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INSIDE THE MAKINGS OF ‘THE FENDI SET’

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“All was still now. It was near midnight. The moon rose slowly over the weald. Its light raised a phantom castle upon earth. There stood the great house with all its windows robed in silver. Of wall or substance there was none. All was phantom. All was still. All was lit as for the coming of a dead Queen. Gazing below her, Orlando saw dark plumes tossing in the courtyard, and torches flickering and shadows kneeling. A Queen once more stepped from her chariot.” ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf, 1928

This is a story about how the legendary Bloomsbury Group’s many lives, loves, shadows and light-filled darknesses continue to influence a swathe of creative minds. In the foreword to The Fendi Set: From Bloomsbury to Borghese, the lush new book by artistic director Kim Jones and photographer Nikolai von Bismarck, Jones talks to Jerry Stafford, a stylist and creative direction consultant. He explains that the inspiration for his debut couture collection with Fendi came to him when he was sitting in his library, surrounded by his collection, noting Orlando specifically. “I am privileged to own [the author, and inspiration for Orlando] Vita Sackville-West’s personal copy of Woolf’s novel,” he says, “and I felt it was the perfect inspiration and articulation for the collection and its presentation. My own relationship to the area where the artists lived and worked added another very personal dimension. It made sense for me to see the female members of the group as strong, independent women who, coincidentally were working at the same time as the Fendi family business was founded in Rome in 1925, an equally powerful dynasty of women. There was a mirroring.”

Jones subsequently discovered a series of exhibition catalogues with paintings by Vanessa Bell, Woolf’s sister, of the Borghese Gardens in Rome. “I began to explore the relationship which Virginia, Vanessa and [the painter, and Bell’s lover] Duncan Grant had with Rome, and this journey from England to Rome became central to the collection’s narrative.” Enter Nikolai von Bismarck, who had already been invited behind the scenes to photograph the fittings for Jones, capturing the designer at work in the atelier with stylist Alister Mackie and Lady Amanda Harlech – whom we both agree would almost certainly have been in the Bloomsbury Set. It was here that The Fendi Set really began to roll.

Von Bismarck knew of Jones’ passion for the Bloomsbury Set, but didn’t fully understand the extent of his obsession, which began when the designer was just 14 and has seen him amass an enviable collection of first editions, paintings and furniture by the group’s members. “Asking me to be involved was a great honour; it was amazing to be able to dive in and be given so much time as well,” says the photographer. “Kim’s very trusting and decisive, and once we worked out the parameters of it all together and that we were going to establish links between the Bloomsbury Set and Rome, and that Amanda should style it, he just said to me that he wanted to be surprised by the end result.”

The project took 11 months to complete. “The last year has been obsessively about this,” says von Bismarck, talking to me from his studio. “It was incredible to go down to Charleston [the East Sussex home of Grant and Bell] and learn about everything from the aesthetic and the way it’s painted – there’s hardly any white in the house at all – and then go to Knole [the Kent home where Sackville-West grew up], which Orlando’s estate in the book was based on. And then to Monk’s House [the 16th-century Sussex home of Woolf and her husband, Leonard] – seeing the beds they slept on, these single beds, was quite strange. Then going on the walks they went on, reading the books… It’s been fascinating.”

Von Bismarck’s desire was to infuse the soft chiaroscuro of their worlds with his own shadowy palette. In pursuit of this atmospheric patina, the Fresson technique of charcoal photographic printing was used, invented in the 1890s by Théodore-Henri Fresson, who in turn passed on his secret technique to future generations of Fressons. The Fresson colour charcoal print was introduced in 1952; each one was done by hand in natural light and many of the images took weeks to complete. Introducing an “element of risk”, von Bismarck also used expired Polaroid film, which was “quite painterly, with splatters of red and weird greens; [it] felt very much in this same world”. The cameras he used included a 4×5 Zone VI, 4×5 Toyo field, 8×10 Sinar, Mamiya RZ67, Hasselblad 503, 180 Polaroid Landcamera, Bolex Super 8, Contax G2 and an array of lenses.

