Fendi Handbags Show in Milan

If there is any brand in Milan whose runway theme is hard to predict it must be Fendi, whose spring 2011 collection shown Thursday, Sept. 23, was a masculine meets feminine conception with a very real difference.

Where in the hands of other, lesser, talents this would have meant mixing menswear fabrics with a female silhouette, at fashion Fendi handbags wholesale led to some strikingly new dramatic shapes and tonalities for the coming spring.

“It’s a geometric collection in soft materials, makes the whole thing float, and then, after all this beige, there was a need for color, which is why we used the bright colors seen at sunset,” Fendi’s creative director Karl Lagerfeld said post show.

“I did not want mark down Saint Laurent. There’s far too much of that around,” said Lagerfeld with a dismissive gesture, in reference to the dozens of shows in New York, London and Milan that evoked Yves Saint Laurent’s colors and cuts, in the wake of the French designer’s monumental retrospective this year in Paris’ Petit Palais.

Like the better-run Milan houses, Fendi telegraphed its intentions with the invitation, cream paper cutout and stained with what looked like cappuccino ? the same look that became the backdrop of show.

Shift dresses with huge curvy, priest’s robe-like sleeves, flounced blouses in voluminous proportions, asymmetrical shirts that looked like an upside down men’s jacket and some stunning looking woven leather skirts all felt fresh and new.

Fendi’s fabric innovations are so sophisticated they leave even experts puzzled. Critics sitting front row were divided over whether one dramatic red dress was in waxed taffeta or treated leather, though when Lagerfeld was asked, he responded: “Oh that, it was waxed nylon actually.”

His finale featured razor-thin rubber cocktail dresses finished with micro flower sewn as if to darn up old holes.

“They were darned by the atelier, as if people were sewing up old socks. It’s very Italian Neorealist, and very neoromantic at the same time,” said Lagerfeld, as he pulled up his ever-present designer replica handbags.

The show also featured notable new accessories, in particular some great bags in contrasting vivid Pop Art hues and clutches in contrasting strips of woven leather.

Mega sunglasses, an important new Italian trend, were also stars on this catwalk, as Fendi finally begins to move away from its signature double F logo print shades.