and always ended up in very long conversations, maybe eating there, having fun. And so those nights I could be part of it.
AF: But it’s interesting because it’s wider than fashion as well. It feels quite Roman, all these different cultural figures coming together, especially for dinner.
SVF: Eating. It’s very Italian. For us this was very important because the Fendi sisters were mothers first of all. And Italian mothers – they feed. My grandmother, she was obsessed by quality, but not only the quality of the handbags or the clothes, but the quality of everything we were eating. We were going every Sunday to have lunch at her house, and when we were eating, there was always a story – every ingredient had a story. I learnt very, very early on that there are invisible differences that make things better.
AF: I didn’t quite know the dynamic of how present your grandmother was – because she gave the business to the daughters. But was she still …
SVF: Always there.
AF: I was going to say – was she micro-managing?
SVF: She was there watching. She was very interested in watching. But she could talk with her eyes. So she would never interfere.
AF: What memories do you have of your mother and your aunts working? What was that dynamic like, those strong women working together?
SVF: Well, it was five different personalities with a common goal. This made the decision-making process very long. But it made them study the problem from every aspect – it was analysed from every side. Those five women were very different. But they had to stand with one decision. It was long, but for sure the decision at the end was the right one. But that’s why they sold the company, in the end, because the process was very long. The problem – my grandmother had put all the family daughters in at the same level. For any decision, they had to vote. I remember they were working night and day. For the selection of the outfit, of the looks for the show, it was a nightmare. They were sleeping in the fitting room at night in order to start again at eight o’clock, fighting for what was to go in the show.
“I learnt that fashion is a very serious subject. We want to approach it with depth. And then I learnt that if you have an idea you have to fight for it” – Silvia Venturini Fendi
AF: Would Karl come and break the deadlock?
SVF: Yes. Karl arrived and said, “Now we do what I say.” Or he was listening and then one sister was not happy because, to her, he was listening to the others. He had a lot of fun.
AF: I remember you saying to me – which I loved – that he was Monsieur Lagerfeld in Paris, at Chanel, but he was Karl in Rome, at Fendi. This idea of the familiarity, the family atmosphere.
SVF: We had a great time. When he started working at Chanel, he had less time to devote to Fendi. But otherwise, his Roman times were not only work. Really, we incorporated him a lot into our clan. All his birthdays were here in Rome, Christmases were in Rome.
AF: Going back to your mother, your aunts, what do you feel you learnt from them?
SVF: I learnt that fashion is a very serious subject. We want to approach it with depth. And then I learnt that if you have an idea you have to fight for it. I never give up. I’m very resilient, as you can see.
AF: You have to be in fashion.
SVF: Yes.
AF: When did you know that you wanted to work in fashion? How did that manifest?
SVF: I think the day I was in the fashion show, when I was six years old, I understood. That day I decided that I wanted to be involved. It’s like now, my grandchildren, they’re already waiting for September. They’re sure they will be in the show. They’re sure! I don’t know how to tell them they’re not supposed to be …
AF: You might not be able to stop them …
SVF: Every time I see them – “Nonna, when is the show? When is the show? We are in the show, right?” I say, “Yes, yes, we’ll see … ”
AF: Did you ever question your career at all? With fashion being your family business, was there ever any rebellion against it?
SVF: A little. I tried to experience life before I started working, because I knew how demanding it was and how much they wanted me to be involved in a very serious way. So I tried to postpone it as long as possible, just having fun, travelling, experiencing life. But I didn’t try to study more than I could get with my experience. It was already there. Today I ask myself, “Well, maybe I could have been a good doctor.” Because I think I would have been a very good doctor. But otherwise, no, I am happy here. My interest in Fendi was very, very strong from when I was little. If I look at many things in the archive, I’m always there. My five-year-old handprint, they have it, because they were doing gloves. And I was in Jacques’ movie, for instance [Jacques de Bascher created a film titled Histoire d’Eau to showcase a Fendi collection in 1977]. It was August, it was very hot in Rome. All my friends were at the seaside but I was there.
AF: You never escaped it. You were always coming back, fascinated by it.
SVF: Completely.
AF: How did working alongside Karl shape you? I mean as a creative, but did it change you as a person as well?
SVF: A lot. In a good and in a bad way. It was not easy. First of all, your private life was not conceivable. You had to be devoted to him and to Fendi. If you had a boyfriend and you had to go out …
AF: He didn’t last very long?
SVF: No. Because we used to work at night – Karl liked to work at night. And he liked to be late in order to see how much people loved him.
AF: It’s a bit like Elizabeth Taylor – she would always be late but no one could be late for her.
SVF: If they want me, they wait for me. That’s what he told me.
AF: What is your earliest memory of Karl?
SVF: I was four when he started at Fendi, so the very first memory? I have no idea. For me, he was always there. But I remember I was fascinated by him. I understood that he was very important, somebody so important for my mother that when he was here, she was excited and she didn’t have time for anyone. It was just, “Karl is here.” We postponed every problem until Karl left. Also, if I had a problem – “No, Karl is here.” I understood that if he was so important to her I had to know him better. I wanted to know why. I wasn’t jealous. And then, to me, going there and watching him work, he was like a magician.
