Fendi accessories and menswear director Silvia Venturini Fendi tells us about fashion, fur and the future

“Women used to wear fur to please their husbands, as a way to show off his wealth, but luckily the ’60s changed all that,” says Silvia Venturini Fendi, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I was raised in a family with women in the majority – even the dog was a girl. Everything was feminine and my grandmother was very open-minded, so she let her daughters take charge once she retired.”

Venturini Fendi now handles accessories and menswear for the renowned Italian fashion house, where Karl Lagerfeld has been head of womenswear since 1965 – when she was just five years old. “I’ve known Karl since I was a kid,” Venturini Fendi says. “I remember him working with my mother and her sisters at the Fendi Fur Atelier, sketching, brainstorming… As a child, I posed for his first fur advertising campaign and that was the starting point of Karl’s longest collaboration with a fashion brand in history.”

Founded in Rome by her grandparents in 1925 as a leather goods and fur workshop, Fendi later passed into the hands of the five daughters, who transformed it into the international luxury label it is today. LVMH bought the brand in 1999 and Venturini Fendi is now the only family member actively involved in running the company. “We have endured because good craftsmanship and experimentation have always been core values for Fendi,” she says. “We have brilliant techniques we implemented decades ago that are still relevant today. I wear a cape from 1978 that could be off the last catwalk.”

It is Lagerfeld, however, who has been credited with changing preconceptions about the old-fashioned nature of fur, by turning a weighty, stiff item of clothing into a wearable modern must-have. “Adele Fendi was a genius,” recalls Lagerfeld of one of the five sisters. “I went to
see them and I proposed a collection called Fun Fur. Slowly, the classic bourgeois fur coat disappeared and then the fur business in Italy accepted that it was possible to do things with fur nobody had done before. It had to be treated like just another material.”

By the ’80s, with fur still central to the Fendi brand, Lagerfeld’s boundary-pushing had gone further still – colour-treated mink coats made to resemble the artwork of Florentine impressionist painters, and silk evening gowns enhanced with a thick fur trim. “Karl rethought Fendi furs,” says Venturini Fendi. “He changed them from a status symbol to a normal garment. He gave an incredible lightness to them.”

Fendi’s revolutionary approach to fur is still going strong, evident in the latest ready-to-wear autumn/winter collection, presented at Milan Fashion Week – a bold, playful, brightly coloured ode to the sumptuous material. In addition to the magnificent coats and jackets, fur is found on bracelets, belts, boots, necklaces, ski wear and sunglasses. Hairstylist Sam McKnight attached dark pink and grey fox fur mohawks to models’ heads, while Venturini Fendi hung perfectly-crafted miniature fur owls off all of her handbags.

One part Sesame Street and two parts style, these tiny avian accessories have taken the fashion world by storm. They adorn the arms of prominent personalities such as Cara Delevigne and Olivia Palermo, and are the subject of their own short film, which can be viewed on the Fendi website. “The charms were designed to give everyone the possibility to live the fur dream, even if they can’t afford a coat,” says Venturini Fendi with a smile.

Despite the offbeat charm of these small accessories, it was the lavish fur coats that really stole the show. They came in a variety of options: camel with multi-coloured stripes, either thick or thin; combinations of black, teal, orange and white; belted and leather-fringed; floor length or waist skimming; and in midnight black or white as snow. “What brings our coats together is the way that they move. When worn, Fendi fur becomes very sensual, like a light garment, and that is close to the symbol of women nowadays,” says Venturini Fendi.

Style bibles around the world have declared over the past year that fur is back in fashion, and Fendi is well placed to profit from this rediscovered appreciation of man’s first cloth. After 90 years in production, Fendi’s techniques in working fur are unparalleled, and the craftsmen and women train for almost 10 years to earn a place in the prestigious atelier outside Rome.

One of the brand’s unique fur-working techniques involves a sophisticated fusion process that adheres molecules of 24K gold to the outer fur, providing protection and adding depth to the overall appearance of the coat. And the inlay technique – the arduous process of assembling and joining specific geometric shapes of shaved fur to create the final coat – is now so intricate that it takes more than 80 hours of hand-stitching to complete one coat.

“Furs are part of our DNA, and the unique craftsmanship is passed on from generation to generation,” says Venturini Fendi. “The time and effort we put into it is correct. Fur is a unique piece of clothing that you buy once and wear forever and ever. It is something that doesn’t get destroyed. Some fur coats in my opinion are like little works of art.”