Silvia Venturini Fendi

Silvia Venturini Fendi is an Italian designer and third-generation member of the Fendi family. After working on the younger Fendissime line, she joined the main house studio in 1992 and was appointed artistic director of accessories and menswear in 1994. She worked alongside Karl Lagerfeld until his death in 2019, then twice assumed responsibility for womenswear during periods of succession. In October 2025 she became Honorary President of Fendi.

Her accessory designs changed the commercial and cultural scale of the house. The Baguette, introduced in 1997, treated a small shoulder bag as a surface for serial reinvention; the Spy translated concealment and soft volume into a mid-2000s object; the Peekaboo used a restrained frame and exposed interior to propose a more private form of luxury. Across menswear, she developed a parallel vocabulary of relaxed tailoring, utility and Roman material wit.

Silvia Venturini Fendi designs through function, construction and controlled surprise. Bags open, sag, conceal and reveal; hardware becomes architecture; leather is softened until it behaves like fabric. Ornament is rarely separated from use, and the most recognisable objects are built around a physical gesture: carrying the Baguette under the arm, opening the Peekaboo, searching the Spy’s hidden spaces.

Her clothing follows the same logic. Menswear combines tailoring with workwear, trompe l’oeil and tactile surfaces, while her interim womenswear collections used family memory and atelier knowledge without turning the archive into costume. The continuity in her work comes from an intimate understanding of how Fendi objects are made and handled, not from repeating a fixed look.