From a white page, the magic would happen. He was the fastest, but so accurate. At the beginning you would see just lines, you don’t see anything, and little by little it forms and you understand what he’s doing. And, oh my God, the process of it was so beautiful. And every line had a meaning. A technical meaning. Perfection. Construction, proportion. I can read his sketches very well. Sometimes when we remake Karl’s designs for the archive, I say, “No, no, no. This has a meaning. Follow this.” There is a way to decode them – also his handwriting, which is quite difficult to understand. To me, it’s very easy. I learnt. I can speak the language.
AF: The other thing that’s interesting is that Karl wasn’t a big name at that point. At the start, when you’re talking about him working with your mother, he hadn’t become ‘Karl’ the archetype – the superstar he became later.
SVF: It’s rare to meet those kind of people – because he was a real multitasker. But first of all he was full of irony. Normally, people who are very cultivated are very boring. No, Karl knew how to grab your attention.
[On Karl Lagerfeld] “It’s rare to meet those kind of people – because he was a real multitasker. But first of all he was full of irony. Normally, people who are very cultivated are very boring. No, Karl knew how to grab your attention” – Silvia Venturini Fendi
AF: When you were talking about food, Italian food, I remembered the Fendi handbag and jewellery from 1992 that’s shaped like pasta. I remember looking in the archive and there is a pair of earrings that look like lumps of coal but they’re set with crystals, like diamonds. Amanda Harlech said, “That is so Karl. Carbon with diamonds, that is such a Karl joke.”
SVF: Everything could impress him. Everything could turn, in his brain, to something else. He could really be inspired by the most beautiful paintings, but even from very humble and normal things. And he liked to crash them together.
AF: Are you influenced by Karl’s creative processes? Did they define your processes?
SVF: I have my own process – because I’m very fast, but he was very fast. I have different obsessions to him but the process is very similar. I’m fast in making decisions – I’m fast even in changing my mind if I need to change it. The process is similar but how we nourish this process is very different. We had very different lives.
AF: And as well, he’s part of – for want of a better term – your fashion education. He’s kind of your fashion university.
SVF: He was like a real teacher. More than that, probably, because I had a real affection for him. And he had a real affection for me. And we were very open to confrontation. Before, Karl was dealing with five Fendis. After, it was one, so it was easier.
AF: Karl always talked about never looking back – he never wanted to look at what he’d created. But what is your relationship to the past and the idea of legacy – and also this archive? Because you’ve shaped the archive. How do you relate to it?
SVF: I love the archive, because it reminds me of many things. Maybe I see a dress and I remember my mother wearing something similar. I see a coat and I remember the day we went out and she was wearing it. I have a very different reaction to our archive than my design team. I remember the emotion.
AF: We have touched on the idea of Rome already, of course. I wanted to talk to you, as a Roman, what do you feel it is about the city that shapes Fendi, that shapes your approach to fashion?
SVF: It’s the freedom of creativity. It’s the freedom of putting things close that don’t have any common denominator, to find a new kind of accordance. You see the Egyptian obelisk close to the gothic church, which is quite bizarre. It’s the most holy city, but if you know Rome, it’s the most profane city in the world. It’s the contrast that’s interesting. It makes you very open-minded, very open to the unexpected.
AF: Speaking of the unexpected, I think it surprises people when you say that Fendi is 100 years old. How does it feel to you? What does the 100th anniversary of Fendi mean?
SVF: It makes me think about time. It makes me think about the relevance of time. It makes me think how the test of time is a real witness of creativity and that if something is important, that stays. Some things we have to forget. Fendi is something that has to stay. I think there’s a beautiful story. I am proud of the people that I have known – because I knew all of them, except my grandfather. I never met him. The rest, I knew them all.
The strong commitment, the passion. Sacrificing a lot of personal life for their vision, for fashion. You always pay a bit, on a personal level. It’s a big history. It’s a big story. But I also felt that I was missing a real family model – I was seeing what all my friends experienced. Yet, in reality, I had the most fantastic and wonderful family. I like the open-mindedness that I can see today in my children. It’s thanks to all of this.
And the value, that aesthetic beauty can be substantial. It’s not ephemeral. I really think that Fendi makes clever fashion, with meaning. If you look at Fendi, at the history of these women, starting from my grandmother, you can read so much of the changing role of women in society. You can really read Fendi in so many aspects. It’s not just a double F.
Hair: Alex Brownsell at Streeters using BLEACH LONDON and KEUNE. Make-up: Thom Walker at Art + Commerce using MAKE UP FOR EVER. Set design: Emma Roach at Streeters. Casting: Julia Lange at Art Partner. Model: Noor Khan at MIKAs. Photographic assistants: Simon Wellington and Cordelia Ostler. Styling assistant: Emma Govey. Hair assistant: Ronke Abonde-Adigun. Make-up assistant: Martha Inoue. Casting assistant: Anna Pkhakadze. Set-design assistant: Rhys Floyd. Production: 360PM. Executive producer: Chris Cowan. Production co-ordinator: Gillian Panuncialman. Production assistant: Alice Young
This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine, on sale internationally on 25 September 2025. Pre-order here.
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