Weekendpaper* | Silvia Venturini Fendi | Butter art fair | Indian modernist gem

Bill Prince, Editor-in-Chief

Welcome to Weekendpaper*, the Saturday newsletter from the Wallpaper* editors that brings our weekly highlights, from insightful interviews to intriguing exhibitions and tempting purchases, direct to your inbox.

This week, Wallpaper* launched its September Style Issue, a chance to slip the surly bonds of stuffy sobriety to embrace the spirit of glamour and luxury that flowed through the A/W 2025 collections, twisted and subverted by the season’s designers. Pick up a copy on the newsstand and, for a flavour of the issue meanwhile, read fashion features editor Jack Moss’ interview with Silvia Venturini Fendi, below, as she reflects on 100 years of the house, the wisdom of Karl Lagerfeld, and what's next.     

In this Weekendpaper*, we also meet the founders of Butter art fair, a platform dedicated to Black artists and newly spread from Indianapolis to LA; enjoy a modernist sleepover in India at the invitation of an architectural master; and discover how Max Lamb is turning tourists’ trash into design treasure in Bali.

When it comes to Fendi, the house’s third-generation artistic director Silvia Venturini Fendi has seen it all. And if she’s seen it before, she doesn’t want to see it again. ‘If it reminds me of something we’ve already done, then we can’t do it. We move on,’ she says. She learnt such mantras from Karl Lagerfeld, whom she first met when she was just five and he was at the start of his 54-year tenure at the house. ‘He was always interested in the moment. The past was the past, and the future we don’t know. So let’s live in the moment. It has shaped my view.’

Speaking to fashion features editor Jack Moss in Rome, Venturini Fendi is in the middle of preparing a second collection as the sole creative director of the men’s, women’s and accessories collections (following Kim Jones’ departure last year; LVMH is yet to announce whether the role of artistic director of womenswear and couture will be replaced by somebody external).

As we explore her rapturously received A/W 2025 collection, marking Fendi’s centenary, its creator reflects on translating legacy into a way forward (‘Anniversaries are beautiful, but you don’t want it to be a retrospective or nostalgic’) and her life as a Fendi scion (‘From an early age, [my mother] taught us to be very different individuals from the rest’). As for the future? ‘I want people to say, maybe she didn’t do so many collections but the ones she did, they were good, deep, smart – a moment.’

In 2020, Indianapolis-based Mali and Alan Bacon felt a sense of urgency. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was ‘a sudden and almost haphazard effort’ from art fairs and galleries to show artwork made by Black people. The couple, who have experience in the non-profit and for-profit sectors and art backgrounds themselves, thought, ‘OK, it’s great that it’s finally happening, but the artists still need to be cared for and we need to protect them.’ They continue, ‘We had been to Miami Art Basel and other fairs for years and we thought, we can do the artwork justice.’ Butter – their Indianapolis art fair, where all works are by Black artists – was born from that energy. Now, you can also get a taste of Butter in LA, where the city’s first iteration of the fair is on show at Context Projects until 17 August. Lina Abascal speaks to the founders.

Writer and architect Nipun Prabhakar was already on his way to meet Shankar Kandade, whom he describes as ‘one of the last practising modernist architecture masters left in India’, when he got a surprise phone call. Would you like to stay? The opportunity to spend the night in a modernist gem, in the village of Nagaj, was too good to pass up. The house – which Shankar, now approaching his nineties, and his late brother Navnath had built for themselves – is a masterclass in quiet confidence. The Kanades were known for their innovative, low-cost, context-driven homes. Prabhakar’s sleepover, he says, ‘felt like being in a conversation with both brothers’.