FENDI Spring-Summer 2025 Invites Us to Join the Club
For a second consecutive summer, Silvia Venturini Fendi ventured outside the comfortable confines of FENDI’s Milanese showroom. After showing in Florence, in 2023, to celebrate the opening of a new, state-of-the-art atelier and factory, the Fendi Spring-Summer 2025 collection was shown in the south of Milan, in an industrial but airy space.
This, too, was a celebratory occasion, though less about something new. 2025 will mark FENDI’s centenary, and this was the first glimpse of what the Roman house’s clothing will look like that year.
The seats were arranged in a large square around the runway. As models began making their way out, they were flanked by six large, moving, mirrored monoliths in the centre, a deconstructed take on FENDI’s interlocking logo.
If the vibe and venue were noticeably different than the Fall-Winter 2024 —which, in comparison, was a bit moodier — there was a through line with the clothes. Silvia Venturini Fendi seems to still have her mind in the idyllic British countryside, and the Fendi Spring-Summer 2025 collection felt like a continuation of Fall-Winter 2024’s exploration of that aesthetic, albeit with a lighter touch, with fabrics and styles more suited to warmer weather. Together, it created the aesthetic idea of the FENDI country club, which we’d all want to be members of.
Opening the show were a pair of trousers done up in a light plaid that called to mind the palette of rolling hills in the late summer countryside. These were paired with a light green shirt and striped green tie, with a classic beige trench coat. Both the crushback shoes and bag that rounded out the look bore the Selleria stitching that’s long been used by FENDI, dating back to its first leather goods. This would lay the groundwork for the collection, rife with references to classical American and British menswear, infused with a century of FENDI’s history.
A new crest was introduced, collegiate and nodding to the brand’s past: a squirrel for Venturini Fendi’s grandmother, whose husband would often say she was as busy as one; the widely-used Pequin stripe; the Roman god Janus; and the now-iconic double F logo designed by Karl Lagerfeld. The crest featured on light cricket sweaters, ties, sport coats, caps and ties — the pillars of Anglo-American prep, easily imagined in a quad or the clubhouse of a links course. Continuing on the sporty, Britannia trend, Venturini Fendi offered up a luxurious FENDI-branded soccer kit, well timed considering Italy would play their first match of the European Championship a few hours after the show.
Plaids and checks, which featured prominently in the Fall-Winter 2024 collection, were reimagined with lighter colours. Selleria stitching was a motif used to accent the plaids, but also on a leather duster, polos and trousers, each time rendered slightly differently: printed, cut-out, embossed, debossed, and stitched. The effects were varied, on the plaids, when paired with the lighter palette, the result was almost madras-like. On the trousers, it created something akin to a boro treatment, the Japanese art of stitching pieces back together to extend their wearable life. On knit polos, the oversized Selleria gave an impression that was similar, visually, to seersucker.
Amongst it all, asymmetrical knits and shirting stood out, baring a shoulder or a sliver of chest at times. The footwear, too, was notable, there were loafers that were also part driving shoe, with an exaggerated outsole that, when put together, came to resemble a boat shoe; and the aforementioned sleek, rounded crushback leather slippers, which sat on a sizeable sole.
If the collection was full of nods to the first hundred years of FENDI’s history, the clothes appear to the product of Venturini Fendi looking to the next hundred years and wanting to create something timeless–rooted in the traditions of the past, with a foot in today’s world and an eye on tomorrow.
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