The atelier on Via Solari is quiet at seven in the morning

The atelier on Via Solari is quiet at seven in the morning. Leather cutters arrive first, followed by seamstresses, then the selliers who assemble the frames. By eight-thirty, thirty-seven craftspeople are at their stations, and the hum of industrial sewing machines settles into rhythm. This is where a Peekaboo begins — not in a showroom, not on a runway, but here, in a converted factory space north of Milan's centro, under fluorescent tubes that have been burning since 1997.

Fendi does not name its artisans in press releases. The maison's communications office will confirm the existence of an atelier in Bagno a Ripoli, outside Florence, where leather goods are made. It will not confirm who, specifically, cut the panels for Silvia Venturini Fendi's spring 2018 Peekaboo prototype, nor who stitched the first Baguette in 1997. This is house policy. The work is presented as collective, the signature institutional.

But the people exist. And if one asks the right questions — of former employees, of suppliers, of the maestri who trained under Fendi's original Roman workshop in the nineteen-seventies — a roster begins to emerge.

The First Generation

Fendi's leather atelier was formalised in 1965, the year Karl Lagerfeld arrived as creative consultant. Before that, bags were contracted out to Roman workshops, each with its own capo. Lagerfeld wanted control of the chain. He wanted fur treated like couture, and leather treated like fur — which is to say, with a level of technical scrutiny the industry had not yet applied to accessories.

The first head of the leather atelier was a man named Giulio Cappelletti, who had trained at Gucci's Florentine workshop in the fifties. Cappelletti brought with him a crew of six, all men, all trained in saddle-stitching and edge-painting. They worked in a rented space on Via del Corso. The brief was simple: make a bag that could be folded, unfolded, and folded again without creasing. The result was the Selleria line, introduced in 1966, hand-stitched in full-grain calfskin with a topstitched seam that borrowed from equestrian harnesses.

Cappelletti retired in 1989. His deputy, Carla Briganti, took over. Briganti is still cited in trade journals as the maestra who formalised Fendi's approach to interlining — the hidden layer of canvas or buckram that gives a bag its shape. She developed a system of graded interlinings, each matched to a specific leather weight, so that a soft nappa Peekaboo would hold its silhouette as firmly as a rigid box calf version. This is not innovation in the flashy sense. It is the kind of structural thinking that allows a design to endure.

Briganti trained thirty-two people during her tenure. Most are still in the trade. A few have gone on to start their own workshops, supplying Fendi and others. One, Alessandra Moretti, now runs the Bagno a Ripoli atelier.

The Baguette and Its Architects

The Baguette, introduced in 1997, was Silvia Venturini Fendi's first major design. The story is well-rehearsed: a compact shoulder bag, sized to tuck under the arm like a loaf of bread, produced in hundreds of materials and colourways. What is less often discussed is the technical brief.

The Baguette required a new approach to the flap closure. Traditional turn-locks were too heavy for the bag's proportions. Magnetic snaps were unreliable. Venturini Fendi wanted something that clicked — audibly, satisfyingly — but did not add bulk. The solution came from a metalworker named Stefano Lodi, who had been supplying Fendi with hardware since the eighties. Lodi designed a flat clasp with a spring-loaded mechanism, housed entirely within the flap's interlining. The click is produced by a steel tongue meeting a brass plate. The sound is now so associated with the Baguette that Fendi's design team reportedly tests new iterations with a decibel meter.

The first Baguette prototype was assembled by a seamstress named Francesca Ricci, working under Briganti's supervision. Ricci had joined the atelier in 1991, trained in industrial sewing at a technical school in Prato. She specialised in curved seams — the kind required for a bag with a rounded base and a structured flap. The Baguette's seam allowance is three millimetres, half the standard for leather goods. This creates a sharper edge but requires absolute precision. A single stitch out of alignment and the flap will not sit flush.

Ricci worked at Fendi until 2004, when she left to join Bottega Veneta's atelier in Montebello. She has not given interviews. But her name appears in internal production records, cited by a former Fendi sample coordinator who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Peekaboo's Engineering

The Peekaboo, introduced in 2008, is arguably Fendi's most technically ambitious bag. It opens from the centre, splitting into two compartments, each lined in contrasting leather. The frame is rigid. The handle is a single piece of leather, folded and stitched along its length, with no visible seam. The bag must hold its shape when empty and accommodate a laptop when full.

The frame is the critical component. It is made from a thermoplastic composite, moulded to shape and covered in leather. The moulding process was developed by a supplier in Scandicci, a suburb of Florence known for its leatherworking infrastructure. The supplier, a company called Tecnopelli, had previously worked with Prada on structured handbag frames. Fendi's brief specified a frame that could flex slightly under pressure but return to its original shape. The tolerances were tight: a deviation of more than half a millimetre and the bag's two halves would not align.

The Peekaboo's handle is stitched by hand, using a technique called punto selleria — saddle stitch. This requires two needles working in tandem, each passing through the same hole from opposite sides. The stitch is stronger than a machine seam and lies flatter. It also takes longer. A Peekaboo handle requires approximately forty minutes to stitch. The work is done by a rotating crew of six selliers, all trained in-house. Their names are not disclosed.

What Happens When a Maestro Leaves

In 2019, Alessandra Moretti, head of the Bagno a Ripoli atelier, announced her retirement. She had been with Fendi for twenty-eight years. Her replacement, a former deputy named Marco Santini, lasted eighteen months before leaving to join Loewe. The atelier is currently overseen by a committee of three senior artisans, none of whom hold the title of capo.

This is the tension. Fendi's model depends on continuity — on artisans who stay, who train the next generation, who absorb and transmit the house's techniques. But the market for skilled leather workers is competitive. Hermès, Bottega Veneta, Loewe, and others are hiring aggressively. Wages have risen. Loyalty is less assured.

Fendi has responded by expanding its training programme. The maison now recruits from technical schools in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, offering two-year apprenticeships. Graduates are not guaranteed positions, but the completion rate is high. The programme is expensive — Fendi reportedly spends upwards of thirty thousand euros per apprentice — but the alternative is worse.

The Question of Credit

One could argue that anonymity protects the artisan. It insulates them from the pressures of celebrity, from the expectation that their name should carry the weight of the brand. But it also erases them. When a Peekaboo is photographed on a runway, or featured in a magazine, or sold for four thousand euros, the credit flows upward — to the designer, to the maison, to the conglomerate. The hands that made it remain unnamed.

This is not unique to Fendi. It is the structure of the industry. But Fendi's case is instructive because the maison's identity is so bound up in craft. The double-F logo, designed by Lagerfeld in 1965, stands for Fendi and Fun — but it might as well stand for facture. The bags are marketed on the strength of their construction. And yet the constructors are invisible.

There are exceptions. In 2021, Fendi produced a short documentary about its atelier, filmed in Bagno a Ripoli. The camera lingers on hands — cutting, stitching, burnishing edges. A few artisans are named on-screen, though only by first name. The film was screened at a private event in Rome and has not been released publicly.

It is a start. Whether it represents a shift in policy or a one-off gesture remains to be seen. For now, the work continues as it has for decades: quietly, precisely, and largely out of view.