When asked why he became a fashion designer, Kim Jones recently said it was because he “wanted to do something that created a world.” At Fendi, where Jones has been creative director of women’s ready-to-wear and couture since 2020, he has nimbly built upon the legacy established by his legendary predecessor Karl Lagerfeld. For the label’s resort 2023 collection, Jones brought the brand to New York and held an extravagant show in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Fendi baguette that included collaborations with Marc Jacobs and Tiffany & Co.

Founded in Rome in 1925 as a fur and leather shop in Rome, Fendi is one of the most storied luxury houses in the world, and one of the few that still remain a family business. Founded by Adele Casagrande and Edoardo Fendi as a leather and fur workshop in the Italian capital; the label then went to Adele’s five daughters: Paola, Franca, Alda, Anna, and Carla; who would go on to transform the business by hiring Lagerfeld as creative director in 1965. Soon thereafter the iconic double F logo, which stands for “Fun Fur,” debuted. In 1992, Silvia Venturini Fendi, Anna’s daughter, was named artistic director of accessories and menswear, and in 1997 she cemented her place in the fashion pantheon when she introduced the Fendi Baguette bag, one of the decade’s It-bags, popularized by Sarah Jessica Parker on Sex and the City. In 2001, LVMH acquired a majority stake in the business, but that was not the end of the family business. In 2020, Jones brought on Delfina Delettrez Fendi, Venturini Fendi’s daughter, as artistic director of jewelry. “Fendi has always been a story of women and a man,” Venturini Fendi once recalled. “It’s beautiful to see that this sort of alchemy is repeating itself today with the arrival of Kim, and also of Delfina.”

At Fendi, Jones is guided by powerful women he admires, like Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, whose work he avidly collects, but also longtime friends like Kate Moss and her daughter Lila Grace, and of course, the Fendi women. “They’re the living history and encyclopedia of the brand,” he’s said. For Fendi’s fall 2023 ready-to-wear collection, the designer cited Delettrez Fendi’s way around her trove of vintage Fendi, and simultaneously paid homage to Lagerfeld with looks that referenced his fall 1996 collection for the house. Jones and Venturini Fendi have their feet grounded in Fendi’s history and their eyes firmly set on the future.

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