Through The Looking Glass

What is a Fendi-ness, you ask? To Fendi's menswear and accessories creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi, it is something that courses in her veins, fuelling her radical approaches to menswear.

- Vanessa Grace Ng

After the Fendi Spring Summer 2025 show, Men's Folio catches up with the head of design to hear more about her direction for the house at its centenary.

In the hectic aftermath of the Fendi Spring/Summer '25 show, Silvia Venturini Fendi the mastermind behind it all stood backstage, attending to questions about her latest collection for the house. Even in her petite frame, the Fendi creative director of accessories, menswear and children whose veins flow with the Fendi DNA through and through - stood taller than any other creative, public relations professional or eager-eyed journalist looking for a savvy soundbite. She had just presented one of the most important collections for the house - its centennial one - to much fanfare from her audience after all.

Creating something new is already a challenge when there is a century's worth of newness to live up to; a bigger challenge arises when one has to capitalise on that newness, maintain a reverence for a hundred years of history, and then make it grandly impactful.

But to Venturini Fendi - a veteran in the design community - grand impacts are a mere afterthought. Her priority lies in her defiance of convention instead.

It matters not if these conventions were the same ones that built her family's fashion empire to where it is today - the designer toes the line of legacy with a brazenness that comes with the wisdom of experience. In an exclusive interview with Men's Folio, the creative director reflects on what has been before and what is to come, a hundred years into the inception of Fendi.

LET’S START BY ADDRESSING THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: FENDI IS TURNING 100!

I think the future often has a strong link with the past. So, with its 100 years of history behind it, Fendi is a perfect brand that looks at its past to write the future.