At Fendi haute couture Kim Jones’s opening look was as spare and minimal as could be: a black, strapless calf-length column he called “a box-dress.” He bookended the show with the same geometric shape, except it was smothered in silver bugle beads.
“I wanted the collection to feel quite graphic rather than romantic because I was thinking about Fendi and how, under Karl, there was always an element of ‘futurism,’” he said in a preview. “I didn’t go back to look at what Karl did, but I like to take the essence of it.”
Framing the language and materials of the house of Fendi—its rootedness in fur, fine leather, and bags—is part of Jones’s mission here. Against the simple elegance he’s carving out for clients, Fendi couture “bags and baguettes” play a jewel-like role. The most stunning examples were also the tiniest—miniscule bags on chains, dangling fringes, which were color-matched to a series of chiffon full-length “flag dresses” in pale pink, pale gray, or white.
Jones had also developed trompe l’oeil decorativeness of an unexpected kind. “We wanted to do fur, but without using fur or fake fur,” he said. “So we’ve done it with embroidery instead.” Embroidered with miniscule filaments, and sewn in densely overlapping rippling formations, the results are feather-like and feather-light to wear, be it as a coat, dress, or pencil-skirt.
With awards season imminent, Jones has been putting into practice what he knows from friends, actors, and clientele. “I’ve been thinking about how terrifying it is when you go onto the red carpet,” he said. A solution is what he described as the “shapes on shapes dress”—slim neutral-colored looks with narrower abstracted bugle-beaded silhouettes superimposed on them. Watch for the ones who’ll be trying out the illusion on the awards scene sometime soon.
