FENDI NEWS: Francesca Leoni is becoming a member of Fendi as world chief communication officer, WWD has realized.
She was beforehand chief model officer at Michael Kors from 2018 till March this yr and succeeds Cristiana Monfardini. As reported, Monfardini is exiting Fendi after 20 years on the luxurious model.
Leoni brings to Fendi her 25 years of expertise in style and luxurious, overseeing all aspects of name communication. Leoni is acquainted with newly appointed chief inventive officer Maria Grazia Chiuri, having labored with the designer earlier than.
As world communications and picture director at Valentino in Rome between 2010 and 2018, Leoni labored with Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli who have been co-creative administrators on the couture home on the time, then-led by CEO Stefano Sassi. Chiuri left Valentino in the summertime of 2016. Leoni’s duties additionally included the administration of archival initiatives and classic acquisitions.
Earlier than Valentino, she was world communications director at Bulgari, one other Rome-based home, from 2005 to 2010. She spearheaded PR, occasions, and world advertising and marketing throughout jewellery, perfume, and skincare, and developed storytelling methods across the model’s new hospitality undertaking, when Bulgari launched the primary three lodges in Milan, Bali, and London. Leoni additionally oversaw the jewellery archives and orchestrated acquisitions by personal purchasers and worldwide auctions at Bulgari as effectively and was liable for orchestrating the primary Bulgari retrospective exhibition in Rome in 2009, adopted by Paris a yr later.
From 2000 to 2005 she was public relations and cultural affairs director at Hermès in New York and Paris and earlier than that she was U.S. public relations director at Malo Cashmere in New York from 1993 to 2000.
