Maria Grazia Chiuri’s New Chapter at Italian Luxury Brand Fendi

ROME — Maria Grazia Chiuri has returned home in more ways than one.

After 10 years, she is back in her beloved hometown, the Italian capital, to lead Fendi, which she first joined in 1989 at age 24, helping to boost the brand’s accessories offer for 10 years before moving on to Valentino in 1999. After a stellar career at that brand and at Dior, she brings to Fendi a multilayered experience and a good dose of contagious energy and enthusiasm. 

“New beginnings are always exciting and challenging yourself is stimulating for a creative person,” Chiuri said ahead of her debut collection for Fendi in Milan on Wednesday as chief creative officer.

Speaking at the newly restored Teatro della Cometa in Rome, her personal project unveiled in May, she appeared calm and collected, with clear objectives in mind for Fendi, and unfazed by the white noise and expectations surrounding her return to the brand.

After all, Chiuri is known for being a driven, focused hard worker, with a practical approach to design, interested in all the multiple dimensions that make up a brand, and deeply passionate about fashion — and accessories in particular, she admitted. “I remember when I would make bags out of scraps of fabric when I was a child,” she reminisced with a chuckle. “I can’t help it, I just love bags and shoes.”

That love has served her well, as she built the early phases of her career on accessories, contributing to the success of the Baguette bag at Fendi and moving on to Valentino in 1999, hand-picked by the late couturier, first as accessories designer with Pierpaolo Piccioli, delivering the hit Rockstud line, and then sharing the co-creative designer role with him.

Then and Now

She conceded that “knowing the history of Fendi helps,” but she also said that it was impossible to compare her first experience at the brand with today’s new phase. “Things have changed so much in the industry and in the company. I was very young and it was a formative period for me. At the time, I did not have a comprehensive vision and over the years I have accumulated so many different experiences that I see things from a different point of view.”

Asked what led her to accept the offer extended by Fendi’s parent LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton after exiting Dior as artistic director of women’s collections last May, she said “it was interesting for me to conceive a project and see if it can be carried forward. Fashion is connected to desire, joy and lightheartedness and given it’s not such a joyful moment, it’s challenging for the industry. But it’s important to have an optimistic vision of the future, to know how to create a conversation and to understand how fashion is considered today by a world that is constantly evolving and that we don’t know how it will be tomorrow.”

She gave a shout-out to the people involved in such a project, from the owner to the team, who are as key as the creative director in sharing a common goal.

Given the increasingly global customer, she pondered over Fendi’s references, asking herself “how to shine a light on the brand’s values, on craftsmanship and how to transfer them onto the products. Communication is much more extensive and information is much more pervasive and widespread, which leads us to consider how we speak [to people], what kind of communication and imagery we use, how to reactivate a series of elements so that the public will perceive this great tradition,” said Chiuri, who admitted it was her “obsession” to defuse the attack on fashion.

“It’s difficult to deliver the concept that fashion is connected to culture, to artisanal craftsmanship, to skilled know-how; it’s a much more complex system that is very often simplified,” she said, referring to both the headline-grabbing news about issues throughout Italy’s supply chain, “with so much information that is not correct,” and to the “The Devil Wears Prada” and its sequel.

“I am a bit worried because it’s a film that influences the imagery of fashion, but it’s fictional, not very realistic, and fashion is much more complex, with so many people working in the industry. And this reality, all that is behind it, behind even the smallest object, an embroidery, that complexity is not perceived at large,” she lamented.

Returning to Fendi, her starting point was to review “with fresh eyes but also through my recollections,”  the essential elements of the brand. This led to revisiting the original Fendi logo with Italian graphic designer Leonardo Sonnoli, “with its very geometric and original proportions.”

“I will never forget the internal book of guidelines Carla Fendi wrote and how the logo should follow certain rules. She was very attentive to how it was used for labels, packaging and so on. It may not seem relevant, but it’s actually part of the visual identity that is essential for the brand and all the company’s departments that work in alignment. It’s the brand’s signature,” she asserted.

Throughout the interview, Chiuri’s admiration for founder Adele Fendi, and her daughters Carla, Anna, Paola, Franca, and Alda Fendi, was reiterated — clearly mentors for the young Chiuri in her early days at the company.

“They exemplified working as a team, they were great at collaborating together in a constant dialogue, but at the same time they each had individual responsibilities. Their way of working was a reference point for me to look at the company again today,” said Chiuri, adding that she admired their diligence and rigor. “It’s not by chance that so many designers developed their careers at Fendi and rose to become creative directors in fashion. It was a formative experience for so many of us. It was a factory where creativity was at the center,” she remarked, no doubt thinking of the likes of Piccioli, Alessandro Michele and Frida Giannini, who all worked at Fendi in their early careers.

