The Fendi Set

Charming talk at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival looking at the creative process behind Kim Jones’s first women’s wear collection for Fendi.

The collection and been inspired by and launched at Charleston during lockdown and a luscious book had been created to accompany it. The talk brought together a selection of the creatives on the project, Kim Jones the designer, Nikolai Von Bismarck the photographer and Demi Moore who had modelled for it. Yes that is Demi Moore the actress! The event was ably chaired by fashion journalist, Alexander Fury.

I was fascinated to hear how Jones had got to know Charleston as a teenager when he did etchings in the garden for his GCSE and how he came to appreciate the outsider nature of the place. He talked about how he had several copies of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Moore talked about how the books were at the photo shoot for the book.

Von Bismarck talked about how he used vintage cameras on the project to create photographs in a style that might have found in the house and about building sets in Paris based on Charleston and the Villa Borghese in Rome.

Throw in the fact Moore had a very tiny dog with her who nestled in her scarf and stole the show and a story heard after the event that Jones had bought copies of the expensive book for a group of fashion students who were there and had brought up pictures to be signed as they couldn’t afford the book.