In the Marni offices, near Milan's Linate airport, there is an unusual calm.
There are less than two days left until the brand presents its next collection, but Francesco Risso (Sardinia, 41 years old), its artistic director, chats animatedly with the models while he tries on the clothes and makes the final touches.
Most of them have worked with him throughout the six years he has been in the school, something also unusual.
“Everything here is an exchange, I wouldn't be who I am or do what I do without the people who work with me.
Not just the models or the design team.
Here we even compose music together,” explains the designer, who, in addition to playing the cello in one of his last shows, has been working hand in hand with musician Dev Hynes for several seasons to compose avant-garde soundtracks.
The artistic director Babak Radboy, agent of the viral success of the New York brand Telfar, and the choreographer Sharleen Chidiac are also responsible for Marni today being one of the most radically creative brands on the scene.
But Risso doesn't like to talk about community: “It's a word that is being exploited too much in fashion;
It even sounds like a business meeting,” he says.
“We are real people, who discuss and debate to move things forward.”
The truth is that Risso has always looked for that kind of creative commune through which to express himself.
His early years were spent with his family living on a boat and traveling the world;
Later he settled in Genoa with his grandmother, his parents and his four siblings, from his parents' two previous marriages: “We were a very noisy family and we were always hosting people at home.
But my brothers are much older than me, so I looked for my own world in those years.”
His grandmother Licha, a renowned Genoese tailor, was the one who taught him how to sew.
“Since I was little I started making my own clothes, I didn't even want to be a designer, but that was my way of facing the world,” she recalls.
Little by little he built his identity through the pieces that he designed, customized or bought second-hand.
“As a child I was already very feminine, but, outside my home, where we have always been very free, I surrounded myself with a somewhat conservative environment.
I found it very difficult to adapt to society, so I shaped my own world, my own way of expressing myself.
Little by little I met people like me, people who have helped me be who I am, some of them are now part of Marni,” he explains.
For the spring-summer collection, the Italian designer has been inspired by the Parisian style and has mixed it with the classic colors and prints of the Milanese house.Davide Galluzio (Marni)
The volume plays are the protagonists of the latest collection: loose jackets with mini dresses or loose pants with tight tops.Marni
The show was held at Karl Lagerfeld's house, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris.Marni
Since 2021, the designer prefers to do mixed shows.
In his design process, he does not distinguish between genders.Davide Galluzio (Marni)
Conceived as “a celebration”, the collection boldly combines strong colors and prints.Marni
Risso's proposal for spring.Marni
After working for several Italian brands, in 2005 Risso began working at Prada;
There she was in charge of women's collections and special projects, where the work “mixed the brain with the hand.”
Since Renzo Rosso, the owner of OTB (the
holding company
that owns Marni, Margiela, Jil Sander and Diesel, among others), elected him artistic director of Marni in 2016, Risso and his group have been able to give free rein to that creativity that transcends market trends and dynamics.
He confesses that in his closet there are hardly any garments that he has not personalized himself and it is that same spirit that he has been bringing to the brand for eight years now: “Here we don't sew, we mend.
We don't print, we paint, we glue, we staple... It's a way of returning purity to what we do, and a practical way to get ideas together.
In fact, for the collection they are preparing at the time of this interview, he and his team have covered the walls and windows in white and have removed from the offices any element that could contaminate the creative process.
“It is an attempt not to get carried away by anything, to start from scratch, leave behind hackneyed structures and ideas and try what comes from a place where there are no references.”
Risso's first show, in 2017, was quite criticized.
It was expected.
Almost since its creation, in 1994, Marni became a cult brand, and its founder, Consuelo de Castiglioni, a kind of global prescriber almost at the level of Miuccia Prada.
Her primary colored garments, her bold mixes of prints and her geometric accessories were (and are) the wardrobe of the intellectual bourgeoisie.
It has been difficult for Risso to get rid of that past.
“I am a big fan of Consuelo, but it is true that the aesthetics were very linked to certain types of people, yes.
I want to think that now it is for everyone who wants to wear it, that it means different things to different people.
“It has been a long and very interesting journey, we have explored different creative fields, dance, music…, to turn it into a kind of creative and diverse collective,” he says.
The colors and geometric patterns are still there, but not always.
Unlike most of his professional colleagues, he is not interested in a specific style, but rather a specific garment.
“I have a large collection of vintage clothes, not luxury clothes, but clothes that I have been buying, that friends have given me or that I have had since I was a child.
I keep them and use them because for me they tell stories, they have a life of their own.
That is the true power of fashion: wearing certain outfits almost like a shield because they mean something to the wearer, whatever the garment may be.
That's why at Marni we like to get our hands dirty, cut the fabric, use glue... We want it to mean something to someone.
"I don't want my designs to be in museums, I want them to be on the streets."
And, apparently, he is succeeding.
Although OTB is not obliged to break down the turnover of its brands one by one, when presenting the group's results in 2023, at the beginning of this year, Renzo Rosso stated that Marni had grown by 8.6% compared to the previous year.
In the last 12 months alone, they have opened 16 points of sale, more than half in Asia, and they have just renewed their agreement with Coty to produce fragrances for 20 years.
Francesco Risso spent his childhood with his family living on a boat and traveling the world.
Today he defines himself as a nomad.Sergio Cattivelli (Marni)
Francesco Risso's journey seems to be paying off, perhaps because it is not just mental, but also physical.
After the pandemic, the designer decided to move with his entourage of musicians, artists, dancers and models to the different capitals that represent the brand's main markets.
They have left Milan (to which they have returned only for this season, which marks the brand's 30th anniversary) to show in New York, Tokyo or, more recently, Paris.
“I like the idea of being a nomadic brand.
We don't use cities just as a setting, we try to do something that has to do with their culture, that connects with the idiosyncrasies of their people.
If we chose Paris for the last collection it was also for a practical reason.
Many guests cannot go to the rest of the sites, but they always go there to the shows, although we will continue traveling in the coming seasons.
In May, for example, we will do an event in Shanghai,” he explains.
But the pragmatism of parading in Paris, with clients and press gathered, did not take away even a bit of romanticism from the proposal.
The collection was presented at Karl Lagerfeld's former residence, on L'Université Street, because, when he was a teenager, the designer found the German creative looking through the window of his house.
On that same trip, visiting a friend, Risso fell in love for the first time at a party, and walked through the streets of the city looking for that boy, of whom she now only remembers his scent.
“That led me to think about the
flâneurs
, the Parisian strollers.
From there I moved on to the city's long tradition of taking to the streets to fight for their rights.
And at the same time I realized that in Paris mysterious things always happen behind closed doors, in those incredible houses in the center that only open to small circles.
So that contrast led me to mix the idea of the urban uniform with that of craftsmanship,” he says.
Striped and checked suits that are not printed, but hand-woven, coexist with garments in which the three-dimensional flowers seem to continue opening with movement;
There are disproportionate volumes that are close to sculpture and fluid pieces that stick to the body.
Risso has not presented shows separated by gender for four years.
Although the men's line has been gaining more importance, he prefers not to distinguish the proposals.
The idea, and almost the clothes, are the same.
He himself does not distinguish them in his closet either.
“Marni is a way to express yourself, whoever you are.
I like to see it as a language,” he states.
Diversity here is not even questioned.
“It is another word that is abused today.
This is simply my reality, the one I have grown up with and the one my people have grown up with,” he says.
Those people who continue painting with their hands and playing with every object they find, because, although they now work for a big fashion brand, their talent lies in the fact that they don't want to stop being children.