Fendi Spring Summer 2026 “A Colorful World of Mink”. Story by RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Fendi.
For Spring Summer 2026, Silvia Venturini Fendi didn’t just open a color box—she spilled it. Referencing the work and personal archives of Italian artist Maria Lorenza, the collection emerged as a chromatic playground with unexpected harmonies and surreal textures, underpinned by the quiet elegance of craftsmanship and a somewhat obsessive devotion to mink.
Venturini Fendi, ever the conceptualist with a Roman pragmatism, found inspiration in the way Lorenza organized books and translated them into visual art—treating printed matter as palette, structure, and memory. “Shade is very important for life, and also for fashion,” she noted backstage. And so the collection unfolded like a concertina of pigment—layered, twisted, and refracted into something between joy and abstraction. Imagine a painter’s accordion, freshly oiled and playing a tune you didn’t know you needed.
Mink Mania — In Every Register
Let’s address the obvious: mink was everywhere. Not quietly tucked into trims or linings, but loud, assertive, unmissable. Mink baroque—mink carved, dyed, printed, embroidered. Mink as surface, volume, gesture. Whether adorning bags, coats, dresses, or even accessories, the fur became a baroque flourish—more sculptural than indulgent, more structural than seasonal.
Florals too took on a surrealist note—what the house charmingly dubbed “fried flowers”, plasticky 3D blooms with yolk-like pistils adorning garments and bags. The motif matched Marc Newson’s abstract set design, where pixelated weaves echoed the supersized bags on the runway.
Fendi’s decision to spotlight mink so prominently this season inevitably raises questions. While one might accept the reality of archived furs or private commissions behind closed doors, making mink a visible centerpiece in 2025-2026 feels tone-deaf to the ongoing conversation around enviroement. It’s a choice — and one we respectfully question.
Sportswear, Reimagined
One of the collection’s most cohesive undercurrents was a recalibration of sportswear, abstracted and elevated with couture-level detailing. Tracksuits arrived in sartorial wool for men, and organza for women, with zipper tapes rendered in silk—because of course they were. The details told the story: colored elastic drawstrings looped through halter dresses and pleated skirts; cord locks became fashion accessories in their own right; jackets with patch pockets placed at the small of the back felt like conceptual sketches come to life.
Silhouettes were reshaped with visible button jabs—a subtle act of controlled tension, as if the fabric itself was resisting simplification. It was a kind of intellectual sportswear: rigorous, complex, and far from performative.
Color, Clashing and Collapsing
If the fur and the tailoring formed the skeleton of the collection, color was its nervous system—alive, twitching, unpredictable. Fendi played with tonal excess, sometimes layering five or six shades of one hue in a single look, elsewhere crashing together unlikely pairings that only made sense once you surrendered to their logic.
Accessories didn’t merely complement—they completed the looks. Pouch bags with wooden-bead handles, open Peekaboos revealing sequin linings, Baguette bags reinterpreted in cable-knit, and chunky block-heeled sandals that grounded the surrealism in something tactile and wearable.
A Chorus, Not a Solo
The casting was notably diverse in age and presence, making the runway feel less like a fashion show and more like a living gallery. There was no singular protagonist here—just a rotating chorus of muses, each amplifying Fendi’s maximalist melody.
Fendi’s Spring Summer 2026 show was not a parade of trends, but a richly orchestrated study in excess as elegance. Mink was the thread, color the paint, and sportswear the armature. It was both cacophony and clarity—held together by a designer who, once again, proved that fashion doesn’t have to whisper to be intelligent.
See All Looks Fendi Spring Summer 2026
