Staring down the barrel of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s kohl-framed gaze, I feel suddenly uneasy. “Designers who are men can do womenswear,” she says with heavy irony. “But designers who are women cannot do menswear.” I’ve just delivered a question about what will, in June, be her first menswear show as Fendi’s Chief Creative Officer. Clumsily asked and slightly misunderstood, it has catalysed a jolt of sarcastic clarity about misogyny in fashion.
Warming up, she raises an eyebrow, smiles, and leans forward. “Because geniuses are only men! Creative people, only men!” She pauses, as if to consider: “ What about Miuccia Prada? But she’s a founder, eh? Chanel, poverina? Schiaparelli? It’s like chefs: a chef is a man. And a cuoca [female cook] is not equal. Nothing changes.”
Wait. What about Chiuri’s own record of changemaking? In 2016 she became Christian Dior’s first-ever female Creative Director (of womenswear, haute couture, and accessories, but not menswear). Over the next nine years her feminocentric, feminist, collaborative approach to design and storytelling at the French house surely changed that discourse: because while yes, her collections sometimes divided the critics, they nearly always entranced the clients. And along the way, by the way, she close-to quadrupled revenues.
“Yes, and everybody remembers me because I did the big number in Dior! When a male designer does a big number, [it is because] he has a sense of business. But if a woman designer does a big number, it is because she is commercial.” She enunciates commercial with the same dismissive emphasis that the word is so often harnessed to in fashion (albeit not by CEOs). “It’s a mentality. It’s cultural!” As Chiuri says this, I think en passant of Virginie Viard at Chanel.
In the face of friendly fire, it’s time to deflect. Let’s bring it back to Fendi, where Chiuri was announced Chief Creative Officer last October, six months after her departure from Dior. Fendi is where, aged 24, Chiuri began her career as an accessories designer in 1989. It’s where she worked when she had her children, during a time when she was mentored by the five Fendi sisters—Paola, Anna, Franca, Carla and Alda—in a supportive culture she has often described as a sorority.
Chiuri takes control. “The Fendi sisters too. Everybody speaks only about Karl Lagerfeld, like they did nothing. I’m sorry, eh.” She laughs a full laugh, and the balloon is punctured. “I’m sorry eh! Mi parte proprio la brocca! (I’m really losing my temper!) I don’t want to discuss this system. I’m… it’s… so boring.”
Boring possibly, but also tangibly true: just run a comparison of the number of female creative directors in top fashion houses as compared to male. And as Vogue noted when Chiuri’s Fendi appointment was announced, it attracted plenty of commentariat side-eye. This despite the fact that if any designer has earned the unqualified right to be ranked one of the very greatest of our time, it is her.
Chiuri says, however, that she has not rejoined Fendi to prove any personal point. “I’m here to give back what they gave to me.” She adds: “I worked here for a long time, in another time, when fashion was completely different. This was a very small company, a family company. I learned so much at Fendi. I think for my generation it was incredible to work with the founders.” She is still full of admiration for the Fendi sisters, under whom she worked so long. “These were five women from Rome who called Karl Lagerfeld in Paris, before he was at Chanel, in 1965. I think that was not so normal, to maintain your tradition and background but at the same time to have a conversation with someone who is completely innovative and from a completely different camp. They were great visionaries.”
Chiuri departed Fendi in 1999, shortly before it was acquired by LVMH. She left with Pierpaolo Piccioli to join the accessories team at Valentino, where they worked under the founder before being nominated to succeed him upon his retirement in 2008. “In Fendi I learned about accessories—shoes, bags, and fur, of course—and in Valentino I learned about couture. But also the idea of major campaigns, stores. It was a very impactful experience. There we became creative directors which was another step too. From every single experience you learn something more.”
Nearly 30 years after leaving it, the Fendi she has returned to, she says: “is different like all the brands today are different. The organization is different and the dimensions are different. And when I left, Fendi was a family company.” Which is not to say, of course, that the culture of Fendi’s present owner LVMH is unfamiliar to her: Dior is one of its subsidiaries, and leading that great French house for so long has given her another layer of experience and learning.
Now the sum of all her experience is being applied to shaping a new phase for Fendi. Her arrival, she believes, coincides with the dawn of a broader period of evolution in the luxury fashion arena. “We are moving into another moment. I think the big impact in this system was about the new media. Everybody started to speak about fashion. Because fashion became more popular, there were not only the journalists and the people that know about fashion speaking about fashion. The impact of all these voices was very strong, but not all the time positive. I think part of it became an entertainment. But in the end, it [fashion] is not that.”
She continues: “I think we have an idea that is more the narrative of this job, and less the reality of this job. Sometimes the narrative is that you [the designer] are there, like a light from the sky, and you just make a sketch… The reality is more complex. It is really teamwork. There are so many different technical skills.”
But doesn’t she acknowledge that this complexity, even if true, is challenging to digest for those who prefer to enjoy the fantasy and image of fashion? “Yes. And we arrive at a point that could be more crucial to have a name for something, or a narrative, and you don’t see if someone desired it. Before this [narrative], you have to start with something that you create. When I see around me that the team is happy [with something they have developed], that’s when I say, ‘Oh, okay.’ Because then you feel the energy.”
Tomorrow’s fall 2026 show in Milan will be the first opportunity to transmit the energy of Chiuri’s new formula of desire at Fendi outside the closed circuit of her team. Asked to sell the essence of that formula, Chiuri again raises an eyebrow. “I am probably not a good seller! But I synthesise my vision for Fendi in this show. In the silhouette. In the accessories. In the shoes. For women and for men also—there will be some men in the show too, absolutely, because we did the collections together. I work in parallel with the two teams like they are the same team.” As previously established, however, Chiuri will also present a show during the menswear week in June.
