IT / EN

I Keep You With Me

I Keep You With Me

Rizzoli

Year: 2018

Pages: 222

In 1925 Adele and Edoardo Fendi opened a small fur and leather goods shop in Rome. Decades later the Fendi fashion house had become an internationally acclaimed luxury brand and an icon of Italian style. Over time their five daughters, Paola, Anna, Franca, Carla and Alda, all of them actively involved in the family business, became as famous as the celebrities clamoring for their products. But outside the glare of the spotlights, away from the public eye, what was this legendary family like? Franca Fendi, the third of the five daughters, offers us an intimate glimpse of it through her eyes. Giving form to the abstract, she puts into words the emotions of being raised by a gifted, caring father who remained in the shadows and a hardworking, authoritative matriarch who was feared by her children and respected by all. We learn of Franca and her sisters’ childhood during the Fascist era of Mussolini and World War Two. We watch the rising success of the family business, the children hel- ping out at their parents’ shop from a tender age, folding tissue paper and arranging merchandise. As they grow older, ignoring the deeply chauvinist roots of Italian society at the time, the Fendi daughters become female entrepreneurs in their own right under the supervi- sion of their omnipresent mother.