Rome (AFP)

Fendi celebrated Karl Lagerfeld, the famous German stylist who disappeared in February in Rome, with whom the fashion house collaborated for half a century and to whom it offered the Temple of Venus as a decoration for a tribute parade.

Fifty-four silhouettes, as well as years of collaboration between Lagerfeld and Fendi, marched at the Temple of Venus, on the Palatine Hill, a vestige twice millennium for which the Italian company LVMH group announced to pay 2.5 million euros for its restoration.

Today there remains only the apse and some columns of this building built between 121 and 135 AD. JC, under the reign of Emperor Hadrian, and which was one of the largest temples of ancient Rome.

A place "chosen with Karl (Lagerfed) and which becomes the temple of what he bequeathed us," told AFP the president of Fendi, Serge Brunswick.

"The heart beats because the emotion is great to be here today without him," he added a few minutes of the show organized on one of the seven hills of Rome where had been invited 600 guests.

Romanesque detail in this autumn-winter 2019-2020 collection entitled "The Dawn of Romanity".

The marbles of the floors and decorations of Rome of all times are declined in light patterns on a silk trousers, a geometric interlacing of furs or a dress in veil.

- Trompes-he?

"I wanted to get this solid, hard material to a state of lightness," the designer Silvia Venturini Fendi, heir to the founders of the brand in 1925, Edoardo and Adele Fendi, told reporters.

The ancestral know-how of the arts and crafts of the architecture and decoration (marquetry, mosaic engravers) are superimposed on those of the sewing (embroiderers, dentists, weavers) involved in the realization of the creations.

As always, the work on fur is the workhorse of the House which was the first with Karl Lagerfeld to make it a light and malleable element.

But it is about renewable and durable fur, made from the work of cashmere or other materials, underlined Silvia Venturini Fendi.

Of the 54 silhouettes, 21 are new while the others have been redrawn from archival pieces, the designer added.

The prowess lies in the play of trompes-il's (mottles, perspective effect, illusion of a relief) that interact on a silk organza or a mosaic of fur.

It is also in the work of the materials where the feathers resemble the fur, the fur imitates the feather.

"Thanks to Fendi, the largest temple in ancient Rome, dedicated to eternal Rome and Venus, will return to its former glory," said Alfonsina Russo, director of the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum.

With this event, Fendi wanted to look to its origins while opening up to a rebirth, that of the post-Karl.

A challenge for this institution left orphaned by the death of the "Kaiser" whose relationship with Fendi represents a record of longevity in the history of fashion, and which Silvia Venturini Fendi ensures continuity.

? 2019 AFP