The highly-anticipated Fendace collection — a powerhouse, experiment between two great Italian fashion houses: Fendi and Versace — will drop on May 12, with a worldwide series of events and pop-ups in Dubai, London, Kuwait, New York, Osaka, Paris, Shenyang, Tokyo and more locations. The pop-ups are the only locations to sell the entire pre-fall 2022 collection.

The business synergy between these two iconic Italian brands is producing astonishing results — given that they are direct competitors owned by two mega-luxury fashion houses. LVMH is the majority stockholder in Fendi and Versace is owned by Capri Holdings.

Atypical of the traditional high/low brand collab or Gucci hacking into sister brand Balenciaga, and then Balenciaga vice versa in the next season, Fendace is a meeting of equals — with success shared by luxury conglomerate competitors.

Steven Meisel lensed the Fendace advertising campaign, with videos by Alec Maxwell. The campaign images include Adut Akech, Amar Akway, Anja Rubik, Anok Yai, Imaan Hammam and Lina Zhang entering a Fendace nightclub.

Meeting them at the door are two highly-unusual bouncers in the forms of Kristen McMenamy and Naomi Campbell.

The concept behind the swapping is unique. Rather than collaborating on a single unified fashion collection, Kim Jones, Fendi’s women’s wear artistic director and Silvia Venturini Fendi, Fendi’s men’s wear designer created new styles of fashion pieces and accessories after spending time in the Versace archives. Similarly Donatella Versace created new pieces from the Fendi archives.

The results are Versace, frankly, given its lavish use of unmistakable logos, prints, safety-pins, gold-gold-gold and other legendary iconic touches from the house of Versace. Flipping Fendi ‘F’s around off the diagonal suddenly gives us a Versace-looking border. In AOC’s opinion, there is something powerful in play here.