What about the accessories, traditionally alongside fur the core of the house’s offer? “Accessories are very important. We are working on every single category: sunglasses, jewellery, everything. I am trying to define all the iconic elements of the house and to put them all in order, these codes. This is very important. Sometimes—and not just for Fendi—the idea to communicate so much creates confusion. It is important to clarify, first to myself and the team, and then to the people outside. The references of Fendi that come from modernism, and also via Karl from the Viennese Secession, this is the reason that Fendi is so clean, so impactful, so geometric too: I have been working to do a big picture of the Fendi codes, and, of course, to give them my interpretation.”
Chiuri says she is moving away from the recent orthodoxy to use branding as decoration through monograms, to return instead towards presenting a range of embroidered and other applied materials that can reflect the individual personalities of the clients. She says, “that was part of the story with the Baguette and the Peekaboo too.” She adds: “The logo is a signature. It is not decorative.” In order to clarify that signature, she recruited Leonardo Sonnoli to “renovate” the house Double-F logo and font. “I think we have to use it only with products that are right for the logo,” she adds: “not for all.”
Instead of via the branding of its logo, Chiuri plans for Fendi to communicate itself through the substance of its silhouette. “Because I think we are now working in another time in the fashion industry, my point of view is very focused on the silhouette. It is important to define the silhouette of Fendi. And really that is the silhouette of the coat. The coat, the jacket. That is my job. And also what kind of women and men are the references.”
Maria Grazia Chiuri, in her first round at Fendi, circa 1992. Courtesy of Fendi
Before Fendi became so famous for its accessories (an achievement of which Chiuri was a part) it was most renowned for the sophistication and richness of its furs. These were predominantly worn as coats and jackets. Each Fendi sister was responsible for a different element of their development and presentation, and Chiuri considered the core characteristics of the sisters while shaping this new silhouette. She says, “the reference is the sisters. They were very creative, but also pragmatic: they worked. So the way they were was very… functional. Then sensuality is very important also, because the element of fur is about something soft, light, and very close to sensuality. For Fendi, fur and feeling are the same.”
To hear Chiuri mention fur unprompted is something of a surprise. While the house has never ceased producing its haute fourrure for clients, for years it has barely advertised the fact more broadly. “I am completely conscious about the sensibility of this argument,” says Chiuri. “And also that now it is different to the past.” She says that in order to meet growing interest in appreciation of heirloom furs, she has inaugurated a new program in the Fendi atelier named Echo of Love. It will be dedicated to disassembling, restoring, and rebuilding vintage precious pieces. “All our clients, also with fur that was not done by Fendi, can come back to us and we will work on it. Because we are speaking about a durable material. Many women, including me, have fur in their wardrobe that comes from their mother or their grandmother. The idea is that we can work in couture to remake them in a different way—maybe to use in a coat or a trench, or to remake long or short or in a new shape—and so it becomes a one-of-a-kind couture piece. As well as this I also want to work with the fur and applying the techniques to new materials.”
In 2021, during his four year period as Fendi’s Artistic Director of ready-to-wear, Kim Jones began showing couture beyond fourrure in Paris. Chiuri indicates she plans to continue it, without disclosing exactly when. She says, “It’s not possible to define everything at the beginning. You have to go step by step. I really want to do couture, but only when we are ready. Because it is very important to work on the global project, and the global vision. I’m happy because this first collection is the first step.” Another key step will be the simultaneous release of Chiuri’s first campaign for the house created with Jo Ann Callis, an artist whose lens of subversive honesty and self-possession seems finely aligned with that of the designer.
These steps begin a journey Chiuri had neither any obligation nor need to embark upon. We are speaking in the Teatro della Cometa, the jewel-like 1950s theatre at the foot of Rome’s Capitoline hill that Chiuri bought and restored alongside her daughter Rachele. That passion project began back in 2020, way before any talk of a return to Fendi entered the frame. Post-Dior, she could quite easily have dedicated herself to her theatre instead of returning to the spotlight of fashion.
“For me Fendi is very important,” she says, and repeats: “so it’s very important to give back what they gave to me.” Then she leans forward again, gaze fixed. “Between us, I really have love for all the fashion brands. Not only Fendi. I really love fashion. I could work for everybody! Because I think it’s a beautiful industry. I really appreciate the people who founded the houses. All different, all with a different point of view. I especially love the historical brands. Probably I should start a restoration! Because you want to put in light, to show what magnificence there is in these stories. I really believe in this. They are beautiful. As I am now, this is really a dream. To study more about the brands… you really can see how much the founders give everything to create this brand and how much they work. I think sometimes this is not so evident: the real passion that is behind each name.”
Before luxury’s recruitment consultants reach en masse for their phones, there is no doubt that for the foreseeable future Chiuri’s studies will remain solely focused upon the founders she knows most intimately: the Fendis. Chiuri demurs at the suggestion that her work ahead might also contain some autobiographical elements, drawn from her memories of arriving here for her first job, aged 24. “It’s difficult for me now to see myself then,” she says, shaking her head. And yet comparing her conversation today with her characterisation of the sisters—as creatively imaginative yet pragmatically orderly, as hard-working yet passionate—suggests powerfully that Fendi’s new phase will also hew true to the soul of Maria Grazia Chiuri.
