Editor’s Note: Ahead of the opening of “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” at the Costume Institute, we are celebrating his talent by adding five newly digitized archival shows he designed to the Vogue Runway Archive. This one, for Fendi, was shown in March 1999 in Milan.
Fendi’s two 1999 ready-to-wear collections can be read as chapters, in terms of approach. Their aesthetics—sunny minimalism for spring, and a good dose of hippie splendor for fall—are divergent, but in both shows Karl Lagerfeld was preoccupied with a kind of reduction, showing unlined furs, for example.
“Featherlight luxury” is how Vogue described the patchwork maxicoat Steven Meisel photographed on Maggie Rizer for the July 1999 issue. (Stella Tennant wore it on the runway.) “It’s a return to Fendi tradition,” Silva Venturini Fendi told the magazine at the time. “Fur: but with a richly modern feel.”
In a floor-sweeping fur and what looked like her own jeans, Tennant seemed to capture the high-low mood both Lagerfeld and Venturini Fendi were after. She wore another stunning number with fur-lined felted-wool pants. Once again playing with dichotomy, Lagerfeld glammed up homey hand-knits with sequins, and applied simple quilting to luxurious pelts. Venturini Fendi followed suit, showing Aran-knit bags and others featuring felt leaf trimmings. T-strap shoes were beaded with Fendi’s Lagerfeld-designed double-F logo, shorthand for “fun fur.”
