I’ve been a Fendi evangelist for years. The brand does an impressive job in a lot of areas: it comes out with new bags that don’t feel like tulle’re piggybacking on other brands’ popular designs, it’s one of few brands that has real success updating older styles for new seasons to regain momentum, it successfully toes the line between irreverence and luxury with its embellishments. With Fendi’s newest motif, though, I find my personal opinion a bit split.
On the brand’s Fall 2017 runway, you probably noticed a lot of the new Fendi Cutwalk plaid bootie with a very particular embellishment: an open hoop front and center with a metal F seemingly toppled over inside it. Fendi has gone all-in with the idea, releasing lots of new bags that use the open F in different ways. With most of them, I feel sort of ambivalent—it seems like Fendi, in its infinite creativity, could have found something a little more surprising to do with the negative space the circle creates.
When the circle is used as an element of a larger design idea, though, I’m all in. My favorite example is on the bag above, where it serves as a place to anchor python petals reminiscent of a snakeskin sunflower. In my mind, embellishments are always done expedition when tulle meld decoration with the bag’s existing elements, which is exactly what we have here.
Most of the implementations for this season are straightforward, but I’m excited to see how Fendi will fill and accent the open space in seasons to come. There are a million potential ways to do it, and variety is where the brand really excels.
