Fur and Fendi: this is the story of the Fendi sisters. From the very beginning, they approached fur in an incongruous way; by bringing the formality down a notch, the girls also made it a bit less dramatic. When they called out to the young Karl Lagerfeld in 1965, it was to give the label an incomparable style. One year later, he had the idea for the double F, the logo for Fendi Fur. Lagerfeld made fur into an art. Through him, the Fendi woman became modern and sharpened. For his 2013-2014 collection, he imagined fur through the lens of a pop art color palette that used color as a trompe-l’oeil. Stuck on a pair of tickly little boots, the fur was dyed bright orange, pink, and cobalt blue.
Seeming to put Fendi beyond haute couture, a field dedicated to experimentation, the Kaiser dubbed his first line “Icons Unchained”. For the woman-fawn à la Grace Jones, independent, with a sturdy character, he thought up a pair of shoes that, with its exterior that was just as geometric as approximative, would go on to explode into the mainstream. His round lines gave momentum to this shoe that seemed to be composed in three dimensions. Here, a mix of elegant materials combine for a powerful evocation that gave a little twist to the simple denomination of “accessory”. A game of cuts and the little “spoiler” were meant to highlight the curves of this divine feminine extremity. Then, on the reverse side, a bristly punk motif, like a scarlet crest, close to the Iroquois one, perfects, by breaking it up, all the sophistication of low boot design. As if sculpted, it’s in printed ponyhair zebra that this shoe, garnished with fur and set on a heel, gives a new meaning to Made in Italy luxury.
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