Carla Fendi, one of five sisters who
transformed her family's leather goods company into a global
fashion house, has died in Rome after a long illness.
She was 79.
Carla Fendi, together with sisters Paola, Anna, Franca and
Alda, opened the first Fendi store in the capital in 1964.
One year later, the sisters hired a young designer, Karl
Lagerfeld, paving the way for the house's ascent as a global
powerhouse with a focus on leather goods and luxury furs.
Creative director Lagerfeld last year marked his 50th
anniversary with the brand.
Carla's niece, Silvia Venturini Fendi, daughter of Anna
Fendi, has co-creatively directed the brand since 1994.
Fendi in the 1950s joined the small firm founded by parents
Adele and Edoardo in 1925 .
While other members of the family were regarded as the
company's creative forces, Carla mainly focused on coordinating
the brand's marketing and PR, contributing to the its success in
the United States in the 1960s.
Over time the label's logo of two Fs, one of them upside-down
and backwards, became an internationally recognized symbol for
luxury with a range of fashion must-haves to its name including
the famous Baguette Bag.
Carla was the company's president until the fashion house was
sold to French luxury group LVMH in 1999, after which she served
as honorary president.
In addition to her work with the brand, she set up in 2007
the Carla Fendi Foundation whose philanthropic work focused on
the preservation of "cultural heritage and values from the past"
and on guaranteeing "their continuity and future growth,
primarily in the art, literature, cinema, fashion, environment
and social sectors", according to its website.
The foundation, among others, has funded the restoration of
the Trevi Fountain in Rome in 2016 and sponsored musical
institution Accademia Nazionale Santa Cecilia since 2010 and the
Two Worlds Festival in Spoleto
Fendi used to stress that such initiatives were of "pure
philanthropism" and were not sponsorships.
"My husband pushed me to become a patron", she used to say of
her spouse Candido Speroni, who died in 2013 aged 83.
In 2010 the couple had celebrated 50 years of marriage.
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