Stefano Pilati Is Designing A Collection With Fendi

Fendi has just announced its newest collaborator, and he’s a good ‘un. For the autumn/winter 2024 season, Stefano Pilati is set to bring a touch of “modern elegance” to the house for its first ‘Friends of Fendi’ initiative.

The Milan native (who features on the cover of 10 Magazine Issue 71 – FASHION, ICON, DEVOTEE), has lent his deft hand to some of the best brands in the bizz including Tom Ford, Yves Saint Laurent – where he was design director – and Zegna – where he was a menswear designer. After relocating to Berlin in 2017, where he spent a lot of his time exploring gender barriers, Pilati, 57, launched Random Identities, the brand for “every gender”, as the product of epiphany of his opus.

The inaugural ‘Friends of Fendi’ designer, Pilati has created a one-off capsule collection that spans men’s and womenswear, set to drop October 26. With a strong focus on tailoring, the collection will celebrate the strength of the women who’ve built Fendi into the fashion empire it is today.

“[Pilati] is a friend, an inspiration and a designer for modern times – always looking to the future, asking questions and proffering solutions,” says Kim Jones, artistic director of Fendi.

Jones, 50, has previously explored friendships with well-known designers Donatella Versace (recall the full-scale brand swap) and Marc Jacobs while in the driver’s seat at Fendi. ‘Friends of Fendi’, initiated by Jones alongside Silvia Venturini Fendi, is circuited to showcase a “new way to introduce special projects and collections that differ from Fendi’s main collections and are achieved with outside designers, houses and organizations,” according to the maison.