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Guests arriving at this Thursday s Fendi menswear show will be among the first to glimpse a new jewel in the Roman heritage house’s portfolio: a freshly-opened, state-of-the-art factory in Bagno a Ripoli, just outside Florence, which cost a reported €50 million and will serve as the show’s backdrop.
Designed by the architectural practice Piuarch, the 14,000-square-metre facility is both technologically progressive and sustainably responsible, as far as corporate certifications are concerned. The facility today received the highest LEED credential available: platinum, which means it hits optimal levels of efficiency across the criteria of carbon, energy, water, waste, transportation, materials, health and indoor environmental quality.
When it is fully staffed, up to 700 artisans (including trainees at Fendi’s in-house school) will work here to craft the Baguettes, the Peekaboos, and the many other varieties of small leather goods that make up Fendi’s best performing category.
“It is a milestone,” says Serge Brunschwig, Fendi’s chairman and CEO. He hastens to add that just as the factory has been built on an existing industrial footprint — that of a historical terracotta furnace — the development of Bagno a Ripoli can be traced directly back to the brand’s origins. Adele and Edoardo Fendi opened their small leather goods shop on Rome’s Via del Plebiscito in 1925. Back then, says Brunschwig, “You would enter the store, and be welcomed. Maybe you would order a bag, and that item would have been crafted there on site. This factory is where that magic of Via del Plebiscito has been transported.”
The difference is that today, 98 years later, Fendi has 276 directly operated physical stores, its own digital retail operation and a web of wholesale partners both real-world and online around the world. What remains the same, says Brunschwig, “is that the know-how is the source of everything. This has then been progressively developed, but the main aspect — the link between the idea and the realisation of the object — is always conserved.”
On Thursday, he hints, the menswear collection designed by Silvia Venturini Fendi, “will not be shown in an empty factory, but a place where things happen”. This will allow Fendi’s artisans to stand centre-stage and communicate their craft directly to the house’s global customer base. Brunschwig predicts that Bagno a Ripoli will allow Fendi to massively expand its prototyping capacity and to self-produce up to 45 per cent of its small leather goods, an increase from its current 10 per cent. He adds that he would never anticipate Fendi producing all of its own leather goods, instead preferring to continue working with the “industrial tissue” of Made In Italy expertise. In September 2022, Fendi acquired a majority stake in knitwear supplier Maglificio Matisse — being among several luxury brands buying up production partners to have better control and access across their supply chains.
“We subcontract with a network of Italian companies. These are often family businesses and it’s important that they continue to develop: this gives us flexibility and access to special expertise.”
Brunschwig is very much a company man: born in Arles, he graduated from École Polytechnique in Paris (the same alma mater as both Bernard and Frédéric Arnault) before joining LVMH in 1995. He held various roles for Louis Vuitton and Sephora in Asia and France, then became chairman and CEO of Céline in 2006. He then became chief operating officer of Dior Couture in 2008; and in 2015, he was appointed chairman and CEO of Dior Homme.
In 2018, Brunschwig says, he heard that Pietro Beccari, then Fendi chairman and CEO (and most recently freshly installed at Louis Vuitton), was heading to Paris to take the same role at Christian Dior. “I really declared my candidacy [at Fendi], that I was absolutely interested. And, I am glad to say this was accepted, and I had the chance to move to Rome and join the family.”
During his near 30-year career in luxury, Brunschwig has developed an acute awareness of what allows heritage companies to survive and thrive — and what relegates them to failure.
“In luxury, I think there are two very important aspects,” he says. “The first is to understand who you are, and who you have always been. So, in the case of Fendi, voila; a master of materials, a family brand, and a Roman brand, which serves exceptional customers both men and women. But then, what is just as important is the capacity to surprise. To be more of the same but never the same. Because the cemeteries are full of brands that did not have that capacity, and are not here any more.”
Brunschwig makes the etymological connection between luxury and luxation: a twist, or dislocation. “That unexpected way of showing things is what luxury is.” He cites the Fendi family’s appointment of Karl Lagerfeld to design its womenswear as a “visionary” moment in the history of the house. “These five Fendi sisters could have continued working as their father did, and maybe they wouldn’t exist any more. But they had the vision and instinct to realise they had to use their amazing savoir faire as a platform from which to innovate. So, they made Karl part of their chosen family.”
Today, Brunschwig works side by side with Silvia Fendi, while his philosophy chimes with that of his ultimate employer. When LVMH, then in partnership with Prada, acquired 51 per cent of the company in 1999, Bernard Arnault said: “We want to keep it a family affair. It is very important that the company is impregnated with the history and spirit of the house.”
Almost a year to the day after Brunschwig was appointed to the leadership role at Fendi, Lagerfeld died. Brunschwig faced a potentially pivotal point of departure — and a moment of deep loss — for the house. He says: “Karl was adopted as a family member. And so his loss was that of a family member. The rest of the family, Silvia, and ourselves, behaved in a very natural way. We worked to best pay homage, and best continue his legacy.”
He adds: “One of the extraordinary aspects of Karl is that he would never glorify the past. He would always speak about the future; next, next, next. So, we had to continue his tradition of looking forward, to do what he would tell everybody: ‘Think about the future, think about tomorrow, create the unexpected, continue to twist things’.” This led in 2020 to the appointment of Kim Jones to continue Lagerfeld’s role in Fendi women’s ready-to-wear, and begin its development in couture. “The next chapter was the adoption of Kim as a son, and so the family tradition continues,” says Brunschwig. He adds that Jones’s decision after arriving to “adopt” Silvia’s daughter, Delfina Delettrez Fendi, as artistic director of jewellery represented: “a super natural and organic transition”.
Although a cast of men has acted as sons, husbands and brothers in the Fendi story, from Adele onwards it has always been a house defined by its family matriarchy. Does this mean its masculine offerings are sometimes overshadowed by the feminine? “We call the Fendi man the ‘liberated man’, who exists alongside the strong woman. And we are extremely happy about the return of masculine elegance in luxury, and I think we are going to see this for sure in the show.” Brunschwig hails Marco de Vincenzo’s refashioning of the Peekaboo as a masculine bag as a particular point of pride. “It is the most amazing, beautiful briefcase. The best on the market.” That bag is being produced, naturally, at Bagno a Ripoli.
Before signing off I take the opportunity to ask this proudly French, LVMH Group stalwart to characterise his first professional experience of working in Italy and alongside Italian teams. Brunschwig replies: “There is an attitude here that nothing is impossible. Brainstorming with the teams is incredible. From the product to the communication team, when we want to do crazy things, like maybe making a show in the factory, it is never impossible. The answer is always ‘let’s go, let’s go!’ And that’s what makes it so exciting to be here.”
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