Maria Grazia Chiuri’s FENDI debut had one clear rule: it wasn’t about her. As models walked the Milan runway this February, the words “Meno Io, Più Noi”—Italian for “less I, more us”—appeared spelled out along the show space, setting the tone for everything that followed.

It’s also, in its own way, a homecoming. Chiuri got her start at FENDI back in 1989, and returning as creative director puts her back where she began, working with the same house that first taught her how a brand built by five sisters actually thinks.

That collaborative instinct shows up everywhere in the collection, and most literally in the accessories. Chiuri returned to her roots as an accessories designer to rework FENDI’s most famous bag, the Baguette®, in a run of inventive new finishes: beading, paillettes, hand embroidery, animal prints, crackled leather, and saddle stitching that puts the house’s craftsmanship on full display. Alongside it, she introduced a line of “verbal object” jewelry, resurrecting a concept the late artist Mirella Bentivoglio first dreamed up in the 1970s, brought to life now through a close collaboration with Bentivoglio’s estate. Performance artist SAGG Napoli—known for striking, unconventional runway moments of her own—also joined the project, another familiar face from Chiuri’s creative circle brought along to a new house.

Beyond the craft, the collection carries Chiuri’s now-signature instinct to blur the line between menswear and womenswear entirely, sending men and women down the runway in pieces that read less like “his and hers” and more like a shared closet. That’s the real thread running through the collection—Chiuri doesn’t seem interested in fashion as a solo act.

Images courtesy of FENDI.