Marni’s expansive, columned show space on Viale Umbria in
Milan was dense with expectation on the morning of Febru-
ary 26: After 22 years, Consuelo Castiglioni had retired from
the house she’d founded and nurtured, one with an almost
cultishly devoted fan base, and her assembled fans and the at-
tendant press were gathered to see how Francesco Risso—a
34-year-old designer barely known outside Milanese fashion
circles and the newly appointed creative director of Marni—
would add to her legacy.
Castiglioni made Marni by translating her own instinc-
tively hewn, unconventional femininity into modernist,
faintly bohemian, and utterly anti-bourgeois furs, florals,
extravagantly casual silhouettes, and accessories that sub-
verted the gaze of the male eye. These were pieces for women
who didn’t look to define themselves by sex appeal—who
were sophisticated enough to play with both feminine and
feminist stereotypes. How would this man handpicked by
Marni owner Renzo Rosso to succeed Castiglioni articulate
his own voice within this heady framework?
The collection started in ebb, eventually flowed, and then,
near the finale, flourished before Risso emerged to take his
post-show bow wearing an artfully frayed 1940s cowboy
shirt, baggy straight-leg pants, and the Jack Purcells he
lives in. Afterward, with no shortage of opinions from the
gathered crowd, perhaps only one thing was certain: At first
glance, Risso’s Marni seemed a different beast entirely from
Castiglioni’s.
A few weeks earlier, Risso is seated at a table in his favorite
pasticceria, Cucchi, on Milan’s Corso Genova, alongside a
vitrine displaying a pair of high heels and a handbag made
of chocolate. We are around the corner from the apartment
he has shared with Lawrence Steele, a Virginia-born designer,
since they got together in 2008: a 1930s penthouse with a
sprawling terrace furnished with exotic plants and trees—a
“beautiful jungle,” as Risso puts it, twisting the ringlets of his
copper-hued hair, before launching into his almost cinemati-
cally baroque backstory.
Risso was born in Alghero, Sardinia, in 1982, and until
he was four lived and meandered across the Mediterranean
with his mother and father on their sailboat, the Tartar. “I
was a baby on a boat—my crib was tied between two masts,”
Risso says. A love of adventure—or a kind of free-spirited
wanderlust—seems to run in the family: Later, Risso shows
me a blurred photo of his father, also named Francesco,
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galloping down a beach on horseback, dragging a boy
(Risso is not sure who) on water skis behind him, while
Risso’s grandmother on his father’s side was found—only
after her death—to have owned a secret house in Jamaica
where she’d run off to every August, telling anybody who
asked that she’d been in Europe with a friend. Eventually
the family settled on dry land in Genoa, where they lived a
big, rumbustious life.
Risso was enthralled by fashion early: When he was
eight, he began cutting up his parents’ clothes to see how
they were made, and at the age of sixteen he left home to
study fashion—first in Florence at Polimoda, then at FIT
in New York, and finally to London and Central Saint
Martins for his masters.
Once graduated, he worked for Anna Molinari at Blu-
marine in Carpi for two years before joining Alessandro
Dell’Acqua in Milan. In 2008—four years after he arrived
in the city—Risso transferred to Prada, working first as
a knitwear designer before being promoted to a kind of
senior lieutenant of womenswear. His eyes widening, Risso
describes working with Miuccia Prada for nearly a decade as
“surfing for the mind”—which is why taking the decision to
accept an offer from Renzo Rosso to replace Castiglioni was,
he says, so profoundly jarring: “It was very deep, and very
emotional—especially when it came to telling Mrs. Prada.
I burst into tears! Working there was the most stimulating,
intense, creative adventure.”
When Castiglioni told Rosso that she wanted to step away
from Marni, Rosso began a broad search for her replace-
ment. “I was looking at some very important names in the
fashion industry,” Rosso says, “but the more I looked, the
more I knew I had to find someone really young and modern.
Francesco and I started to talk—for a long time—about a vi-
sion for Marni: line by line, including shoes, accessories, bags,
ready-to-wear, the stores, the advertising. And we started to
feel together—we were in love with what we wanted to do for
the future of Marni.”
Risso brings to his own adventure at the house an energy
and an eccentric spirit that jibe nicely with its history. “I was
always a passionate client—I love the sense of playfulness
and dynamism in the colors, the prints, and the decorations,”
he says. “To me, Marni is a temple of playfulness—and I love
that it is intelligent and against stereotypes. I want to fight to
keep that—it is so important.”