Once upon a time a fashion brand would compete with another to win the money (and loyalty) of consumers. Then came collaborations and things changed with limited edition products and collections to whet the appetite of fashion fans.
Coronavirus changed quite a few things in fashion, though: with lockdown fashion ceased to be a necessity and consumers started redirecting their money towards other goods that went from electronics to videogames. When lockdown ended, the priority seemed to go out and see the world once again, so travelling and holidays were high on the agenda for many of us.
Many fashion houses therefore started looking for innovative and fun ideas to rechannel the attention and money of consumers towards clothes and accessories. For some, collaborations were the answer, after all there's safety in numbers, and so came the unlikely duet between Balenciaga and Gucci, a collection showcased a few months ago in which two different houses belonging to the same fashion group tried to have fun at hacking each other.
Yesterday evening, during Milan Fashion Week, Fendi and Versace pushed things further with a friendly fashion battle. Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi of Fendi and Donatella Versace of Versace swapped indeed houses.
The project was sparked by a dinner at Versace's family house, continued with a trip to the Novara-based Versace archives for Jones and the Rome-based Fendi archive for Donatella Versace and resulted in a collection showcased in the courtyard of the Versace family palazzo in Via Gesù.
Presented under the rather cringing Fendace moniker (that evokes the slogans you may see printed on bootleg shirts that make fun of fashion brands), the collection was unveiled with a grand runway that featured all the most famous models and supermodels you may expect to see at a glamorous fashion show, from Kate Moss and her daughter Lila Moss Hack to Amber Valletta, Shalom Harlow, Kristen McMenamy, Mariacarla Boscono, Gigi Hadid, Adut Akech and Naomi Campbell.
House tropes were swapped and promptly integrated in each other's collection: safety pins and Baroque prints made their debut on the Fendi section of the runway that also included elegant lace gowns in black or pale pink and sporty oversized shirts and shorts for men; Donatella added bright and bold colours in the logo suit, jumpers and denim pantsuit with bell bottoms, incorporating the Medusa logo on Fendi's totes (while Jones added safety pins on Peekabo and Baguette bags), emblazoning Gianni Versace's trademark oroton gowns with Fendi's double-F logo.
The runway was divided in two sections that featured 25 designs each, but the results weren't always so distinguishable, and at times they looked rather predictable, nothing was indeed too unexpected or extremely innovative.
The collection allowed Silvia Venturini Fendi and Donatella Versace to explore other houses from the inside (they never designed for other brands). Besides, "Fendace" proved that two rival houses - or in this case fashion dynasties - that are not part of the same fashion conglomerate can actually work together (allegedly for fun reasons and definitely not for money...). Another interesting point about this collection was the fact that the swap regards also the manufacturing aspect - Fendi will indeed produce the Versace collection and vice versa.
That said, "Fendace" is one of those commercial ventures aimed at generating immediate media revenue upon its launch and possibly reasonable sales upon its release. It can be considered as a way to celebrate the return of fashion in a grand kitsch style after a global pandemic but maybe, if there hadn't been a global pandemic, the two brands would have never worked together.
It is indeed undeniable that Covid-19 brought brands together and that partnerships and collaborations are now the rule, as they represent a way to go through difficult times. As you may remember from a previous post, a few months ago Ermenegildo Zegna and Prada bought a majority stake in Italian cashmere company Filati Biagioli Modesto SpA together; in April 2021, after a fire burnt down a Valentino manufacturing plant in Tuscany, Prada's CEO Patrizio Bertelli made one of the fashion house's factories available to Valentino's employees to make sure they could keep on working.
Will Fendace become a tradition for the two houses? It obviously depends from the sales (the collection will be available from Fendi and Versace boutiques exclusively from next May), but deep down you wish there would be healthier types of collaborations between brands. It doesn't indeed take a genius to mix the main logos, tropes and codes of two fashion houses and create a remixed language that some consumers may find interesting (and that will be easily copied by many fake fashion manufacturers out there - you can bet that in a week's time Fendace will be all over Aliexpress...). In this case the two houses may have worked only with leftover materials from each other's stocks to give the collection a sustainable twist.
It would also be more intriguing if two houses could develop together something more durable, from a new textile to a processing plant where materials could be recycled. Yes, we do need collaborations, partnerships and clever exchanges, but they need to bring something genuinely new and innovative to the table to be truly ground-breaking, rather than just the umpteenth branded accessory that nobody really needs.
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