She marveled at how the five sisters in 1965 called on Karl Lagerfeld, who was not the globally renowned designer he became in time, to design the brand. “Hats off to these incredible women, who were far-sighted and capable, as was the next generation,” said Chiuri, also praising Silvia Venturini Fendi, Anna’s daughter, now honorary president, and her daughter Delfina, in charge of the brand’s jewelry category.

“I feel the responsibility to do a good job here so that [all the Fendis] can recognize themselves in the brand today. I want to pay tribute to them and for me this is an honor, and it has a sentimental value.”

The Fendis, what “they did in complex times with strength and determination and without giving up on a personal life and children,” are aligned with the designer’s celebration of women throughout her career.

Her First Collection

In terms of the first collection for the brand, Chiuri said she was focused on “giving Fendi a clear silhouette,” starting from the jacket and pants. As both divisions now fall under her purview, she has been simultaneously developing the men’s and women’s looks across categories.

“I think this is the most contemporary and efficient way to work today. My approach is to work on a single object and not in relation to who will wear it. A jacket is a jacket,” she said, shrugging and smiling, adding that she often shares coats with her husband.

Chiuri asked herself who was the Fendi customer and the response was quite diversified, as she believed the focus in the past was “more on craft and less on a silhouette. In my other experiences, the silhouette was very important,” she said — cue the Bar jacket at Dior, for example.

Thinking of the Fendi sisters and their husbands, she believes the Fendi customer is “one that works, extremely attracted by creativity but also very pragmatic. They are active people, leading a real life, not out of context.”

She said she wanted “to be very clear about Fendi’s DNA, which is in accessories and fur,” expanded later into apparel and other categories. Chiuri touted the company’s specific expertise, and said that part of the remit she has given herself is “to review the fur category in today’s perspective.” 

She recalled how fur was not really controversial when she first worked at Fendi. “It’s very important to know how to transition toward awareness while protecting our know-how.” Emphasizing the longevity of furs and their sustainability, she said that Fendi’s expertise will allow any model to be restored, even those made by other houses, transforming this into a couture initiative. Like jewelry, furs are often passed down through generations and may have a strong sentimental value, she said, exemplified by her mother-in-law’s Swakara fur coat the designer wore for years.

As for accessories, she enthused about the “incredible quality” of the hides, Fendi’s “great history” in the category and said that she “had fun” with her team working on recovering some of the brand’s designs that she believed had not been highlighted enough over the years.

“This is a fantastic company with an admirable history, regardless of my arrival, and it has so many strengths — the Selleria, the embroidered Baguettes, the Peekaboos, the Pergamena [the processed leather in yellow that became the color of the house] and part of my job was to tidy up the range. I had fun going back to the archive, seeing these models and remembering them. But it’s not so simple, you can’t just show how much there is in the history of a brand, there has to be an evolution.”  

Launching a new accessories campaign, or “visual manifesto,” Chiuri collaborated with Jo Ann Callis — the Los Angeles-based artist’s first project in fashion — which reinforces the house’s dedication to artistic exchange.

Chiuri has been building her own team, with some designers hailing from Dior, but she described it as a heterogeneous group. “What is fundamental is to work with people who are skilled, sure, but also share similar views and have the same end goal and belief in the project.”

Asked what she believes she brings to Fendi, she pensively responded: “My experience working for different brands and their owners, executives, and marketing teams, which allows me to see things from different points of view. At Valentino [where she worked for 17 years] we went from HdP to Marzotto to Permira and Mayhoola, from families to funds. Each owner views the company in different ways, so you must be flexible. At Dior, it was a totally different dimension, different language and culture, different creative directors after the founder; all these different experiences enriched me and helped me learn to tackle things with elasticity.”

Chiuri will also train her vision on the stores, but that project will be approached based on the product. “One has to think in terms of the space in the stores. When you develop a category, there must be the right space to display it. For example, the Selleria range [of accessories] is very important; I really believe in it very much but it can only be available in some stores because it’s higher end, so you have to create the right space to represent it. Menswear must have its own space, and include a more formal offer, and maybe not in all the stores. For furs, we must organize the process.”

All in due time. As she takes in being back in fashion, and in Rome, it’s a city, she concluded, that “gives you a feeling of great possibilities, where anything seems possible, there is always something new to learn, discover, study and every day is the first day. And for someone like me who loves the history of art, it’s boundless.”