Marni and Francesco Risso Are Parting Ways
Francesco Risso is packing up his paint brushes and exiting Marni, the Milan-based fashion house he built into a temple of irreverent creativity.
Marni parent company OTB announced the news in a press release this morning. In a statement, OTB chairman Renzo Rosso called Risso “a unique designer and an artist at heart.” “Francesco has embraced the spirit and the values of the house, and together with the team brought them to new grounds building the foundations for a new and exciting chapter of Marni.”
Added Risso: “I will always be grateful to Renzo for believing in me, for giving me the front seat on a journey that became more than I could have imagined. Marni has been a studio, a stage, a dream. It carried color, instinct, care, and gave space for people to be themselves. It taught me how to build with feeling, and how powerful true collaboration can be. Thank you to the whole Marni team, and to all the friends who joined along the way, and here’s to more extraordinary journeys ahead!”
Risso joined Marni in 2016 following the exit of founder Consuelo Castiglioni, and the Prada alum defied initial skepticism to reinvent the brand into what often felt like a hippie art school. While designing the fall 2024 collection, for example, he papered the Marni studio from floor to ceiling to create a cave where he and his team designed without references or digital devices; the runway show venue was similarly mâchéd like a DIY grotto.
His unorthodox process yielded clothes with a real sense of humanity, imparting a certain warmth or even a direct impression of their creator. Risso loved hand-painted clothing, which became a signature, alongside power-clashing polka dots and stripes. For how DIY Marni could feel, not long into Risso’s tenure the brand became a mainstream hit. The Marni candy shop-core mohair sweater has been one of this decade’s biggest NBA tunnel style signatures, and its slouchy tailoring and floral shirting caught on with gallerists and bleeding-edge style celebrities like Tyler, the Creator and Jonah Hill alike. It’s no coincidence that Justin Bieber became one of Marni’s many prominent devotees as his style got stranger and more expressive.
Risso himself referred to Marni as a “living organism,” and under the Italian designer it evolved in unexpected ways. However a designer is supposed to do things at a conglomerate-owned fashion house, Risso clearly never got the memo. After sending a group of his best friends down the runway in February in Milan, Risso held a no-guest-list party at his own house, which all felt gleefully anti-capital-F-fashion. As he told GQ in 2024, “I don’t care to work for the sake of a solo expression of creativity. It’s an adventure that I make with the people that I love.” (There’s a reason why his frequent collaborators like Dev Hynes and Carlos Nazario came back season after season.) It was one of his finest and most freakily elegant collections yet, proof that he was in complete control of his experimental craft.
The news comes on the cusp of another fashion season defined by change, following an eight-month period in which over a dozen luxury houses have reshuffled creative directors. It’s the third change in the OTB stables alone, after Rosso appointed Simone Bellotti to Jil Sander and his star Diesel designer Glenn Martens to take over Maison Margiela. In its statement, OTB did not name a successor at Marni, but speculation over Marni and Risso’s futures will surely be the talk of Milan Fashion Week Men’s when the shows officially get underway on Friday.
