Fendi

Fendi is an Italian fashion house best known for its baguette handbags. It started in 1918 as a fur and leather shop in Rome, owned by Adele Casagrande. When she married Edoardo Fendi in 1925, they made a decision to change the name to Fendi. The business prospered, and a new shop was opened in Via Piave in 1932. The couple's five daughters went to work for the firm. German designer Karl Lagerfeld joined Fendi in 1965. Lagerfeld immediately created the inverted FF logo that joined the growing list of international status symbols, and then set about, aided and abetted by the sisters, to revolutionize the treatment of fur and other clothing.

Marvin Traub, president of Bloomingdale's, discovered Fendi's leather goods and introduced them to the United States. In 1969 Fendi presented its first ready-to-wear fur collection at Palazzo Pitti in Florence. When the sisters could not find the fabric clothes they wanted to show under the furs their women ready-to-wear line was born (in 1977), again to great success. In 1999 the sisters sold out to LVMH and Prada for an estimated US$850m.