Yesterday, in the splendid halls of the Palais Brogniart in Paris, the Fendi Spring/Summer 2022 Haute Couture show took place, the first physical show of Kim Jones’ couture collection.
The artistic director of the maison’s women’s collections wanted to pay homage to Rome, a city with which she has established an intrinsic bond that has been gradually solidified during her work with Fendi that began in September 2020.
The eternal city as inspiration, Jones explored the historical codes of Rome by inserting his presentation in a context that defies time and space, in a game of balances between past and present.
On the sidelines of the show Fendi also presented The Fendi Set: From Bloomsbury to Borghese, a book created by Kim Jones himself enriched by the shots of British-German photographer Nikolai von Bismarck.
Just like the first couture collection created by Jones for Fendi exactly one year ago, this work also tells us the exciting love story between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville West, as well as allowing us to enter the incredible world of the Bloomsbury Group, a group born in 1905 as an informal social gathering of recent graduates of Cambridge University who met in the Bloomsbury district – where Kim Jones spent most of her childhood – in London. The works of its members, including the Scottish painter Duncan Grant, the painter Vanessa Bell and, of course, Virginia Wolf herself, influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism and economics, as well as feminism, pacifism and sexuality.
This book will take us directly to the places that have marked the history of the Bloomsbury Group by dividing the narrative into three different but extremely significant moments: from the English countryside of Kent and Sussex, through Paris, to arrive with the final section, in Rome, where in 1925 Edoardo Fendi founded the eponymous maison and where the members of the Bloomsbury found inspiration in Renaissance masterpieces and handmade ceramics. The book also reveals the magic behind Jones’ entire creative vision and his passion for art that shaped his first Fendi Couture collection.
The relationship between the group and Italy was very strong, many of its members spent a lot of time in our country becoming fascinated in a decisive way by our history and art.
Below you can see the short film that tells about The Fendi Set: From Bloomsbury to Borghese, while to be able to buy the book we will be forced to wait until April, the month in which the release is scheduled.
