IF ever €6.8m seemed like a bargain price for staging a fashion spectacular, it was Fendi's sunset show on top of the Great Wall of China which, in one fell swoop, cemented the Roman luxury brand as the most famous in the world's fastest growing market.

In an audacious display of glamour and chutzpah by Fendi and its designer Karl Lagerfeld, 88 models strode down the 2,000-year-old wall as giant arc lights branded the surrounding jagged hills with football field sized versions of the famed double F logo. In a telling comment on contemporary China, the show was staged during the Communist Party Congress, in full swing three blocks away from the hotel where Lagerfeld, Fendi staff and visiting media were partying hard.

But if the event was a mega success for the Rome-based fashion label it was also a huge feather in the cap of Michael Burke, the Franco-Irish-American rugby fanatic executive who has masterminded an impressive turnaround at Fendi.

Burke's boss, Bernard Arnault, chairman and key shareholder of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy), the world's largest luxury conglomerate, acquired Fendi in two stages, eventually paying in excess of €1bn for the label back in 2003. At the time, Fendi's annual sales were one third of that sum, while the brand was deep in the red. To many, the acquisition marked the high water mark of Arnault's buying frenzy, which saw LVMH balloon into a 50-label empire with sales of €15bn.

But under Burke's astute management, the turnaround was swift at Fendi. The house returned to the black in 2006 and will breach sales of $500m next year.

"We'll be a billion dollar brand within the next five years," enthused Burke, son of a US pilot who married a Frenchwoman and settled in France, and great grandson of a Corkman who emigrated to New England.

"The Great Wall showed that Fendi is clearly one of the few brands that is going to be known everywhere as a magical brand. It's not a stretch for Fendi to do something like this. But how many brands could pull this off with credibility? If Coca Cola did it, it would be a stunt. For many of our competitors it would be a stretch," Burke argued.

Fendi certainly got plenty of bang for its buck for the Great Wall show, which was covered by Sky, CNN, Good Morning America and was the lead item on CCTV, China's giant national network.

Over 100 fashion print journalists also crowded the ranks in the audience of 500, which included actresses Kate Bosworth, Thandie Newton and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Zhang Ziyi, who, like half the crowd, turned up in an elaborate Fendi fur -- in her case a stunning mink and marabou outfit.

"It just might be the first fashion anyone has ever managed to see from the moon," joked LVMH luxury tsar Arnault.

"Within 25 years, China will become the world's greatest economic power and we want Fendi to be very important in this country," added Arnault, as he set off on a pre-show jaunt up the wall.

Fendi is already enjoying rapid growth in China of "between 50 and 100 per cent," according to Burke. The brand currently operates 10 stores in China, including two in Beijing, and the show can only add to its reputation.

A six-foot-high double F in rusty metal, created by one of Arnault's favourite artists, became the traffic island into the private entrance reserved for Fendi guests staying in Beijing's Grand Hyatt. Facing Fs even featured on hand-warmers, heated cushions and on chocolates handed out at the show.

"It's all about the logo: I first drew the double F 40 years ago, when I wanted to inject in some humour and it meant Fun Furs. I never dreamt that one day it would illuminate miles of The Great Wall," enthused Lagerfeld back stage as he posed for photos with Zhang Ziyi.

At a moment when private equity funds have been snapping up major labels -- Valentino, Hugo Boss and Jimmy Choo already this year -- the message is clear, glamour labels require, demand, major continual investments and micro management.

Looking back at his first month in charge at Fendi, Burke shakes his head: "Karl wanted to leave; Silvia Fendi (inventor of the label's famed baguette bag) was not in a creative mood either; stores were haemorrhaging, product flow was absent, image was confused, there was no strategy."

Burke's key job was to convert Fendi from a wholesaler into a retail operation -- within three years of the acquisition; Fendi went from having two flagship stores to owning 100 boutiques.

"This all happened in a short period of time. And don't forget, post 9/11 were not the glory years of luxury. What we did was strategically necessary but doing it was very complicated."

Moreover, the store network was made up of franchisee stores, i.e. a hodge podge of boutiques that made brand positioning totally incoherent in many countries.

Yet, Burke waved aside the received wisdom that LVMH had overpaid for Fendi, a mere 3 per cent of the business remains in the hands of elder sister Carla.

"No, because with hindsight, we can today say it was a good price. From the vantage of 2007, we clearly did not overpay. In the middle of a repositioning, you cannot make an estimate of price. But on today's performance we clearly did overpay."

One continuing problem for Fendi is security; as Continental Europe's most famous furrier, Fendi has been the focus of several angry protests by PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

"We don't want to turn our backs on our history. Fur is an extremely ecological product, it's eminently renewable, and does not require sinking any wells. It's the most glamourous raw material you can work with, and extremely expensive. Our roots are in this. Even in darkest years, we never caved in. We do not take to terrorism lightly, we don't think people have the right to abuse or harass our guests. We want our audience to know that if they attend a Fendi show they won't be whacked on the head by a dead animal, or doused with stuff," insists Burke.

There was no such problem in China, where the show was staged with almost military precision. Little wonder, seeing that Fendi flew in some 80 employees to mount the event, including 10 seamstresses. Fendi Casa furniture was shipped from Italy, remaking VIP rooms at the Grand Hyatt and Lagerfeld's interview suite backstage.

Besides the show, the house staged a series of dinners and cocktails, plus visits to Beijing's pearl market, the Forbidden City and Asia's hottest contemporary art district 798, built in a disused armaments plant in Beijing.

Post show, 600 guests were wined -- Dom Perignon, of course -- and dined in a new high-tech, shopping complex in downtown Beijing where acrobats performed arty manoeuvres on an exact five-story reproduction of the label's Rome palazzo. Actress Asia Argento and Japanese hipster Nigo spun the disks on a booming dance floor.

The only bum note (from the point of view of Burke, a former scrum half with Kings College, London) was the event clashing with the Rugby World Cup finals. "Rugby was how I nearly never met Arnault," he says. "I was playing in Roubaix and initially wanted to turn down an introduction to him in order not to miss rugby practice."

Hired by Arnault to work on real estate projects, Burke was later named president of Christian Dior's North American operations, a job he held for seven years, before taking up the same position at Louis Vuitton.

Burke's next project? Finding an event to outdo this one. "How about a show at the Coliseum in Rome, the pyramids of Egypt or the Taj Mahal," he mused.

Godfrey Deeny is European editor of Fashion Wire Daily

- Godfrey Deeny