Is it possible to win New York Fashion Week on the very first day? Well, last night, Kim Jones and his team over at Fendi did a damn good job of trying to, enlisting a line-up of the city’s most notable names – Marc Jacobs, Tiffany & Co., Carrie Bradshaw – for a grand-scale, capital-s show at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Attended by everyone from Jocelyn Wildenstein and Kim Kardashian to a roll-call of mononymous nineties supers, it was the sort of spectacle that the city’s schedule hasn’t seen in some time. And to top it all off? Linda Evangelista, who’s absent from the runway for 15 years, closed. Granted, this starry spectacle wasn’t staged for the fun of it. Rather, it was a worthy celebration of a monumental anniversary for the Roman house — the 25th birthday of the Baguette.
Indeed, being a pop-cultural artefact in its own right, the idea, Kim explained, was to pay the bag its birthday dues. “It’s not a bag – it’s a baguette,” Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw famously said in the show which helped cement the accessory as one of fashion’s most enduring icons. Two decades on, Carrie even made her mark on the Baguettes that filed down the runway last night, with SJP working on four gradiated variants of the bag that appeared in the collection; she spent plenty of time showing hers off to Kim Kardashian in the front row.
“It has a very strong identity,” reflected Silvia Venturini Fendi of the piece that she first conceived 25 years ago. “To me, it’s always represented a sort of manifesto,” one which, when it was first designed, was in direct opposition to the uniform of the time: the monochromatic minimalism of the late 90s, characterised most visibly in the accessories domain by Prada’s black nylon backpack. What it represented to her – and, it appears, to women the world over, was a kind of liberation; a shift from low-key refinement into the expressive fun and glamour and eclecticism that aesthetically characterised the turn of the millennium.
It was the energy of that time which Kim Jones drew on for his collection: yes, there were Baguettes in abundance, affixed to gloves and gaiters and beanies; inbuilt as pockets into tops and cargo skirts; suspended as earrings or dangling as charms (“We’re probably the world record holders now for number of bags in a show,” Kim grinned.) – after all, Fendi has long played in the domain of irreverent takes on utilitarianism, and that sentiment was writ large in Baguette font across the collection. But, beyond the literal, there was a clear homage to the era within which the bag was conceived. “I was thinking about all those different girls running around New York at that time, being busy and loving fashion,” he explained. “It’s that mix and match thing: putting fabrics together than you wouldn’t normally. It’s a bit off-piste for us but it feels exciting.”
So there was a Carrie Bradshaw-spirited eccentricity to the collection: sequins sandwiched between chiffons and knits; sportswear and parkas layered with glossy, beaded glamour and grounded with tufted Fendi clogs. There wasn’t a hint of nostalgia, but rather the translation of a feeling: a love for the New York that Kim would save up to visit in the nineties, taking cheap flights and staying in youth hostels to go clubbing in the city. “I was obsessed with it here,” he recalled. “I just loved the idea of everything just being mixed together.”
He was fascinated by the Warholian blend of uptown and downtown, he said, so he invited two of his friends to channel that energy: Marc Jacobs, “the king of downtown”, who designed a collection that united his vision for dramatically elegant plays on proportion with Fendi logomania, and uptown icons Tiffany & Co., who were responsible for (baguette) diamond-encrusted white gold buckles on a Tiffany blue crocodile bag; an astonishing sterling silver iteration cradled by Linda Evangelista; and a wealth of miniature forms.
“It all seemed like it made sense: Tiffany makes you think of Capote, Hepburn. It’s a traditional American luxury house,” Kim smiled. “And Marc – well Marc is someone who I admire and love, and someone who holds such an importance for so many designers. There’s a school of Marc Jacobs, which I am a part of. I love what he stands for, I love what he’s doing, and I wanted to give credit where credit’s due.”
Marc’s take on Fendi – expressed through couture dimensions realised in contemporary fabrications and a palette of workman-neon blended with glittering grandeur – refracted a frankly fabulous vision of his city through the wit characteristic of the Italian house (who doesn’t crave a Baguette stamped with “The Baguette” in Marc’s typeface?). His ten looks were created and fitted in Rome alongside – but separate from – Kim. “It was amazing to see how he worked,” Kim said. “I didn’t come up working ‘for’ anyone and you never get to see that side of things with other designers. Maybe a little bit in a documentary. But it was so interesting to watch, and to see him interpret what we’re doing.”
It seamlessly meshed with the family spirit so innate to Fendi – especially when the two designers walked out together after the show alongside Silvia and Delfina Delettrez Fendi (who is responsible for the jewellery), before being joined by Linda. “In the 90s, Linda was the leader of the pack,” Kim said. “And when I read about the pain she’d been in, I wrote her a letter because I don’t believe that people are disposable. In the end, I got the magical moment of seeing her being shot by Steven Meisel for the campaign. It was like a childhood dream come true.”
If the Baguette was first conceived as a canvas for expression, here both Kim and Fendi expressed themselves at their best: cool, irreverent luxury elegantly underscored by familial warmth. And New York? Well, here it was at its most fabulous. An entirely excellent start to the month ahead.
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Images via Spotlight