Cara, Bella, and Naomi Get Ethereal in the Name of Fendi

In January of 2018, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell reunited to close out the fall season’s Louis Vuitton menswear show. The finale marked the end of an era: And just like that, Kim Jones’s acclaimed tenure at the house had come to a close. It isn’t much of an overstatement to say the industry awaited his return as the head of womenswear and couture at Fendi later that year with bated breath. As expected, Jones more than delivered—and he brought company. In a true testament to how beloved Jones is to fashion’s top tier, the cast was made up of names like Demi Moore, Bella Hadid, Cara Delevingne, Christy Turlington, Farida Khelfa, and Christy Turlington. (Plus Kate and Naomi, but that practically goes without saying.)

Four years later, Jones has made such an impact at the house that it’s merited a book. The Fendi Set, published later this month by Rizzoli, is a collection of photographs by Nikolai von Bismarck (who happens to be Kate’s boyfriend). It’s also a collection of stories. Jones has been loud and proud about the fact that he’s highly influenced by the Bloomsbury Group, a noted collective of early 20th-century luminaries including Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Virginia Woolf. They’ve made such an impact on the designer that his first Fendi collection was decorated with quotes from Woolf’s Orlando. The novel came about right around the time that Fendi came into being—and to Jones, its connection to the so-called “Fendi woman” was clear. “Punk obviously interests me,” he says in an introductory interview in The Fendi Set with the writer and stylist Jerry Stafford, “and here we have educated, upper-class Victorians also rebelling against something.”

For The Fendi Set, Jones brought supermodel company once again. With Polaroid, Super-8, and traditional cameras, von Bismarck captured many of the aforementioned names at places closely associated with both Woolf and co. and Fendi. The book begins, for example, with Gwendoline Christie paying a visit to the childhood home of Vita Sackville-West, whose family history inspired Orlando. As it turns out, several of the Bloomsbury Set had a connection with Rome, where von Bismarck also photographed Kate and her younger daughter Lila. See a selection of his snapshots, below.