BEHIND LUCA GUADAGNINO AND FENDI’S BIG FASHION WEEK COLLABORATION

Silvia Venturini Fendi and director Luca Guadagnino created a fantasy garden, complete with leather watering cans. Plus: Rihanna’s muse.

BY RACHEL TASHJIAN

Silvia Venturini Fendi and Luca Guadagnino on the “Calming Pastime” of Gardening

Where is a man to go when he needs to escape it all?

Paradise!

More specifically, says Fendi, to the paradise that is your garden, which the brand conjured for their Spring 2020 show in Milan earlier this week. The show, one of the standouts of this season, featured uniforms in olive and zen beige perfect for gardening—or, you know, thinking about gardening—as well as leather and suede baskets, woven straw hats, and even a leather watering can. The show notes wrote that the collection drew “upon the idea of the garden as a symbol of man’s most sophisticated relationship with nature—a subject of great mutual affection for Luca Guadagnino and Silvia Venturini Fendi.”

Guadagnino, of course, is the director behind films with Elysian natural settings such as A Bigger Splash and Call Me By Your Name, and this season, he served as Fendi’s guest artist. “Silvia asked me to collaborate for this collection and I instantly agreed since we have a great history of partnership and I respect her work tremendously,” Guadagnino told GQ in an email. “The idea of gardening and the outdoors is a peaceful escape, a calming pastime which is so inspiring.”

Guadagnino developed a botanical print that appeared throughout the collection (Venturini Fendi was also a producer on the 2018 film Suspiria), and pieces like a long silk shirt are reveries from time spent in Ethiopia during Guadagnino’s childhood. Guadagnino also worked with Venturini Fendi on the show location, casting, and soundtrack, made up of excerpts from Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1999 intimate and hard-to-find piano album BTTB.

“My love of gardening was one of the main inspirations,” Venturini Fendi added. “It's important to be connected to nature. It was obvious to me that Luca was the perfect artist to work with this season. Luca is an expert at creating this fantasy and we built upon that bringing together graphic prints and a spectacular location to create the perfect environment in which to present these new designs.”

Rihanna’s Muse: Rihanna

Rihanna dropped the second delivery of her new Fenty line, LVMH’s sparkly new €30 million fashion brand helmed by Bad Gal RiRi herself, and also took over two floors of Soho’s branch of The Webster boutique. At a party earlier this week—she arrived fabulously, mere minutes before the party’s end—she told Women’s Wear Daily that “I’m the muse of my collection.”

Extremely same, but there’s logic beyond her tongue-in-cheek egotism: the brand’s collections will arrive when she wants them to and you least expect it. “I get bored easily,” she said.

https://www.gq.com/story/fendi-luca-guadagnino