Kim Jones on her Fendi debut, a deeply personal collection

By Olivia Singer

Instead of sitting amid the light-drenched glamor and high-vaulted Fendi ateliers to talk to Kim Jones about her first collection for the Roman house, we take a drive through the Sussex countryside on a ghastly day. gray before lockdown, stormy and violently gloomy, with thick mists that made it almost dark by midafternoon. We're a long way from the Italian capital, where dozens of seamstresses are in the process of weaving pearl lattices and lavishly embroidering haute couture gowns for their upcoming debut, but it soon makes an enchanting sense nonetheless. Jones recently bought a holiday home here in the quiet village of Rodmell, a stone's throw from the house where he spent much of his upbringing and a few doors down from Virginia Woolf's cottage, and he has brought me here for a journey through his childhood. “When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time cycling through all these towns,” he smiles, dodging a snarling tractor. ‘This first collection feels almost autobiographical. What I'm referencing feels really personal.'

While this is Kim Jones's first womenswear collection, she's been at the forefront of fashion for over a decade: until now, her three-year tenure as artistic director of menswear at Dior, where he's translated the feminine romance of the founder's codes into chic tailoring and a boldly contemporary sensibility, which has already garnered him nearly every industry award (along with a host of fans, from Bella Hadid to Naomi Campbell). Prior to that, his seven years as director of menswear at Louis Vuitton are regularly credited with transforming the fashion landscape by bringing his encyclopedic knowledge of streetwear cultural codes to hyper-luxe terrain. (In 2017, he was responsible for the house's collaboration with Supreme, widely regarded as a signifier of shifting fashion into a new era.) Consequently, much has been written about his youth: the son of a hydrogeologist specializing in irrigation projects, Jones grew up between England and Africa (with seasons in Kenya, Ethiopia, Botswana, Tanzania and Ecuador), and his early life is easily related to a lifetime of collections imbued with wanderlust and disparate cultural references. “From a very young age, I realized that there was a lot to see in the world,” he says. 'But in many ways, it's more difficult to investigate in a lockdown, so what I've done is look within.'

Instead of leading one of his regular research trips to the Amazon or Japan, for Fendi, Jones has returned to his youth spent here, in Rodmell, around Lewes and on the Charleston farm, where he would later go to sketch from school in the bucolic gardens or etch lino prints of frescoes by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell on the walls. It was here that, one December afternoon, as rain spat against the painted windows, Kate Moss lounged in the same lounge chair in the living room that the Bloomsbury ensemble would have had nearly a century ago, while wearing Jones's newest designs. (Moss is also consulting on accessories for Fendi. 'It made sense. She has such immaculate taste, she's seen it all and her knowledge of fashion is so vast,' says Jones, who has known the model since Lee McQueen introduced them at the 90s).

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'I've always wanted to wear his menswear, and now he's making womenswear!' Kate laughs, draping a dress that combines crisp gray masculine tailoring with a gown embellished with hundreds of crystal wildflowers. 'What he does is always cool and modern. He knows exactly what people want to wear.

Later, I ask Jones what could have drawn a teenager to this quaint little cottage, with its low 16th-century ceilings and perfectly preserved bohemia. 'When cities have a famous literary or artistic figure who lived there, he's on the air,' he recalls. ‘I always saw the old bookshops in Lewes with Virginia Woolfs in the window. The old school essays I found were written about Roger Fry. They were always present. There was something about the collective creativity of the Bloomsbury set, immortalized by Charleston, where they worked and fell in love with remarkably liberal attitudes, that he says was irrepressibly magnetic. ‘I thought that a group of people coming to live together in the middle of the countryside at that time was quite progressive. They were like a fancy commune,' he laughs. 'And his cast about what was happening at the time was impressive and broad. The vision of the future of the economy of John Maynard Keynes and the books of Virginia Woolf, like Orlando.’

The collective energy of the movement is clearly visible in the way Jones now operates. "It was collaborative, a family," he says of the group. 'That's how I like to work.' He is known for his collaborative spirit, both with his teams and with his extensive circle of illustrious friends (from Kanye to the Beckhams, from Kate to Naomi, his dinner locations are a brilliant mix of global A-listers and high school friends from sussex). “What I like most about Kim is her ability to take the family wherever she goes,” reflects Adwoa Aboah, one of the muses that shaped her vision. ‘He keeps such a wide variety of people around him – artists, musicians, young people, everyone – which is why his work remains so relevant. Find inspiration everywhere. (Jones prides himself on knowing both Baby Yoda and Woolf, and values ​​his Julien Macdonald hamburger boxes as much as his art collection—he doesn't like the culture snob.) That energy comes through in her debut, which will be shaped by chosen and biological families, but it's Orlando, Woolf's modernist novel, that has offered the most direct starting point for her haute couture collection. A time-traveling exploration of the mutability of gender, it was written in dedication to Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's long-time lover, whose son later referred to it as 'the longest and most charming love letter of all time'. literature, in which [Virginia] explores Vita, weaves her in and out of centuries, throws her from one sex to another, plays with her, dresses her in furs, lace and emeralds, teases her, flirts with her , drops a veil of mist around him.'

The story has been regularly referenced in fashion: its explicit references to the importance of clothing in establishing one's identity lend themselves easily to designers looking to imbue their work with meaning, but Jones has taken a more indirect approach by reaffirming its relevance. Just as Orlando oscillated between worlds and wardrobes from different eras, Jones has used the biographies of the women who will model his debut to dig through the Fendi archive, mining references to their respective birth years and the history of the house. ‘Every look has to do with the personality that will be in it. That is the luxury of Haute Couture, it is designed specifically for the person,” he says. (“It feels like an authentic representation of who you are. Nobody ever asks me what I like,” laughs Aboah, whose outfit for the show evolved from a 1990 Karl Lagerfeld sketch for the house.) ‘I wanted to look at different points in time at Fendi, which is why Orlando came to mind. I wanted to take cues from Karl, but revamp them,' continues Jones. ‘Look at them in a lighter way, see them with a fresh eye, but without looking nostalgic.’

