December 10, 2025 |
The latest in Fendi’s centenary celebrations, comes Fonderia Fendi by Argentinian designer and artist Conie Vallese, a design showcase made for collectable obsessives, art savants and everything in between. Converging feminine strength with the allure of Italian craft, this project, first unveiled at Design Miami 2025, sees Vallese call upon five different Italian ateliers each to fabricate one-of-a-kind Fendi pieces. These include Fendi’s own leather workshops, the historic Milanese bronze foundry Fonderia Battaglia, the ceramic studio Officine Saffi Lab, carpet weavers CC-Tapis and the 13th century Venetian glass studio Barovier & Toso. Made from a variety of luxe materials, counting bronze, ceramic, glass, carpet and leather, the pieces hark back to Les Cinq Doigts d’une Main, a 1994 illustration by former creative director Karl Lagerfeld that portrayed the five Fendi sisters as the leaders of a single creative vision – not a stretch in the slightest, those women form the backbone of the brand, with their imprint still pulsing through every inch of the house’s creative DNA.
Presented as an intimate living room, or salotto, the new venture places Vallese’s hand-formed, organic creations – made from natural materials – within a pale “cocoon” awash with subtle and smooth lighting. The pieces embrace imperfection, positioning painterly textures alongside tufted carpet reliefs and glazed tiles, all in a Rome-inspired palette rooted in rosy bronze with expressions of Fendi’s signature ‘sorbetto’ yellow and soft ‘anice’ blue. Within the room, sits a chair, a bench, a partition-style room divider, a hand-sculpted rug, mouth-blown opaque glass vases sitting atop protruding shelves, an illuminated sconce and ceramic tiled cuboid plinths or side tables and a special-edition Peekaboo bag, many pieces blooming with sumptuous lilies in elegant bronze. From the house’s leather ateliers, pieces are upholstered in flat planes of ‘cuoio Romano’ leather and finished with Fendi’s famous Selleria stitching, with Selleria also cropping up in the ceramics and woven carpet motifs, as well as floral inflections.
For that Peekaboo bag, Fendi enlisted Vallese to lend her personal, sorbet-tinged touch to the signature carryall, rendering it as a two-in-one reversible model in pale yellow and blue diagonal-striped calfskin with hand-sculpted ceramic details. Originally dreamt up by Silvia Venturini Fendi back in 2008, Vallese’s ultra limited-edition version – there are only five up for grabs – was also unveiled at Design Miami, as well as at the Fendi boutique that sits pretty in the centre of Miami’s Design District.
Referencing the Roaring Twenties where the Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modernism movements converged, the collection slips into a dreamy, retro-futurist fantasy, all elegance with a wink of mischief. The project nods to Italy’s own participation in the 1925 Decorative and Industrial Modern Arts exhibition in Paris too, something particularly poignant for Fendi, which has forever balanced museum-grade craft with a decidedly modern swagger.
Another glittering milestone in Fendi’s longstanding romance in design, this latest chapter proves the house can still surprise, seduce and push the craft conversation forward – one impeccably sculpted object at a time.
Photography courtesy of Fendi.
Conie Vallese
