Fendi and Kim Jones pay tribute to Bloomsbury Set in new book
The Fendi Set: From Bloomsbury to Borghese, published by Rizzoli and featuring ethereal imagery by photographer Nikolai von Bismarck, celebrates the dual history of the Roman fashion house and the mid-20th century British intellectual group
In 1925 – the year that Fendi was established in Rome – Virginia Woolf’s seminal modernist novel Mrs Dalloway was published. The text, revolutionary in form, spanning just a single day but flitting between times, narrators, and slipping into stream of consciousness digressions, was published by Hogarth Press, the imprint that Woolf ran with her husband Leonard, with a dust-jacket designed by Vanessa Bell, Woolf's painter and interior designer sister. British obscenity laws had prevented the duo from first publishing the text – which made reference to homosexuality, PTSD and suicide – in 1919.
The date is serendipitous, as womenswear artistic director of Fendi, Kim Jones, has long held an affection for Woolf's literary canon, and the creative output of the novelist's fellow English artists, writers and intellectuals, who were part of the Bloomsbury Set. Jones, a longtime bibliophile, has collected rare signed and first edition works and literary and artistic memorabilia linked with the group, and the furniture and art objects that Bloomsbury Set members Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell created through the Fitzrovia-based Omega Workshops.
Jones’ interest spans from teenagehood, when he spent his adolescence cycling around the bucolic East Sussex villages Firle and Rodmell and visiting the bohemian town of Lewes, near Charleston House, the home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, which became a Bloomsbury Set residence and sanctuary.
The Fendi Set: the Fendi family and the Bloomsbury Set meet in print
For his debut S/S 2021 Haute Couture collection for Fendi, Jones looked to Woolf’s seminal Orlando, the 1928 novel that sees its main protaganist flit between centuries and sex, from an Elizabethan nobleman to a poet-entertaining lady, and has become a seminal text in gender, feminist and transgender studies. Vita Sackville-West, the married aristocrat with whom Woolf had a 20-year love affair, inspired the novel. Fendi’s maze-like show set featured books and shelves stacked with rare volumes and ephemera related to the Bloomsbury Set, sourced from London's Peter Harrington Rare Books, which included the first copy of Orlando, once read by Sackville-West herself.
Now, Jones has translated his fascination with the Bloomsbury Set into the pages of a new volume, the Rizzoli-published The Fendi Set: From Bloomsbury to Borghese, which celebrates the dual history of the Roman fashion house and the mid-20th century British intellectual group. The book – ghostly and ethereal in tone – hones in on the locations integral to both, travelling from Charleston House, Knole House, and Sissinghurst Castle in England, to a Haute Couture show set in Paris, before landing at Rome’s Villa Medici and Villa Borghese.
Alongside diary entries, excerpts from Bloomsbury Set members and love letters between Woolf and Sackville-West, the book is layered and collaged with original photography by Nikolai von Bismarck, who spent 11 months capturing portraits, interiors and landscape images, following the trail of the Bloomsbury Set and the matriarchal Fendi family. Drawing on the modernist link between the development of new visual techniques and literary traditions, von Bismarck worked with photographic methods employed during the first half of the 20th century; he created muted, layered and blurred images using cameras including the Bolex Super 8, 180 Polaroid Land Camera and 8x10 Sinar and a variety of printing and dyeing techniques, such as colour-dye reversal, slide photography and expired Polaroid film. Figures appear to drift across pages, images have a Post-Impressionist quality, photography assimilates the past with the present.
Other stylistic techniques celebrate the heritage of the Bloomsbury Set: the Caslon font, which Woolf and her husband designed for Hogarth Press, is used throughout the book, and the volume’s marbled textures were created from photographs that von Bismarck took of book covers in Jones’ personal archive and the library at Charleston House.
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
For literary and style obsessives alike, The Fendi Set: From Bloomsbury to Borghese is a century-spanning bookcase essential. In Orlando, female protagonist Lady Orlando holds court with a host of famed writers, including Alexander Pope. With this multi-layered volume, now you can too.
INFORMATION
-
Molly Goddard on creating a community of contemporary brides
As new Molly Goddard bridal wear is released, the designer talks about creating romantic but real wedding dresses, while three recent brides tell the stories behind their own Goddard gowns
By Jack Moss Published
-
Palazzo Roma embodies the heritage of Roman noblesse
Palazzo Roma, part of the Shedir Collection, boasts eclectic and eccentric interiors by Giampiero Panepinto
By Luke Abrahams Published
-
Boise Passive House’s bold gestures support an environmentally friendly design
Boise Passive House by Haas Architecture combines sleek, contemporary design and environmental efficiency
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
’Issey Miyake: 1960 to 2022’ is a definitive guide to the pioneering Japanese designer
’Issey Miyake: 1960 to 2022’ is a new Taschen book that provides a comprehensive overview of the pioneering Japanese designer’s ’poetic but pragmatic’ work
By Jack Moss Published
-
Extraordinary runway sets from the A/W 2024 shows
12 scene-stealing runway sets and show spaces from A/W 2024 fashion month, featuring Murano-glass cacti, rubber armchairs, flashing orbs and more
By Jack Moss Published
-
Milan Fashion Week A/W 2024: Giorgio Armani to Bottega Veneta
The very best of Milan Fashion Week A/W 2024, from Giorgio Armani’s celebration of renewal to the ’monumental everyday’ at Bottega Veneta
By Jack Moss Last updated
-
This season’s womenswear channels freedom and escape
These S/S 2024 womenswear looks promise an escape from the everyday, and are photographed amid the otherwordly landscapes of the Canary Islands for the March 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper*
By Jack Moss Published
-
Best in shows: Wallpaper* picks S/S 2024’s standout looks
As part of Wallpaper’s Design Awards 2024 issue, we select the winning S/S 2024 runway collections – and their defining looks – at the start of a new season in style
By Jack Moss Published
-
Unconventional men’s tailoring to make an impression this winter
This winter’s men’s tailoring is defined by razor-sharp reinterpretations of classic silhouettes, designed to make you stand out over a celebratory season ahead
By Jack Moss Published
-
Fendi’s 1920s-inspired collaboration with guest designer Stefano Pilati has arrived
Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi have chosen Stefano Pilati – best known for his tenure as creative director at Saint Laurent in the 2000s – as the first ‘Friend of Fendi’, a series of collections ‘curated’ by figures outside the house
By Jack Moss Published
-
Breaking baguette: Fendi’s new bag is a playful take on the French loaf
Fendi’s shearling bread-shaped bags – part of the house‘s A/W 2023 menswear collection – are a playful ode to the seminal Fendi Baguette handbag
By Jack Moss Published