Fashion Wire Daily - New York - At Wednesday afternoon's press preview of the new Fendi flagship store at 677 Fifth Avenue, a handful of guests were invited to stop by for tea and a chat with Fendi CEO Michael Burke and architect Peter Marino, the man responsible for designing the bi-level 7,500-sq. foot boutique (he also designed the new Fendi store in Rome, as well as the Louis Vuitton flagships in Paris and New York, Dior and Donna Karan outposts, and various Chanel buildings across the world).
At Marino's latest venture, guests enter a bright and airy space that begins with a section devoted to Fendi's many "It" bags (from the classic Baguette to the B. Fendi to the Spy Bag), and segues to first floor areas devoted to sunglasses, shoes and a capsule menswear collection (fragrance and fine jewelry lines will be introduced within the next 18 months and a full-scale menswear collection will roll out by 2007).
"Everything we tried to do with Fendi was about opposites, because of their Janus-faced image," a black leather-clad Marino told Fashion Wire Daily while handsome waiters from Acquolina Catering passed by with trays of peach iced tea, asparagus, cheese and radicchio finger sandwiches, apple raisin and three-berry tarts, cream-filled pastry puffs and decadent dark and white chocolate cakes. "The house of Fendi is all about dichotomy, so I tried to [interpret] that, physically and metaphysically, on many, many levels."
To wit: every wall of the store is divided exactly in half, with the top half being smooth and curvy and the bottom half being textured and straight (or vice versa). Polished dark gray San Pietrini stone flooring plays off against matte beige Roman Travertine walls and shelving. Baroque details rub elbows with modern fixtures (think: metal and mink curtains). Heavily beaded, hand-crafted Fendi bags and shoes are displayed in stark white backlit cubes. And traditional materials are manufactured in entirely new ways--such as the soaring "virtual waterfall" of illuminated cascading Fendi "F"s that recalls the fountains of ancient Rome in a decidedly 21st century manner and acts as a backdrop for the bronze-railed glass staircase ("We had to have a Roman fountain, but I didn't want real falling water or it would just look like a hotel lobby," laughed Marino).
And then there are the curved slabs of Travertine stone that float near the ceiling, an effect achieved by using a state-of-the-art laser to cut the massive stone into wafer thin slabs that could be manipulated to hang like clouds above calcified plaster panels, the latter of which bear grooves that were raked by Marino's own fingers, furthering the store's handmade-meets-high-tech juxtaposition, and echoing the artisanal hand found in all Fendi products, be it a limited-edition $33,000 squirrel-embroidered Spy Bag, a $30,000 gray persian lamb men's trench coat, a pair of elaborately beaded $3,000 boots or $200 sunglasses (all of which are displayed here to highly covetable effect).
"I'll tell you how it's done," Marino said of his floating Travertine wonders. "I do a sketch, the sketch goes into the computer, the computer cuts a CD, the CD is given to this new machine in Carrara [Italy] that has a laser attached to it, and the laser cuts the block of stone based on the CD based on my sketch."
Wow.
"Wow is right," he laughed delightedly. "You couldn't have even done this a year ago because the machine is only a year old! So just like Fendi is always trying new, innovative technology for fur--they're the ones who made a whole fur coat that weighed as much as a piece of paper, compared to my mother's mink, which weighed more than a Mercedes--I wanted to [try] new things here, too."
Along with the new, comes a bit of the old (make that traditional) in the form of discreet images of classic Italian-centric movies, such as "Roman Holiday" that are projected onto the store's upper walls. And then there are the Fendi designs themselves, of course--the weightless mink coat, the au courant shoes and bags that still painstakingly stitched, beaded and embroidered by hand--all of which merge old-world tradition with new-world technique. But then, we'd expect nothing less from the luxury goods company that recently celebrated its 80th anniversary.
"It's our business we have to reinvent ourselves constantly," CEO Michael Burke told FWD when we caught up with him on the second floor. "And while we're not inventing a new Fendi, we're updating it and keeping it contemporary. The old concept was starting to feel dated and was not entirely in tune with the Fendi values. It was a little too minimalistic, stark, cold--all things that Fendi is not. We're about fun, sensuality, sunshine, smiling. We don't take ourselves too seriously. And it's very very luxurious and light."
Burke stood in the center of the second floor women's ready-to-wear department and gestured to the Fendi Casa home decor section to his right (Swarovski crystal double-F desk lamp, anyone?) and the Selleria section in the middle of the store, which led to a dark-paneled VIP room overlooking Fifth Avenue, where fur throws and mink or laser-cut leather Spy bags were casually strewn across Travertine tables.
And what did he think of the fact that his new store had a breathtaking view of St. Thomas Church across the street?
"It's two different religions," Burke replied with a laugh. "You have to respect all religions. And this is the religion of shopping."
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