Kim Jones’ first Fendi tour was highly anticipated today. Three years into his menswear tenure at Dior, the designer who once collaborated on Supreme for Louis Vuitton and worked for years for Umbro, has certainly become more couture than streetwear. The literary and artistic sources that shaped his Fendi collection could not be further from the street, although Virginia Woolf was always trying to get back to the city. Set in the spirit of Charleston Farmhouse, the 16th-century Sussex sanctuary is set in a Bloomsbury set located near the small town of Rodmell where Jones, now 41, was partially built and has a house. “It’s very personal to me,” he said on a video call from Paris.
Young Jones would spend school trips inspecting the house and learning about the bohemian limbs at Bloomsbury. If they had survived today, you can imagine it would have been listed for one of the menswear collaborations that includes the use of Dior and, previously, Louis Vuitton. His Fendi collection showed a more one-handed show on how Jones excels in form and decoration. “I was very excited about the movement and freedom of things,” he said. While Jones has dabbled in women’s clothing in past endeavors, he also revealed the first real idea of what his vision for women’s clothing looks like.
Discovering that silhouette, Jones said he saw “the reality of what women around me are wearing. I have friends who just buy couture clothes, and they don’t buy a big ball gown. They buy real clothes; things that are appropriate for their bodies. “Above all, it wants to create work that ‘responds to the time in which we live.’ Orlando, Woolf ‘s travel story about androgyny and fashion’ s favorite dictionary for exploring sexism. He used his first building to present his Grand Tour from Rodmell, England, to Rome. “Orlando was published in 1928 and Fendi was founded in 1925, ”he said. The “journey from Bloomsbury to Borghese” featured Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant frescoes in Charleston, England, in hand-beaded prints, and Galleria Borghese marbles in painted tailoring. Dresses opposed the wet clothes of the Bernini statues.
In the pre-recorded show, Jones echoed OrlandoTopics co-ed with many of his high profile friends: Demi Moore, Kate and Lila Moss, Christy and James Turlington, Adwoa and Kesewa Aboah. The family constellations celebrated Fendi’s values as the offspring of matriarchal fashion, whose working-class keeper Silvia Venturini Fendi still serves as the artistic director of women’s accessories and clothing. Accompanying the team were her daughters, Leonetta Fendi and jewelery designer Delfina Delettrez, who Jones has now named as the creative director of jewelery at the LVMH-owned brand. Delettrez’s oversized canal rings paired evening gowns with a 1930s Vionnet silhouette, a distinctive slinkiness that rose in Moore’s slithery silk suit, which was dying to change into a dress.