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"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.