Fendi History

Fendi may have jump-started the past decade’s It bag phenomenon with the must-have Baguette, but the brand’s luxury roots run deeper than any single trendy design. Started as a fur and leather specialty shop in Rome in 1918 by Adele Casagrande, the business underwent a name change in 1925 when Casagrande married Edoardo Fendi. The couwholesale louis vuitton
ple’s five daughters eventually entered the family business, and in 1965, the Fendis hired emerging talent Karl Lagerfeld, then a stylist who had trained under Pierre Balmain and Jean Patou. Shortly thereafter, Lagerfeld designed the famous double-”F” logo which to this day remains an iconic status symbol. (Kanye West once shaved the interlocking letters into his head to attend a Fendi party.)
In 1969, Lagerfeld launched the house’s first ready-to-wear fur collection, putting it at the forefront of fur innovation. Treating the material more like a fabric, he reshaped the stiff and heavy traditional coats into lighter, more wearable styles. Fendi’s experimentation with pelts continues today, as the house recently sent furs gilded in 24K gold, a first for the industry, down the runway.
In 1977, Fendi debuted womenswear, also designed by Lagerfeld, and throughout the eighties and nineties diversified, expanding into menswear, denim, fragrances, and gifts.
In 1994, Silvia Venturini Fendi took the creative reins of handbag design, replica louis vuitton
scoring several major successes, including the famed Baguette, in that market. In 1999, LVMH and Prada teamed up to buy a 51 percent stake in the business. By 2007, however, Prada, as well as the Fendi family, led by chairman and third-generation family member Carla Fendi, had sold their shares to LVMH—though both Carla and Silvia Fendi remain involved. After 90 years in business, the house is still, according to Style.com’s Sarah Mower, “the one and only place to turn for the ne plus ultra of what can be done with fur and leather.”
Who says recessions can’t have a silver lining? When the 1929 stock market crash ran Christian Dior’s art gallery out of business, the onetime political science student found a new way to earn his bread: selling sketches to Parisian couture houses and doing illustrations for the fashion pages of Le Figaro. Eventually, his talent was recognized by Marcel Boussac, a textile magnate, who financed Dior’s own couture house, buying a mansion on the Avenue Montaigne and helping his protégé set up shop in 1946.
Dior’s first collection, in 1947, was a shot heard round the world—without exaggeration probably the most famous single season in style history. The New Look—which harked back to the excesses of the Belle Époque and brushed away bad memories of wartime fabric rationing with a sweep of crinolines—featured wasp-waisted, full-skirted silhouettes nipped in by boned corsets and fleshed out with hip padding. While a few protesters took offense at Dior’s decadent swaths upon swaths of material, it was an international sensation.
Over the next decade, Dior remained an oracle on the Right Bank, dictating nouvelle directions that trickled down to the masses, inking forward-thinking licensing deals, and appearing on the cover of Time magazine. In 1957, however, the world was shocked when he suddenly died. Proving to be as headline-making in death as in life, he had suffered a heart attack at an Italian spa at the age of 52.
Dior’s 21-year-old assistant was left to “save fashion,” as the newspapers shrieked. The understudy’s name? Yves Saint Laurent, perhaps the only man of his day brilliant enough to fill such impressive chaussures. Saint Laurent’s own first collection, the controversial Trapeze show, made waves almost as stormy as those of the New Look, but he pushed the envelope a little too far with his Beatnik collection a few years later, after which Saint Laurent left the house amid another firestorm of controversy.
Since then, a parade of boldfaced names (Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, and, most memorably, John Galliano, the house’s current designer) has kept the flame burning—and the registers ringing with sales of It accessories. Bernard Arnault, who acquired Dior in 1985, brought the fabled house under the sheltering wing of LVMH, ensuring the lights will continue to burn brightly at 30 Avenue Montaigne.