“If We Took a Holiday: Silvia Fendi,” by Hamish Bowles, was originally published in the June 2002 issue of Vogue. Here, we revisit the story as Fendi kicks off its year-long centenary celebrations with a runway show at Milan Fashion Week this afternoon.
Whether you take the slow ferry from Naples or the hydrofoil from Anzio, near Rome, it is something of an adventure to reach the island of Ponza. As soon as its lands come into view across the bright blue waters, however, the vicissitudes of the journey are forgiven and forgotten. Dramatic cliffs rise from the ocean and simple neoclassical villas, painted in the mouthwatering colors of Neapolitan ice creams, dot the hills, which are ablaze with ginestre, the brilliant yellow flower of the gorse bushes that scramble over the undulating landscape.
Running from the harbor which, during summer, is filled with the yachts of visiting Italian grandees jostling for space with local fishing boats—are steep cobbled lanes that snake narrowly between thickly clustered houses. It is here, in the middle of the bustling village, that Silvia Fendi, design scion of the Roman luxury fur and accessories house, has found a holiday refuge—a place to spend high summer with her husband, the Roman lawyer Alessandro Luciano, and their four children. In August, as private boats from the mainland often stop at Ponza, the Fendis always have to be prepared for unexpected company. “You can never make plans, because friends are always coming and going,” explains Fendi. “It’s like living in a lighthouse!”
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