Women's Lifestyle September 23, 2026 0 Comments

Why Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Fendi Comeback Is the Game-Changer No One Saw Coming—And What It Means for YOU!

Ever caught yourself obsessing over a piece of jewelry so much that it feels like part of your very soul? That’s exactly the vibe when you meet Maria Grazia Chiuri at Fendi’s headquarters just a stone’s throw south of Rome’s heart. Sporting these colossal samurai belt clasp rings—yep, actual samurai belt clasps from Kyoto, no less—paired with antique pearl beauties, she jingles with a charm necklace that’s been in her family for generations. It’s not just about accessorizing; it’s about symmetry, story, and serious attachment. Maria gets it—style ain’t just what you throw on; it’s what you live with, treasure, and let evolve alongside you. And honestly, that mindset? It’s what transforms fashion from fleeting trends into timeless expressions of self. Ready to dive into the world of a designer who embodies longevity, meaning, and a splash of familial flair in every stitch? Let’s unravel the tale of Chiuri’s return to Fendi, her couture debut, and her vision of fashion that’s all about humanity—not just brands. LEARN MORE

7 min read

When I meet Maria Grazia Chiuri at the Fendi headquarters just south of Rome’s center, the first thing I clock is her jewelry. She is wearing two giant, oval-shaped statement rings, one on each hand, that she had made from the clasps of samurai belts she found on a trip to Kyoto. Alongside them are two other antique rings, also worn on both hands, each with a large iridescent pearl set in an articulated crystal band. Chiuri plays with them as she explains their origins. She reworked the designs with a friend who owns a small atelier in Rome, she says. She is also wearing a tangle of charm necklaces, one of which features a monkey sitting and looking off to the side, carved from coral and hung on a thick gold chain. It belonged to her grandmother. “I am a little bit obsessed,” she says, jingling as she moves. “I never change my jewelry. It’s very symmetric. In Rome, you can only be symmetric.”

Chiuri understands the importance of being enamored with the things we wear. It’s an idea that has always fueled her work as a designer. “If you want to create your own style, you think in this way,” she explains. “For me, it always made more sense to buy something that I think I’ll maintain long term, something that is part of a personal story. To me, that’s always a good idea.”

Lucrezia Ganazzoli

Maria Grazia Chiuri on the steps of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. All clothing and jewelry, her own.

It’s a sweltering July day on the eve of Chiuri’s first couture show for Fendi—a house where she spent a decade earlier in her career and returned last year as chief creative officer. We’re inside the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, a palatial travertine building with 216 arches carved into the facade in the southern section of the Eternal City. Inside, there’s more marble everywhere, juxtaposed with the industrial-style trappings of the modern open-plan Fendi office and design spaces. The 62-year-old Chiuri looks relaxed and at ease. She is wearing an elegantly rumpled white shirt, with a couple of buttons undone at both the top and bottom, and the perfect pair of belted baggy jeans.

If Chiuri appears right at home, it’s because she is—back at Fendi, where she designed accessories from 1989 to 1999, and working full-time in Rome, where she was born and raised. After nearly a decade at Dior in Paris, she is once again building her professional life in the city where it all began, where her family lives, and where she first cut her teeth in fashion within the collaborative world of the five Fendi sisters: Paola, Franca, Carla, Alda, and Anna. They had inherited the house from their parents, Adele and Edoardo Fendi, who established it in Rome in 1925.

Model in a sheer black lace dress standing against a textured white background.

Lucrezia Ganazzoli

Dress, Fendi Couture.

Model in a dramatic black outfit with fringes, posing against a textured background.

Lucrezia Ganazzoli

Cape and trousers, Fendi Couture.

In the postwar decades, the five sisters operated Fendi as a kind of family-run collective, with each taking responsibility for different parts of the business while sharing creative authority. At a time when the people in creative and commercial roles in fashion were still overwhelmingly male, that alone was radical; even after they brought in Karl Lagerfeld as the designer in 1965, they retained a strong collective identity and collaborative approach to work, which continued into Chiuri’s tenure.

It was an environment that left a lasting impression on Chiuri. “Nothing was impossible for them,” she says. “We had to test. We had to try. They really believed in that, and they found it exciting.”

Chiuri’s first stint at Fendi was in the accessories division, where she worked with Silvia Venturini Fendi, a third-generation member of the family and the longtime creative force behind the house’s accessories. That period included the development of the Baguette, the compact shoulder bag that became one of fashion’s first true It bags when it was released in 1997. (The house recently relaunched it upon Chiuri’s return.) She then spent 17 years at Valentino, working under Valentino Garavani before being named co-creative director in 2008 alongside another former Fendi collaborator, Pierpaolo Piccioli, now creative director of Balenciaga. Most recently, she served as creative director of Dior, the first woman to lead the house. Her collections there often spoke to feminist ideals of dress—movement, liberation, even political messaging about choice and freedom—and featured collaborations with artists and artisans, many of them women, using her platform to celebrate their work and voices.

Lucrezia Ganazzoli

Coat, bra, and trousers, Fendi Couture.

Chiuri’s success as a designer has long been rooted in creating clothes that are meant to stay with us—to become part of how we dress, express ourselves, and change over time. Nowhere was this more evident than in her debut couture collection for Fendi, shown at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in July.

