Moschino has always worked best when fashion feels slightly unhinged. Not chaotic without purpose, but strange with precision: irony as tailoring, humour as critique, clothes as a punchline that somehow still understands cut, glamour, and desire.
Now the house is entering a new chapter with Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, the founders of SUNNEI, appointed as Moschino’s new creative directors with immediate effect. Their first collection for the brand is expected to debut during Milan Fashion Week in September 2026, following the departure of Adrian Appiolaza.
It is a choice that makes a strange kind of sense. SUNNEI built its reputation in Milan by refusing to treat fashion too solemnly. The brand’s shows often felt like conceptual stunts, social experiments, or very elegant jokes aimed at the industry itself. For SS26, Messina and Rizzo staged an imaginary auction with Christie’s, complete with fictional “fashion dollars” and the designers themselves presented as part of the performance.
That instinct feels close to Moschino’s original nervous system. Since Franco Moschino founded the house, the brand has been a place where fashion could mock itself from inside the machine. Luxury became satire. Logos became jokes. Taste became something to twist, exaggerate, and weaponise. The challenge now is not simply to make Moschino funny again, but to make its humour feel dangerous, current, and emotionally alive.
Messina and Rizzo arrive with a useful mix of irreverence and control. Before SUNNEI, Messina worked in visual merchandising, while Rizzo studied economics and later specialised in digital media management. That combination matters. Their work has never been only about clothes. It has been about systems, staging, community, branding, and the absurd rituals that keep fashion running.
The appointment also comes at a tense moment for Aeffe, Moschino’s parent company, which has been navigating financial pressure, restructuring, and leadership changes. In that context, bringing in the SUNNEI founders feels like both a creative gamble and a strategic reset: a way to reconnect Moschino with the playful, surreal, self-aware energy that made the house matter in the first place.
Photos: Moschino