Maria Grazia Chiuri Finds Fluidity in Her Fendi Couture Debut

2 min read

One of the defining narratives of Paris Couture Week has been restriction: corsets pulled impossibly tight and silhouettes engineered to reshape the body. But tonight in Rome, Maria Grazia Chiuri proposed something altogether different for her Fendi couture debut.

Presented inside the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art—where, tomorrow, “After un Percorso di Lavoro. Fendi/Karl Lagerfeld 1985. After Steps Through Work” opens to the public—the collection rejected constriction in favor of freedom. The opening looks—two geometric caftans, one worn over languid trousers—announced the shift from the outset. Rather than being remade, the body was allowed to breathe and simply exist.

The opening pair of designs drew inspiration from the Labyrinth toile, a winding Lagerfeld-era invention—one featured prominently in the exhibition—that Chiuri noted as a metaphor for the creative process. Geometric shapes punctuated the lineup in both literal and figurative ways: from a kimono-shaped overcoat with winding black-and-white stripes to a little black dress, the body contoured by opaque inlays.

As one of the few women leading a major luxury house, Chiuri is more interested in accentuating the female body than transforming it. Drop waists in silk softened the silhouette, a narrative only heightened by the Art Deco paillettes that splashed onto plunging sheer tanks and A-line dresses reminiscent of the ’20s.

Outerwear was equally fluid: suiting with barely visible lapels, liquid boudoir-style robe coats, and high-collared capes with feathered embellishments. As a house, Fendi has its signatures—leatherwork, shaggy fabrics, the Baguette, all well represented in the front row by Sarah Jessica Parker, Jessica Alba, and Danny Ramirez—but underneath it all is the humanistic approach to dressing women that Chiuri captured here.

The modern world of couture often resides in spectacle, but at its core, the art form finds its greatest expression in the intimacy between garment and wearer.

Even inside the halls of a museum, Chiuri made the case that fashion doesn’t only become art when it’s hung on a gallery wall. It becomes art when the clothes themselves move with you.

Matthew Velasco is the Fashion News Editor at ELLE. Based in New York City, he previously worked as a News Writer at W magazine and an Assistant Editor at V magazine. Outside of fashion, he enjoys interior design, tennis (both watching and playing), and a jam-packed antique store.