July 7, 2023 |
To say Delfina Delettrez Fendi has got a lot on her plate is the understatement of the century. In constant flux between her home in Rome and her atelier in Paris, the fourth-generation member of the Fendi family fashion dynasty not only helms her own eponymous jewellery brand, she is the artistic director of jewellery for the house too.
Delettrez was just 19 when she established her own jewellery brand in 2007, following in the footsteps of her jeweller father, Bernard Delettrez. Rejecting the mustiness of traditional fine jewellery – and the Fendi part of her surname, calling it, simply, Delfina Delettrez – Delettrez set out to create something more in tune with contemporary fashion. “Jewellery was the only world that wasn’t touched by Fendi. It made me make peace with that and understand that I had something to say. I wanted to adapt the fashion rules I grew up with and apply them to a universe that wasn’t that exciting,” she said in an interview with Anders Christian Madsen inside 10 Magazine Issue 69. “I was used to this fashion adrenaline: ‘I want this and I want it now!’ So, I naturally applied the fashion rules to the jewellery world and shook it up a bit.”
The Fendi heiress has been designing jewellery for her family’s brand for a few seasons now, since Kim Jones hired her in 2020, carving out an idiosyncratic expression rooted in the spirit of flora and fauna, geometric lines and past, present and future with every piece she churns out. “I want to create small objects that are filled with fantasy… [and] stay close to my vision,” she told Madsen. “The more personal, the better.”
The daughter of Silvia Venturini Fendi, Delettrez spent the better half of this year raising her game for the real precious stuff with obsessive precision and prepping for Fendi’s first foray into high jewellery. Unveiled during it’s haute couture show yesterday afternoon, Kim Jones’ minimalist gowns became the canvas for her opulent bijouterie as it flowed through wrapped silhouettes, colours and embroideries informed by the natural hues of diamonds, sapphires, spinels and articulated gold. As the show progressed, the glimmer of Delettrez’ diamonds actually dispersed into the garments themselves, coating swathes of lush fabrications in sequins, beads and crystals. In the simplicity of the garments though, the jewels were put on a pedestal.
Comprised of 31 pieces, each high jewellery creation oozed with architectural femininity. Passels of perfect diamonds adorned a reinterpreted tennis bracelet and suspended stones dangled from drop earrings, beautifully coalescing as a balancing act between elegant sophistication and frivolous glamour. Elsewhere, draped, asymmetrical shapes ingeniously incorporated tiny geometric plays on the Fendi logo, inverting the calligraphic, ‘FF’ motif to form a diamond-encrusted collier or bracelet. The monogram was reimagined in a frosting of yellow baguette diamonds too, “like a logo within a logo” that became a figurative nod to the house’s best-selling bag originally designed by Delletrez’s mother.
Called Triptych, the range was divided into three distinct chapters differentiated, for the most part, by colour. Epitomised by soft ladylike pinks, rose and raspberry, Roma Rose was the first out. Through echoes of romance and nostalgia, the desirable adornments were reminiscent of the varicoloured tones found in the faded marbles, mosaics and frescoes of Rome. Three parures of pear, oval and octagonal-cut sapphires and spinels were framed by an orb of white diamonds and arrived alongside an articulated portrait necklace with reversed FF cage construction and an emerald spinal at its centre. A lariat pendant necklace was composed of two diamond threads with “whispering” FF motifs framing a pink sapphire like butterfly wings. That feathered form extended into asymmetric drop-chain earrings and an oval-cut pink sapphire cocktail ring.
The Gioiello Giallo segment was dripping in Fendi yellow, evolving on from the Fendi Flavus parure of 2022. Tracing the powdery hue back to the introduction of Pergamena parchment leather in the ‘30s, precious gems entered into a conversion with the body. Through vivid yellow sapphires and white diamonds, cushion-cut orange sapphires and oval-cut green and pink padparadscha sapphires, a necklace, earrings, and a set of four cocktail rings, showcased on fingers clutching jewellery-box evening bags, flourished with subtle FF strands. A double finger ring looked like it was floating through unexpected splashes of sunset colours – the new Fendi Flavus parure.
Bianco Brillante embodied the pure sparkle of an all white diamond. Evolving cage construction into a glittering second-skin mesh, an articulated portrait necklace was dotted with diamonds and tessellating FF motifs. Between cascades of gold, there were also fluid chain bracelets, inverted FF diamond earrings, helix-formation drop earrings and an icy, asymmetric ring with a twisted diamond and tangled FF form. The last look featured a ravishing collar of pale pink spinels that took an arduous 40 years to assemble. Now that’s haute couture.
