Fendi Returns to Rome for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s First Couture Show
Fendi will stage Maria Grazia Chiuri’s first couture presentation for the house at Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea on July 9, pairing the runway with a private preview of an exhibition devoted to the brand’s history with Karl Lagerfeld. The exhibition, titled “After un Percorso di Lavoro. Fendi/Karl Lagerfeld 1985. After Steps Through Work.”, opens to the public on July 10 and remains on view through Oct. 25.
The announcement places Chiuri, who joined Fendi as chief creative officer last October after leaving Dior, at the center of a setting that has long served the house as more than a backdrop. This will be Fendi’s third couture show in Rome. The brand previously presented couture at the Trevi Fountain in 2016 and at the Temple of Venus in 2019, turning some of the city’s most recognizable monuments into stages for its work.
The 2016 show, then called Haute Fourrure, was designed by the late Karl Lagerfeld for fall 2016 and marked Fendi’s 90th anniversary. It was staged at the Trevi Fountain, where the catwalk was placed directly on the water, and was accompanied by an exhibition at the company’s headquarters in the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana. In 2019, the house returned to Rome with a show designed by Silvia Venturini Fendi, ahead of Kim Jones’s arrival in 2020, at the Temple of Venus. For that project, Fendi pledged a 2.5-million-euro donation toward restoration work.
Chiuri has her own history of using Rome as a setting for fashion and cultural patronage. She chose the city for her final Dior collection last year, showing cruise 2026 and haute couture looks at Villa Albani Torlonia. She has also spent the past five years restoring Teatro della Cometa, underscoring how closely her work continues to link fashion, architecture, and the city’s layered artistic past.
In Rome, Fendi is again treating couture as a civic gesture as much as a fashion event — one that folds museum culture, heritage, and brand memory into a single evening.
