There is sometimes a sense with Fendi s spring collections that the house is treading water before Karl Lagerfeld s exuberant imagination truly lets rip for its highly furred, inventive fall shows. This fresh collection, however, seemed to signal a new creative energy for the season.
The overscale lace patterns that filtered the backdrop s glowing pink light and shadowed the length of the runway, together with the influence of Lagerfeld muse Amanda Harlech, who was dressed backstage in a turn-of-the-century Irish lace bolero (which the designer found in a vintage store in Biarritz), pointed to a new light touch. Blooming tulip and poodle skirts, and blouses with built-in fichu capes, were made in crisp white piqué, eyelet, lace, and dotted Swiss cotton and given a pastry chef s flourish of spiraling ruffles or lettuce-edged flounces. Less-conventional treatments included laser-cut doily decoration on gleaming white patent, three-dimensional honeycomb appliqués, tremblant embroideries like clusters of wisteria blooms, and, this being Fendi, after all, dresses with their hems cuffed in pastel-colored fox, worked to seem as light as powder puffs.
And there was a reason for those gigantically buckled belts that cinched dresses high under the bust or skirts low on the hip; they mirrored the buckles on the new B. Fendi bag. Whence the name? "B for buckle, b for belt, b for bag—B. Fendi!" laughed Harlech backstage.
