The past two years have been good to the company. It has emerged from the turbulence surrounding its four-year transition from a family-owned firm to an LVMH subsidiary. In spite of the success of Venturini's accessories, the company had overextended itself by Return to Tiffany Heart tag necklace opening more than a hundred shops during the post-Baguette years. Squabbles within the Fendi clan--the five Return to Tiffany Heart tag choker and their families added up to about thirty shareholders, which in 1999 agreed to sell a fifty-one-per-cent stake to LVMH's joint venture with Prada--added to the muddle.
The company had no central headquarters, working conditions were poor, and Fendi risked losing Lagerfeld, who reportedly didn't get along with Prada's C.E.O., Patrizio Bertelli. The turnaround began in 2004, when Arnault bought out the Paloma Picasso Loving Heart lariat Fendi and Prada shares, and set about revamping his billion-dollar investment, restructuring the retail network, opening a palatial Manhattan store designed by Peter Marino, and creating a symbolic Elsa Starfish for the company by transforming the Palazzo Boncompagni Ludovisi into the Palazzo Fendi.
Guiding the process was Michael Burke, Fendi's new C.E.O. and a onetime LVMH manager, who had helped reinvent Dior with the Heart and Tiffany Box Charm John Galliano. It was Burke, an intense, soft-spoken man, half American, half French, who kept Lagerfeld in the fold. Now Venturini and Lagerfeld share the same enormous desk in the loftlike studio.
The past two years have been good to the company. It has emerged from the turbulence surrounding its four-year transition from a family-owned firm to an LVMH subsidiary. In spite of the success of Venturini's accessories, the company had overextended itself by Return to Tiffany Heart tag necklace opening more than a hundred shops during the post-Baguette years. Squabbles within the Fendi clan--the five Return to Tiffany Heart tag choker and their families added up to about thirty shareholders, which in 1999 agreed to sell a fifty-one-per-cent stake to LVMH's joint venture with Prada--added to the muddle.
The company had no central headquarters, working conditions were poor, and Fendi risked losing Lagerfeld, who reportedly didn't get along with Prada's C.E.O., Patrizio Bertelli. The turnaround began in 2004, when Arnault bought out the Paloma Picasso Loving Heart lariat Fendi and Prada shares, and set about revamping his billion-dollar investment, restructuring the retail network, opening a palatial Manhattan store designed by Peter Marino, and creating a symbolic Elsa Starfish for the company by transforming the Palazzo Boncompagni Ludovisi into the Palazzo Fendi.
Guiding the process was Michael Burke, Fendi's new C.E.O. and a onetime LVMH manager, who had helped reinvent Dior with the Heart and Tiffany Box Charm John Galliano. It was Burke, an intense, soft-spoken man, half American, half French, who kept Lagerfeld in the fold. Now Venturini and Lagerfeld share the same enormous desk in the loftlike studio.
The past two years have been good to the company. It has emerged from the turbulence surrounding its four-year transition from a family-owned firm to an LVMH subsidiary. In spite of the success of Venturini's accessories, the company had overextended itself by Return to Tiffany Heart tag necklace opening more than a hundred shops during the post-Baguette years. Squabbles within the Fendi clan--the five Return to Tiffany Heart tag choker and their families added up to about thirty shareholders, which in 1999 agreed to sell a fifty-one-per-cent stake to LVMH's joint venture with Prada--added to the muddle.
The company had no central headquarters, working conditions were poor, and Fendi risked losing Lagerfeld, who reportedly didn't get along with Prada's C.E.O., Patrizio Bertelli. The turnaround began in 2004, when Arnault bought out the Paloma Picasso Loving Heart lariat Fendi and Prada shares, and set about revamping his billion-dollar investment, restructuring the retail network, opening a palatial Manhattan store designed by Peter Marino, and creating a symbolic Elsa Starfish for the company by transforming the Palazzo Boncompagni Ludovisi into the Palazzo Fendi.
Guiding the process was Michael Burke, Fendi's new C.E.O. and a onetime LVMH manager, who had helped reinvent Dior with the Heart and Tiffany Box Charm John Galliano. It was Burke, an intense, soft-spoken man, half American, half French, who kept Lagerfeld in the fold. Now Venturini and Lagerfeld share the same enormous desk in the loftlike studio.
