What qualifies one as a master of materials? For Fendi, it is perhaps its Fall/Winter ’23 Peekaboo variants: softened with shearling and made whole with artisanal interlace. More than just decorative, the techniques behind the stitch-aplenty offerings adopted by artistic director Silvia Venturini Fendi and team reflect the house’s continued diligence to detail.

For the season, the Peekaboo — which can be said to be the house’s hero bag of late — is dichotomous: moulded and formed in the use of dainty, fragile stripes of some of the more delicate materials but retain a firmness in endurance and toughness. All thanks to the artistry synonymous to the Fendi name.

The artisans’s delicate touch coalesces with the selected material’s lightness to yield the final, buoyant interlace offering. House artisans take on the challenge of balance in privy: wielding a firm hand to select, slice, and loom fine shearling and fur strips that eventually fasten and secure each component into the final purse form. The 630 perforations are hand-bored for the medium version before the manual interlace process is invited with the connecting slivers. Each stripe is meticulously curated and totalling 4.5 metres of lavish shearling. The ISeeU iteration is a similar reflection of this undertaking: a three-strand shearling braid is handcrafted to comprise its handle. Across the collection, inners are intentionally left unlined — a design decision that seems metaphorical for the maison. Intricate interlaces are exposed to the eye, reiterating Fendi’s testament to fashioning beauty that goes beyond the surface.

For a house with beginnings entrenched in delicate and ultra-luxurious materials, the Fendi Fall/Winter ’23 collection reveals its presiding advantage in working with intricacies. Its dominance in exquisites is chronicled in the family business first unspooled with atelier origins. Its current-day alchemist ability to transform even the gentlest of textiles to become the hero component for the season underscores this. In transcending artisanal standards of craft, there seems to be merit in the unparalleled perceptiveness borne through decades of virtuosity.