The show was held in tandem with the restaging of a 1985 exhibition showcasing Lagerfeld’s work at Fendi, where he served as creative director until his death in 2019—an astounding 54-year run. The survey, which runs through October 25, explores how Lagerfeld helped to transform a humble Italian leather and fur label into a globally renowned luxury brand. The original exhibition was controversial at the time because many in the cultural landscape thought it was wrong to place fashion in the same physical space as fine art.

Chiuri’s opening look in the couture show—a graphic, sheer black-and-white-striped caftan—referenced a similar Fendi dress from Lagerfeld’s tenure that evoked the radical, corset-free designs of Emilie Flöge, the Viennese designer and businesswoman who was also artist Gustav Klimt’s muse.

“The COMPLEXITY of this TIME for our INDUSTRY is HUGE, but I honestly BELIEVE that FASHION is about HUMANITY.”

While working on the couture collection, Chiuri integrated the Fendi ateliers, resulting in pieces that blended materials like leather, lace, and fur with rigorous tailoring. There were no restrictive corsets or boning. The strength was felt through the movement. “I think lightness is what attracts me to this job,” Chiuri says. “All the materials we chose for this collection were very light and soft because it gives you a feeling of sensuality. The first thing when you put on clothes, before you see them, is to feel them on your body. And in many ways, you can transform yourself with clothes and embody yourself, but in a light way.”

Chiuri focused on letting the body inform the designs, emphasizing that clothes—even couture—are meant to be worn. “Everything was so disciplined and thoughtful,” Sarah Jessica Parker, patron saint of the Fendi Baguette, tells me a few weeks after the show, which she attended. “Even as young as Maria Grazia was when I first came to know her, she’s always felt like an adult to me. Even in her most flowery and embroidered and maximalist moments, she has felt like a real grownup with such skill.”

Lucrezia Ganazzoli

Collaboration is one of the main drivers of Chiuri’s work. That was another reason she was drawn back to Fendi, where the five sisters liked to operate in the background but did so in transformative ways—even in bringing in a designer like Lagerfeld and giving him the space to create. “They were visionaries,” Chiuri says. “The sisters always put themselves in second level. They never showed themselves too much. But they were crucial. They were very open with the staff, and at the time this was very unusual, when there were many companies with the founders still at the helm and designers with more ego.”

It’s an approach that Chiuri believes allowed her to grow creatively and one she has tried to carry forward throughout her career by remaining open to other people’s ideas and taking the time to listen to and learn from the members of the ateliers and her team. “You aren’t scared of anything,” she says. “Because you grew up with these women who said, ‘No, no—it is possible.’”

Model posing in a stylish blouse with intricate detailing, paired with tailored black trousers against a decorative backdrop.

Lucrezia Ganazzoli

Shirt and trousers, Fendi Couture.

Model wearing a black bra and wide-legged pants, with earbuds, standing against a backdrop of white walls and windows.

Lucrezia Ganazzoli

Brassiere and trousers, Fendi Couture.

The phrase “Less I, More Us” was painted across the stark gray floor of Chiuri’s first ready-to-wear show for Fendi last February. It was a declaration of “less logo, more silhouette” for her fall 2026 collection—one rendered almost entirely in black and white, with beautifully cut suits, sensual lace and silk slips and pencil skirts, and several iterations of the classic white button-down.

Chiuri enlisted the Naples-born multidisciplinary artist Sofia Ginevra Gianni, a.k.a. SAGG Napoli, to translate the show’s collective ethos into a series of sloganed scarves and T-shirts. She has long been a fan of Gianni’s work, which examines subjects like gender, class, agency, and autonomy.

“‘Less I, More Us’ is not just a slogan; it describes her way of working,” Gianni says. “She sees fashion as a cultural language that can carry political, emotional, and historical meaning while remaining connected to the body.”

Model in a stylish, sheer gown with geometric patterns posing against a modern glass facade.

Lucrezia Ganazzoli

Dress, Fendi Couture.

A young woman poses with arms raised, wearing a patterned dress against a textured blue background.

Lucrezia Ganazzoli

Top, Fendi Couture.

Chiuri is focused on transforming Fendi in other ways too. She is working with the company to reduce product offerings each season and give the pieces a longer life in stores, in an effort to shift the emphasis to classics versus one-off, seasonal pieces. The goal, she says, is to build something lasting around clothes that live with you and endure—which she believes is central to Fendi. “The complexity of this time for our industry is huge, but I honestly believe that fashion is about humanity,” she says. “It’s not about brands. It’s about clothes.”

Being in Rome again, at a relative distance from fashion’s centers of gravity, has left her feeling renewed and energized. “You feel less of the pressure of the system,” she says. “There is this kind of idealistic sense that you’re working toward eternity, to create something that can last for an eternity,” she offers.

“It’s very ambitious!” Chiuri says. But, for her, not impossible.

This story appears in the October issue of Harper’s Bazaar.

Model: Anne Floor; hair: Dushan Petrovich; makeup: Josh Bart
for Lisa Eldridge; manicure: Delphine Aïssi for Manucurist; casting: Anita Bitton at the Establishment; production: Olympìque Video; directing and editing: Lucrezia Ganazzoli; color: Daniel Pallucca