"For the moment, we're calling it the Palazzo bag," she said, gesturing at a brown leather object before her. It looked like a bucket, the size of a Somerset basic hoop earrings beach pail, round on the bottom and with a soft drawstring leather top. It was a prototype, the first mockup, a working model of a bag that first existed in Venturini's head, then as a Venetian Link necklace on a computer screen, and then as a paper pattern.
An artisan in Fendi's workshop near Florence crafted it by hand. "Perhaps we'll come up with another name when we get right up to the Paloma's Twist necklace in Milan--that's when we are more relaxed and discover the real character, the identity of a handbag." She laughed. "Now there is no time to think about names. Now there is a lot of pressure. A really crazy moment."
On this particular afternoon, the piano nobile of the palazzo was full of buyers and managers from the worldwide network of a hundred and twenty-five Fendi shops, visiting Rome to preview the fall collections. The first two floors house the company's flagship store, the executive Tiffany 1837 I.D. lanyard are on three, and the top two floors contain the airy design studios. (Karl Lagerfeld, who designs Fendi's women's pret-a-porter and its furs, sweeps in often, like a black-winged angel.) Throughout, there's a feeling that Return to Tiffany Round tag necklace call sopra la bottega--the family atmosphere in a place where everybody is crowded together above the shop and working to make it a success.
Although it's been more of a challenge as of late, media buyers applaud publishers' efforts to stick to their knitting. They caution that as publishers Frank Gehry Torque Bead long drop earrings less reliant on fashion/beauty, they should ensure that nonendemic business doesn't undermine their editorial brand. "You have to make sure it still is relevant to the reader," White said. "Advertising is part of content, when it's done right. The readers aren't going to want to hear about dirt bike riding."
"C'e stata un'overdose di borse"--"There has been a bit of a bag overdose"--Venturini said, one afternoon earlier this year, sitting at her big white Graduated bead drop earrings upstairs in the nineteenth-century Roman palazzo that is the new Fendi headquarters. "It's quite funny. Everyone thought to Elsa Peretti Open Heart earrings the Baguette, and now everybody thinks you can support a company with accessories, especially handbags." She had on a gray dress with a brown shahtoosh around her neck, her round face pale and tense, her blond hair pulled back.
Venturini doesn't seem to concern herself with the competition. After the Baguette, she produced a series of hit bags, most notably the Spy, with its poufy Tiffany 1837 Hoop Earrings shape and hidden change and lipstick compartments, and the B. Fendi, which looks to become a design classic, with its large sculpted buckles and ladylike handles. That day, she was in the Heart Clover Earrings of creating a new handbag, hoping to continue her run of hits.
"We're living in an age where return on investment is critical," said Peter Gardiner, chief media officer at Deutsch. "It's so much easier to see that online than in a magazine. They suffer from their inability to prove results. For beauty, online has become a Return to Tiffany Oval tag pendant place to advertise. Fashion, even though it's so much more image-oriented, is going to be slower to move away from magazines, but a lot of fashion brands are involved with buzz events, quicker ways to get word of mouth."
Some traditional fashion and beauty books are fighting back with nonprint programs like Condé Nast's Fashion Rocks concert and Hearst Magazines' 30 Days of Fashion, a marketing program of fashion shows, parties and other style-related events. "We've been Tiffany 1837 pendant a lot of fashion/beauty to go beyond the page," White said.Meanwhile, Condé Nast's Jane is still working on a Tiffany 1837 Triple bar pendant after advertisers opted to take a wait-and-see attitude while the new management team restored stability.
But not all magazines are seeing a slowdown in spending. Hearst's Harper's Bazaar has rebounded following a string of editor changes, said Valerie Salembier, senior vp, publisher. "The two strongest categories for us continue to be Tiffany 1837 Loop pendant strong," she said. "January to September fashion and beauty are up 124 pages. Frankly, I'm thrilled.""Nothing big works if you want success in Italy," Burke told me as he led me around the palazzo. "In this country, even if you're big you Return to Tiffany Round tag pendant to keep the mind-set of a small company, working in fiducia totale--total faith." He went on, "It's like we're in the kitchen with all the cooks, with flour on the floor."