Von Bismarck’s photography has perfectly captured the magical, indecipherable spirits at play in all this history. “I love the ethereal feeling. I think the image of Virginia’s bed is quite haunting,” he says. Orlando is what they had in mind when they shot Gwendoline Christie at Sissinghurst Castle [the home of Sackville-West] and at Knole. “We had this ghost of Orlando and this ghost of Vita and they’d be going through Knole… It was that kind of sense that [Woolf] was present but not present, there was a ghostly feel to it. There was also a sense of timelessness and a reference to [the photographer] Julia Margaret Cameron, who was Virginia’s great aunt.”

Of all the houses, it was Charleston, where many of the polyamorous intrigues the Bloomsbury Set became known for played out, that resonated most deeply. During his first visit, von Bismarck got a strong sense “of a lot of pain and lots of peering through keyholes, the envy and jealousy. It was at times gloomy, but at times wonderful; there must have been a lot of fun but also a lot of arguments and fighting. I think it’s the collaborative spirit they had that was absolutely fascinating [and] created such an incredible body of work.” He also visited the nearby St Michael and All Angels Church in Berwick, which has a pulpit festooned with flowers and murals depicting scenes from the Bible, painted by Grant, Bell and her son, Quentin, in 1941. “There are images of First World War nurses, too. It’s so gorgeously done, and there is a beautiful graveyard.”

Jones’ first edition of Orlando is inscribed by Virginia Woolf and supplies the scanned copy running alongside the photographs of the couture collection taken at the Villa Borghese in Rome. They wanted the words to lead this chapter of the photography. Although von Bismarck had photographed many of the subjects before, including his partner Kate Moss, he had never shot Miriam Sánchez (who features on the cover), Delfina Delettrez Fendi, Leonetta Luciano Fendi or Christy Turlington before. “Christy was amazing, so beautiful. She just walked into the room and sat down in the perfect position; I didn’t have to do much except take the photograph, which took a while because I was using the 10×8 camera where you put the cloth over it and say ‘please hold still’ for 10 minutes. And then half the time the film was coming out black because it was from the 1980s.” He also photographed three generations of Fendi family members, including the brand’s co-creator Anna and its creative director, her daughter Silvia, at the Villa Medici.

The ideas for the book kept coming. Von Bismarck: “We found out that Duncan Grant once had a studio on the Via Margutta in Rome. So when Jerry and I started talking about expanding the book and Kim’s vision for the show, we went to the Anglican cemetery in Rome and saw the graves of Shelley and Keats. Jerry remembered they were great heroes of Virginia Woolf, so we photographed that too. We knew we had to find quotes and letters and references back to Italy – how inspired [art critic, and Bell’s husband] Clive Bell was by it, and how Vanessa had been there in 1902 and stayed at the Hotel Russia, writing letters to Virginia describing what she saw. Suddenly all these things were coming to life and we were able to tie it all in.”

The Charleston Trust helped out, with Dr Darren Clark providing Italian references and Dr Mark Hussey, a leading academic on the Bloomsbury Set, unearthing relevant letters in the New York Public Library. “When we started scanning those and trying to get permission it was a lot, but it was worth it.” All of this was achieved in lockdown.

Von Bismarck has closed Orlando, but has he closed the The Fendi Set? “Not quite,” he says. “I love this project, it’s been amazing. I think the essence of the book is timelessness; I love the idea the pictures won’t lose anything in 20 years’ time – hopefully!” Favourite image for the walls of his Bayswater studio? He laughs wryly. “When I photographed David Bailey for The Dior Sessions [which Jones also commissioned], he came in to my studio and saw I’d blown up a massive photo I’d taken in Africa and said, ‘You’ve got enough of a fucking ego!’ I said, ‘coming from you…’ And we laughed. So, I don’t know if I would put one on the wall. But some of the 10×8 Polaroids of Delfina – I love those, and I also love the pictures of England.”

Photography by Nikolai von Bismarck. Taken from Issue 19 of 10 Magazine Australia – FUTURE, BALANCE, HEALING – out NOW.

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