Fendi Fall 2026 Couture Collection

Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderne e Contemporanea played host to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s debut haute couture collection for the house of Fendi. Chiuri is Roman, and she’s returned to the Italian capital for her new post after nearly a decade in Paris at Dior. From the get-go tonight, it was clear that the move has done nothing to slacken her gleeful contrary streak: in a city overflowing with antiquities, she sides with the modern and contemporary. To mark the occasion, Chiuri decided to restage a 1985 Fendi exhibition, organized by Karl Lagerfeld at the time of his 20th anniversary at the house. Though the exhibit includes no fewer than 180 illustrations by Lagerfeld, along with 25 furs of his design, this wasn’t a case of history repeating itself. Where Lagerfeld’s ’80s shapes for Fendi were swaddled, power-shouldered, and quite oversized, Chiuri’s vision is much more fluid, with a-line, unwaisted shapes that tend to fall to the mid-calf or ankle. The first look, a caftan in a chevron of pieced black and white stripes, was modeled after a dress worn a century ago by Emilie Floge. Floge is remembered as the life companion of the artist Gustav Klimt, but she was a couturier in her own right, one who specialized in the loose, billowing shapes of the reform style. It was an era when women were rejecting the stifling rigidity of Victorian dress. As an opening salvo, Chiuri’s caftan couldn’t have been more different from the dramatically corseted and more-is-more showpieces that dominated many of the Paris couture shows. Some might look at it and call it minimal or dare to call it “not couture,” but that would be missing Chiuri’s point. The métier need not be outlandish; “at Fendi,” she noted, “craft is not an element, it’s the center of their work, probably because the house started with luggage, bags, and fur.” Her idea was to activate all the house’s ateliers—couture, fur, leather, textiles—and get them cross-pollinating. A stunning ivory cloak evoked lace from a distance, yet up close, flowers of fur, leather, and fabric came into view. Another appeared knit from fur. (All of it, she pointed out, is from Fendi’s Echo of Love program, which upcycles existing fur.) And let’s not give short shrift to the straightforward high-waisted, flared leg trousers that accompanied the cloaks. Pants are vanishingly rare in haute couture, but why? It’s probably not a coincidence that the other place they turned up in great numbers this season was Silvana Armani’s Armani Privé show. Jackets, meanwhile, were cut with the roomy proportions of untied kimonos. Of the simple shapes, Chiuri said, “the idea was that it’s the body that in some way gives the silhouette. It’s not something that you build.” That’s “completely different from the other couture house where I worked,” she said, meaning Dior with its New Look structure. The idea that the body gives the silhouette certainly held true with the siren-y bias-cut long dresses, one with Deco detailing at the neckline, another with traces of cross hatching accessorized with a bold collar necklace. All in all: a modern and contemporary beginning for Chiuri’s Fendi couture.