Building a World, Not Just a Wardrobe
To understand Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, you first have to understand Sunnei. Launched in Milan in 2014, the brand was an immediate departure from the city's legacy of heritage luxury. Neither founder came from a traditional fashion design background;
Messina studied marketing and worked in visual merchandising, while Rizzo focused on business management and digital media. This outsider perspective became their greatest asset. They weren’t interested in just making clothes; they wanted to build a cultural platform. Sunnei quickly became a multidisciplinary creative hub known for its blend of Italian craftsmanship with a playful, minimalist, and often genderless aesthetic. The motto “Everyday I wear Sunnei” captured their goal: to create a timeless wardrobe that evolves with its wearer, rather than being replaced season after season. It was less about status and more about a community of artists, musicians, and creatives who saw the world differently.
The Art of the Unexpected Show
Nowhere is the duo's experimental nature more visible than in their legendary fashion week presentations. Messina and Rizzo treated the runway not as a sales tool, but as a medium for social commentary and performance art. They staged shows in empty swimming pools and under highway overpasses. For one collection, they cast only senior models to celebrate their 10th anniversary, challenging the industry's obsession with youth. For another, they sent out identical twins in quick succession, creating a mind-bending optical illusion. Perhaps most audaciously, they once handed attendees paddles and asked them to score the looks in real time. In another show, models crowd-surfed off the runway, while a different presentation featured their inner thoughts broadcast over loudspeakers. These weren't just gimmicks; they were acts of rebellion against the stuffy conventions of fashion, designed to make the audience think, laugh, and question everything.
A 360-Degree Creative Vision
The Sunnei world extends far beyond clothing. Messina and Rizzo's vision is all-encompassing, touching everything from music to furniture. They launched SUNNEI Objects, a collection of everyday items reinterpreted through their unique aesthetic, including Murano glass pieces and vinyl records of their runway soundtracks. Their Milan headquarters, the Palazzina Sunnei, is not just an office but a multi-functional ecosystem with its own café and gallery space, designed to be a cultural hub. They even developed Radio Sunnei, a 24/7 streaming platform for music and visual content, and created cross-media projects with artists from their community. This 360-degree approach demonstrates their core belief: that a brand should be a container for culture, not just a producer of commercial goods.
The Method and the Next Move
So, what do Messina and Rizzo ultimately bring from this experimental world? It's a philosophy. It’s the proof that you can build an influential, commercially successful brand by following instinct over trends. Their self-taught journey and complementary skills—Messina’s clean, French-influenced lines and Rizzo’s passionate, colorful Italian spirit—created a perfectly balanced creative partnership. Their influence became so potent that in June 2026, the duo was appointed as the new creative directors of the iconic fashion house Moschino. The move was seen as a bold choice, pairing their irreverent, internet-fluent creativity with a brand historically known for challenging convention itself. In a joint statement, the designers expressed their admiration for Franco Moschino's legacy of challenging the status quo, signaling a shared spirit of playful disruption.
