There was really no way around it: A show celebrating 100 years of Fendi was always going to mean celebrating fur.
The brand, after all, began as a handbag and fur workshop. And according to Silvia Venturini Fendi, the designer behind the centenary collection and the lone remaining family member involved in the business (now owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton), when she began thinking about what that might look like, she thought of her first Fendi memory. Which happened to be of herself in 1966, age 6, walking in her first Fendi show and wearing a child-size fur equestrian jacket designed by Karl Lagerfeld. She had the photo on her mood board backstage.
So no surprise that what turned out to be a lovely Fendi show opened first with Ms. Venturini’s 6-year-old twin grandchildren wearing new versions of that jacket, and then with what appeared to be a voluptuous fox fur (or rather a fox-like shearling, since that is what most of the fur really was), belted at the waist. Or that it was followed by more furs, among the graceful beaded 1920s frocks and strong-shouldered suits that fell stylistically somewhere between the ’40s and ’80s, including intarsia furs. Not to mention the best new accessory of the week: a long fur gilet-cum-scarf that was simply the collar and front of a greatcoat, cut to be worn on its own.
But to see fur, or at least what looked like fur, on almost every other runway in Milan? That was unexpected. Especially because what was really notable about the fur-for-all was how very — well, furry all the maybe-fur looked. Almost Yeti-furry. 1980s Ivana Trump furry. Mob wife furry. I’m-all-in-on-fur furry.
Which made it also impossible to avoid the conclusion that, as far as designers were concerned, this particular material, out of favor for a long time, was once again part of the fashion arsenal.
But Is It Fur?
It would be easy to see this as yet another example of the general backlash against woke-ism; a pent-up repudiation of the animal police. But something more nuanced and even confusing is going on.
“Well, it’s shearling, not fur,” Matteo Tamburini, creative director of Tod’s, said before his show of long, louche outerwear with a neatly contained silhouette — and a big, skunk-like fur. Sorry, shearling.
Arguably shearling, which is actually the skin of a newly shorn lamb with the wool left attached, is actually a kind of fur — PETA qualifies it as “animal-derived” — but because it can also be a byproduct, the implication seems to be it is less controversial.
In any case, Maximilian Davis of Ferragamo said much the same after sending out a cool, dance-inspired collection that included not just big fur coats but fur shrugs and fur flip-flops — even fur used as an accent around the waist of a thin chiffon shift.
“It’s all shearling,” he said. “Fur is something that we can’t use today, we shouldn’t use today, but all of the suppliers have developed techniques and different details that are able to imitate real fur.” And that was something, he continued, that he wanted to show off; a luxury in itself.
And there was more shearling — the kind that looked like mink — at Prada. Shearling (big white chubbies) at Dolce & Gabbana. Long-haired shearling at Emporio Armani for men and women. There were ginormous, floor-sweeping, boho deluxe wool furs at Etro as well as big faux fur trapper hats. Faux fur again (a leopard/fox mix) at Roberto Cavalli and even a faux fur skirt at Ferrari. Not to mention faux fur used as a sort of psychotic trim at Bally, which under the designer Simone Bellotti has become the unexpected highlight of the Milan shows.
Getting Under the Skin(s)
In bottle green, pink and black, the shaggy Bally pretend-pelts framed a high slit in a black leather skirt; emphasized the tailcoat cut of a gray flannel tunic and played peekaboo with a matching pair of gray flannel shorts; or filled out the bottom of a neat peplum top. They were a trademark bit of weird in an otherwise pristine collection, and part of what makes Mr. Bellotti’s work so compelling. He is a genius at suggesting the twist beneath the surface of the buttoned-up. (And he made the single best black dress of the week: an organza frock slipping cloudlike off one shoulder).
As to why he was drawn to fur — “It’s the wildness,” Mr. Bellotti said after the show. It was the suggestion, he said, of a break in the routine, like taking five seconds out of a study session to go to the corner and scream.
Which is the thing about all this fur: It plays different roles in the mind of the maker. And, potentially, the eye of the beholder. Or the psyche of the person who wears it.
Rocco Iannone, the creative director of Ferrari, for example, said he was attracted to faux furs because of the way they conveyed “volumes” — the sense of vroom that connects to the brand. Mr. Tamburini of Tod’s said he first started seeing fur on kids on the street, and was following their lead.
Mr. Davis of Ferragamo said, “it just feels super rich and super glamorous. When I think about Ferragamo’s DNA, it’s all about the glamour in the Hollywood and 1950s movie stars and all of them had fur around their shoulders.” He wanted, he said, “to take those references and make them modern.”
And at Fendi Ms. Venturini Fendi said her shearling (and two herringbone pieces of actual mink) were “a nod to what Fendi was and still is.” Just like the hobo ribbed-knit hats with clouds of black netting that represented her grandmother’s hairnet. “I give a lot of respect to the fact that something, when it is beautiful, is beautiful always,” she said.
If all of this sounds like justification, it may be. If it sounds like a case of designers wanting to have their cake (be sensitive to the animal rights movement) and eat it too (claim it’s not really fur), it may be that as well. Because whatever you want to call these “furs,” whatever they are actually made of, what most people will see is just that: fur. And that taps into some atavistic instinct buried deep in our lizard brain. One that may be harder to eliminate than anyone thought.
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