Familiar to many, but brand new to us, Rome’s foremost fashion house is on MR PORTER at last. <i>Salve</i>!.

Fashion can sometimes feel like a very serious business, with shows often set to dirge-like music and long faces on the front row. So, back in June, when Fendi put on a menswear show that was so bursting with exuberance the audience literally left the auditorium dancing, you knew the brand had got something right.

In its showroom in Milan, to a thumping soundtrack of Sister Sledge’s “Lost In Music”, Fendi sent out a SS18 collection that was the perfect mix of wearable and wonderful. It was widely declared to be the show of the season. Vogue critic Mr Luke Leitch wrote, “This excellent collection nailed a tricky-to-pin sweet spot in the Venn diagram between conventionally wearable and perversely covetable.”

It really has been Fendi’s year, so it is fitting that the menswear line is making its debut on MR PORTER this spring. MR PORTER Fashion Editor Ms Eilidh Greig says the collection will appeal to two very different sorts of gentlemen. “The out-there bold prints and vibrant colours mixed in with the sportswear are perfect for the fashion guy who wants to trade up,” she says. “The beautifully constructed luxury pieces that nod to classic 1950s and 1960s Italian style are going to catch the eye of the man who is looking for something traditional with a twist and might want to shake things up a bit by, say, swapping a blazer for a blouson. The colour palette of rich chocolates, dusty pinks and navy is perfect for spring and summer.”

To fulfil two such different sets of expectations is a big ask, but Fendi pulls it off with aplomb. Top picks include the chocolate and blue striped short-sleeved cotton shirt in superfine cotton poplin, the butter-soft suede cardigan with contrasting cotton facing and logo ribbing, and the brown print bomber with a reversible navy lining, which is perfect for casual corporate types.

Indeed, the starting point of the collection was business, but not necessarily the sort that is confined to the office. Today you could be working on your laptop while on the beach or Skyping a colleague in Los Angeles wearing a shirt and tie, but sporting shorts under your desk. “The collection is a reflection of new opportunities,” says menswear creative director Ms Silvia Venturini Fendi (Mr Karl Lagerfeld has been designing the women’s collections since 1965). “I wanted to juxtapose the world of executives and management with something more relaxed, so it is a mix of conventional tailoring and streetwear.”

The image on the green telephone-print shirt is by London artist Ms Sue Tilley. She is perhaps better known as “Big Sue”, one of the late artist Mr Lucian Freud’s favourite models. His portrait of her, entitled “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping”, was sold in 2008 for £17m, at the time a record for a painting by a living artist. Ms Tilley was brought on board by the show’s stylist, Mr Julian Ganio, and Fendi commissioned her to produce a series of illustrations of everyday objects, including a corkscrew, a cup of tea and a banana, which have been printed onto shirts and reproduced in leather and metal as charms and tags and stamped onto bags.

Fendi was founded in Rome in 1925 by Ms Adele Casagrande and Mr Edoardo Fendi. It started life as a small fur and leather shop and soon gained a reputation for creating the world’s most extravagant fur coats, which it still enjoys today. It was hugely successful, but even when she became wealthy, Ms Casagrande couldn’t bear to be parted from her Fiat 500 (although she did hire a chauffeur to drive her around in it). Fendi is now part of the giant LVMH group, but it is still very much a family affair. Ms Venturini Fendi is the founders’ granddaughter.

As well as collaborations with artists such as Ms Tilley, the company has always been involved in art, design and culture, particularly in its home city of Rome. In 2013, the brand paid millions to restore the Trevi Fountain, and celebrated its 90th anniversary, in 2016, with a show on a glass catwalk over the top of the landmark. While Ms Anita Ekberg famously danced with Mr Marcello Mastroianni in its waters in Mr Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, this time models including Mses Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner appeared to float above them.

Fendi’s corporate HQ is in the spectacular Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, an example of the Fascist architecture Mr Benito Mussolini commissioned in the Italian capital. Originally designed for the Rome Expo of 1942 (which never took place because of WWII), it is now one of the best-loved buildings in the city and is affectionately nicknamed the Square Colosseum. It had hardly been used since the end of the war and was little more than an empty box when Fendi paid for its restoration in 2011.

Meanwhile, the brand’s flagship Rome store, which recently opened a stone’s throw from the Spanish Steps, is filled with museum-quality mid-century pieces of Italian design – the family is passionate about post-war Italian furniture. Upstairs on the third floor there is a tiny, extravagantly exclusive hotel – boutique in every sense of the word and the epitome of la dolce vita. Just like Fendi menswear, you might say.

**Shop the Fendi collection here **