Born in London. Inspired by Rome.
In October we flew to Rome for two days. The plan was simple: see F/KL '85 at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, walk the city, come home. We came home with a notebook full of other people's handwriting, and a collection that had quietly changed shape on the flight back to London.
This is the story of that notebook.
The man who made fur weightless
In 1965 the five Fendi sisters, Paola, Anna, Franca, Carla and Alda, invited a young German designer to work with their Roman fur house. Karl Lagerfeld stayed for fifty-four years. It remains one of the longest partnerships between a designer and a maison in the history of fashion.
What he did with fur was close to heresy at the time. He refused to treat it as a status object. He treated it as a textile: shaved it, dyed it, perforated it, pleated it, set it in intarsia like marquetry, made it light enough to move. Even the double F he drew for the house is usually said to stand for Fun Fur. Irreverence, executed with absolute rigour. That tension is the whole lesson.
In 1985 the same museum in Rome marked twenty years of that collaboration. F/KL '85 returns to that moment, and it does something unusual for a fashion exhibition: it shows the work behind the work.
Reading the margins
Most people photograph the garments. We spent most of our time reading the margins. Karl annotated his sketches in French, the ateliers added Italian beneath, and the reference codes were marked in red pencil. A few lines we copied down, in our own translation:
"A coat in two furs, the same colour if possible, or black and white. But above all, with opposite textures." 1972
"The pullover is in the same tone."
"Even in a sensible collection, you need some very short things." 1971
"A fox cape, in dégradé." 1970
"The ball volume will be very much the fashion." 1980
"Lagerfeld dreams, and the computer records his designs." 1985
That last line stopped us. FAMRIXY began, years ago, as an idea for a virtual fashion world: a place where people could try on clothes, meet each other and watch a runway through a headset. The name still carries it. FAM for family, and the X and Y of a coordinate grid. Reading Karl imagine a computer recording his dreams in 1985 felt less like history and more like a conversation.
The pattern room
The room that moved us most had no garments in it at all. Just paper. Cartamodelli, the original cutting patterns, pinned flat under glass: numbered pieces, notches, grain lines, and small arrows marked verso del pelo, the direction the fur must fall. A glove reduced to a pale paper hand. A sleeve labelled simply manica con lavorazione, sleeve with workmanship.
It is the least glamorous room in the building and the most honest one. Everything you admire on the floor below was decided here, in pencil, in millimetres. We left convinced that the invisible part of a garment is the part that decides everything else.
How we design, and how we argue
Our process is less romantic than people imagine. It starts on paper and on a wall. References go up, then most of them come down. Every idea has to survive three questions before it earns a toile: does it need to exist, does it say something true about where we have been, and would we still wear it in ten years?
Then we argue. Usually about millimetres. Where exactly a stone should sit relative to the collar. Whether a line of crystals reads as architecture or as decoration. Whether something is restrained or simply timid. We test on practice garments before we touch a real piece, and we wash every test twice, because a finish that does not survive a 30°C cycle is not a finish.
What we are taking from him
Not his signature, not his silhouettes, and certainly not his name on our clothes. What we are taking is a way of thinking.
Same colour, opposite textures. FW26/27 is built on a single motif rendered twice: once in tonal thread, once in crystal. One design, two textures. Karl's coat of two furs, translated into knitwear.
The architecture of the city. Rome is a city of arches, and every arch is held by one stone at its crown: the keystone. Our collection carries that idea literally. A single Swarovski crystal, in deep Siam red, sits where the keystone would.
The red pencil. The colour Karl's studio used to code its sketches has become the colour we sign with. One red detail on every piece. Never more.
Dégradé and restraint. Where stones appear, they thin out the way light fades on old marble. Sprezzatura, the Italians call it: the craft is total, and it should never look like effort.
Very short things. Yes, even a sensible collection needs them. Our knits are cropped, boxy and heavyweight, cut to sit at the waist.
We are not showing the full pieces yet. What you see here are fragments from the studio, on purpose.
The FW26/27 calendar
- Week 1, 27 October to 2 November. The atelier. Blanks ordered, crystals sourced, first placement trials on practice garments.
- Week 2, 3 to 9 November. Toile and test. Stones set by hand in the UK, double wash tests, first studio review.
- Week 3, 10 to 16 November. The shoot. Real pieces on real people, and the campaign film.
- Week 4, 17 to 23 November. Final review. Edits, sizing, and early access for our list.
- Tuesday 24 November, 7pm UK. FW26/27 opens.
If something is not right, we move the date. Never the standard.
A note of thanks
Fashion has a habit of forgetting where its ideas come from. We would rather say it plainly: this collection exists because of an afternoon spent reading a great designer's margins. Everything we make is our own, and every piece is better for having stood in that room.
Born in London. Inspired by Rome. See you on the 24th.
Notes, sketches and garments referenced: Karl Lagerfeld for Fendi, as shown in F/KL '85, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome. Translations are our own. FAMRIXY is an independent London label and has no affiliation with Fendi.