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Equally, the staunch feminism of Woolf and the women of Bloomsbury, each a force in her own right, offer a parallel, she suggests, to Fendi's history as matriarchy. While Lagerfeld served as the house's creative director for 54 years until his death in 2019, his name has been upheld by the four generations of women who have served as its custodians since it was founded in 1925 by Adele Casagrande (who named it in honor of her husband, Edoardo Fendi) - and it was Casagrande's five daughters who, in 1965, hired the German designer to modernize the brand's aesthetics. In the interim between Lagerfeld's death and Jones' debut, Silvia Venturini Fendi, Casagrande's granddaughter, who has headed the brand's menswear and accessories since 1994, acted as his creative guardian before handing the reins over to Jones. “I have always been attracted to Kim, and now that I work with him, I understand why,” reflects Silvia, who has considered the designer a friend for more than a decade and remains an integral part of the brand's creative process. ‘I am very happy, I like working as a duo and working with him reminds me a lot of how I used to work with Karl. This was written in the stars. It was karma,' she says. “I really admire her,” Jones says on set as he sends an enthusiastic stream of messages to Silvia. ‘I want her to be proud.’

What he has created for his debut, then, is an amalgamation of Jones's lifelong obsession with the deeply British romance of Bloomsbury and the historic Italian grandeur of the Fendi name. 'What's been particularly interesting to me, as I've spent more time in Rome, is that I've seen more of the huge number of references that the Bloomsbury Group took from there,' he notes (later, to prove his point, he pulls out a catalog of Vanessa Bell's paintings, which flit between farmland in Sussex and the Borghese Gardens in Rome; Woolf was also particularly captivated by the 'infinite silence' of Perugino's frescoes; and in London, Fry organized exhibitions and translated his own understanding ancient Italian masters). 'And if you look in the Charleston library or in the Clive Bell book collection, it's all there. All roads lead to Rome.’

In the collection, draped déshabillé gowns are cut as if frozen in time in the manner of Bernini's marbles, but are hand-embroidered with wildflowers; fabric swirls are held in place by blooming rosettes. He has found echoes of Italy in the marbled paper that once bound Bloomsbury's books, which Haute Couture workshops have now translated into a host of impressive weaving techniques. Woolf's tragic story of suicide (a substantial part of our walk was spent retracing her last steps to the river in which, at the age of 59, she drowned herself) is reflected in the bathing suits dripping with crystals. or in the Murano glass droplets hung like jewels or inserted as wavy hairpieces. It's exquisitely opulent, but instead of appearing abstractly ethereal—perhaps apart from a liquid organza gown that floats almost lighter than air, anchored only by its crystalline hem—it seems firmly rooted in Jones' (Kate Kate) world of fresh greed. Sitting at a table, hunched over in an impeccably tailored satin gown proves the point.) "We live in a modern world, so I like that there is reality," he says. By the way, no one put it better than Victoria Beckham: "Kim is in touch with popular culture, and when you marry that with his incredible vision and exquisite craftsmanship, it makes him a real force to be reckoned with." Aboah agrees: 'I'm excited because I know he looks at what you wear, what I wear; he continually looks at everyone, at everything, and wants to make clothes that women want to wear. I'm excited to put those outfits on and feel epic in them. Because he is more than capable.’

Once we've returned from Sussex to Jones' London home, he goes on to give me a tour of the Bloomsbury artifacts he's collected over the years. A gigantic brutalist bunker in Notting Hill, with a swimming pool for morning workouts, a giant steel kitchen outfitted for Sunday roasts, and walls lined with artifacts that rival many museum collections, it's a sanctuary well insulated from the outside world ( when in London, Jones is a determined homebody), and her polished concrete surroundings have become the perfect setting to highlight her fixation with the collective. Here, alongside the art she's amassed over the years (Magritte, Francis Bacon, Amoako Boafo), is a powder room painted by Vanessa Bell, which used to be in Virginia Woolf's Richmond home; works by Duncan Grant hang in the living room; a Roger Fry screen mentioned in Brideshead Revisited; an endless library filled with first editions, publishers' manuscripts, and annotated copies of books that belonged to the Bloomsbury clan. "I'm obsessive," he laughs. ‘I find it so exciting that you can buy these things, especially the books that people used to give to each other. For these books to have touched your hand and the hand of the person you loved and wanted to give it to... it feels like there is energy. And you never really own anything; you keep it while you're here.’

It's a sentiment that echoes Silvia's sentiments about why Kim Jones fits so perfectly into the house that bears her name: one that she says she loves more than herself because of the weight it carries on her family. 'One of the first things Kim did was ask Delfina [Delettrez, Silvia's daughter] to join us, which was the best, because it was a sign of love, and that he understood Fendi, and that his story keep going'. she smiles. "The first thing I wanted was to make sure Delfina was on board, because she's the next generation in the family," he continues (Delfina, whose eponymous jewelry brand has thrived for more than a decade, now oversees the house's jewelry). . ‘I want to respect Silvia and think about the legacy of the house. Fendi is about them: about strong women, smart women, who know what they are doing in their lives. Pioneering women, like the ones in Bloomsbury, like the women on the show. This is a statement: one to celebrate Fendi and the stories of all these amazing women.' It is certainly a celebration, and the new chapter of the story will unfold from here.