Fendi Men’s Creative Director Siliva Venturini Fendi shared that the idea for the Spring/Summer 2023 collection is to explore alternative possibilities for menswear and find a balance in style. She said, “It’s a balance between elaborate decoration and simple restraint, a rediscovery of the value of free time while embodying a spirit of carefree playfulness without age limits.” Or, more directly, it is Silvia Venturini Fendi’s ongoing process of shaping the current FENDI menswear DNA that has never stopped or wavered.
From a macro perspective, the aesthetic vision of men’s clothing today is no longer just strong and tough, but more like a blend of the elegance and softness found in women’s clothing, creating styles that can cater to a wider range of body types. In the pursuit of this breakthrough, Silvia Venturini Fendi can be considered a pioneer – not simply combining men’s and women’s fashion shows, or directly incorporating women’s clothing into men’s collections – but after several seasons of exploration and experimentation, it seems that FENDI men’s clothing has begun to establish its own unique design formula, allowing Silvia to freely navigate within that dimension.
Inverted, inside out, just like FENDI. Silvia peeked into the “ordinary” opposition, using creativity and craftsmanship to analyze and deconstruct familiar silhouettes and materials, drawing inspiration for this season’s FENDI menswear. In terms of color, the collection features colors from land, sea, and air, ranging from cantaloupe, indigo, ocher yellow to mud gray, cornflower blue, and silver gray, injecting Bohemian wandering spirit with FENDI-style decorative details and craftsmanship such as fringes, tassels, looped fabrics, and beaded chains, echoing a relaxed summer vibe. Moreover, the collection uses enlarged and reduced earth meteorological maps to create heat-like patterns on jacquard coats, psychedelic colors on FENDI tie-dyed linen, and fragments on cotton knit sweaters, metaphorizing a spirit of carefree play.
To highlight the presence of spring and summer, Silvia deliberately enhanced the series with a light and ethereal vibe, using extremely lightweight wool wide-leg pants, patchwork denim pants, or calf leather shorts that exude a relaxed summer atmosphere as the blueprint, further conveyed through details such as FENDI O’Lock zippers, open shoulders, and unconventional suit side slits. Shirts, windbreakers, and raincoats are also crafted in crisp poplin, technical cotton, and square-cut pointed collars made of tear-resistant nylon, along with shorts adorned with ultrasonic Selleria bonded leather stitching or leather patch “shadows” for a lightweight and distinctly layered look.
It is interesting that denim, which has always given people a sense of heaviness, has also become the main focus of the FENDI Spring/Summer 2023 collection: it is transformed into vintage optical illusion prints on rich hooded robes and herringbone cotton shirt jackets, or made into five-pocket jeans, lightweight student fabric shorts with feather trim, and even outlines for faded FENDI Baguette handbags and shopping bags. If you look closely, Silvia deliberately retains three variations in the production of denim, from denim that is closer to the original color, to lightly washed effects, to heavily distressed effects like look 34, making this season’s FENDI menswear collection more complete.
In addition to the style obsession, the styling also reflects Silvia’s attention to detail. Among the 53 styles in the entire collection, the vast majority are based on mid-90s California workwear and skateboard culture. At a glance, only 2 styles do not have complementary accessories; in addition to continuing to have Silvia’s daughter Delfina Delettrez Fendi design jewelry, the accessory collection emphasizes the texture of materials, such as woven rope bracelets, embroidered leather sneakers with looped fabric shoelaces, textured sneakers with oversized O’Lock buckles, and metal accessories engraved with letter logos.
It is also worth mentioning a series of bag designs, such as the FENDI Roma bucket bag and cylindrical bag made of canvas and leather, the oversized “laundry bag” shaped hollow double-handle bag, the unwashed “denim” Peekaboo with a water bottle holder, and the summer Peekaboo ISeeU Forty8 made of recycled plastic. Regarding this sustainable design, FENDI also presents the first Peekaboo ISeeU Petit men’s bag in the same design, made of strong textured leather, with a style equipped with a beaded chain shoulder strap.
Ideas, information, details, etc., are still rich in this season’s FENDI menswear collection, and they need time to digest. But if you really want to understand how the aesthetics of men’s clothing have changed in contemporary fashion, this season’s interpretation by Silvia is indeed a reference worth considering, just as he mentioned in the interview after the show: “I want a kind of pressure. This pressure will in turn create a kind of fun.” This inexplicable sense of unease perfectly reflects the evolution of menswear in recent years.
資料及圖片來源：Courtesy of FENDI
