Fashion's Roman Empresses

SPOTLIGHT

despite the imperial drapery, this phalanx of Roman matrons has not been around since the days of Livia. But to the well-furred international shopper, they are as eternal as the Colosseum. The Fendis—Franca, Paola, Alda, Carla, and Anna—have emerged, through unswerving consecration to the household gods of lavoro and famiglia, as high fashion's most indomitable sister act. They were bom in the age of Mussolini, to Adele, a business-minded matriarch with a deft hand for animal skins, who founded a small shop in 1925.

Today, with design chameleon Karl Lagerfeld (who photographed, and designed, the Calpumia costumes here) and a third generation of Fendis, the steel-spined sorelle have created a $200 million empire (furs, status luggage, furniture, ready-to-wear, et alia). Obstacles have been dispatched with the tactical skill of the Caesars. For these days of animal-rights activists, they have created an uncanny collection of furs that don't look like furs. And when they fell out over marketing with their longtime New York bastion, Bergdorf Goodman, they took their rumored $1.5 million worth of business elsewhere. This fall, the new American flagship Fendi store—22,000 square feet of prime Fifth Avenue real estate—is set to open, one block away from BergdorPs.

BEN BRANTLEY