The FENDI Historical Archive preserves about 10,000 products and a paper archive consisting of over 100,000 historical documents and photos and about 35,000 original sketches by Karl Lagerfeld, made from 1965 to 2019.
Those products are unique pieces of clothing, leather goods, footwear and garments that have revolutionized the world of fur, which today represent the history of Italian fashion since 1925, the year the foundation of the FENDI Maison.
The FENDI Historical Archive is located inside the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, the Headquarters of the Maison in the EUR district in Rome. The Archive was created with the aim of preserving FENDI’s unique creations and promoting its creative heritage, making it available both to a select audience and to its own designers as a source of inspiration.
The FENDI Historical Archive uses its assets for the initiatives promoted by the Maison and collaborates with the most important museums worldwide. The collaborations consist of loans for exhibitions and events and plans regular donations to enrich the most important permanent fashion and design collections. The staff organizes guided tours for groups of journalists, schools and for cinema and theater costume designers, with whom they constantly collaborate.
The FENDI Heritage collection has more of 10,000 products and is yearly enriched with an average of 500 new pieces from Men’s, Women’s and Children’s collections. These are furs, trials of fur processing on looms, bags, small leather goods, footwear, accessories, costume jewelry, books, perfumes and special collaborations, such as the Baguette and Peekaboo bags customized by artists. The Archive also has an entire section dedicated to the most prestigious cinematographic and theatrical collaborations.