| Maria Grazia Chiuri unveiled her debut Fendi Fall 2026 Couture collection in Rome at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. The collection features fluid, relaxed silhouettes, high-waisted trousers, and kimono-inspired outerwear emphasizing fur and leather intarsia craftsmanship, anchored in a historic black and parchment color palette. |
Fendi’s Fall 2026 Haute Couture collection arrived in Rome this week, and Maria Grazia Chiuri wasted no time proving that she had something specific to say. Her debut for the house unfolded inside the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, a building she has long admired. This choice signaled her intentions before a single look appeared on the runway. Rather than leaning on nostalgia, Chiuri paired her show with a restaged 1985 exhibition that Karl Lagerfeld had organized for his twentieth anniversary at Fendi. This gesture read less like an homage and more like a quiet negotiation between two eras of the same house.
Chiuri returned to Rome after nearly a decade at Dior, and the shift is evident. While her work in Paris often revolved around structure and architectural rigor, her Fendi debut felt looser and softer, more attuned to how fabric moves on a real body. She has said that couture at Fendi begins with the material rather than the silhouette, an idea that shaped nearly everything on the runway. The fur, leather, and textile ateliers collaborated to produce pieces that appeared simple until you got close enough to see the intarsia work inside them.
The opening look, a caftan pieced from black-and-white stripes, drew inspiration from a garment worn a century ago by Emilie Flöge, the designer and companion of Gustav Klimt. This set the tone for the entire show: unfussy, unwaisted shapes that skimmed the body instead of confining it. Trousers, rarely seen on couture runways, appeared with a high waist and relaxed flare. This gave the collection a sense of ease that felt almost radical compared to the more elaborate designs seen elsewhere in Paris this season.
Chiuri leaned heavily on kimono-inspired jackets and coats, some in velvet and others in grain de poudre. All were cut with a roominess that avoided anything stiff or overworked. A trench made from double-worked cashmere that was left unlined and finished with fur and leather intarsia captured her approach well. Nothing about it screamed for attention. It simply held up under scrutiny, which is arguably the more difficult trick to pull off.
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Black and parchment anchored the color story, nodding to Fendi’s origins as a luggage and leather goods company long before couture came into the picture. A parchment pantsuit clearly referenced the 1970s, Marlene Dietrich, and the five Fendi sisters who ran the company with independence ahead of its time. Chiuri has spoken about those women as a kind of personal compass, and their influence was evident not as costume, but as attitude, expressed through tailoring that never tried too hard.
A standout floor-length coat constructed from leftover fur and leather scraps arranged into a floral pattern demonstrated what happens when a company allows its artisans to experiment without a looming deadline. Chiuri credited that freedom for much of what appeared on the runway, and it showed in details that rewarded a second look rather than a first glance.
