Inside the fantastical world of Francesco Risso’s Marni: ‘We push it to the maximum’

It’s a grey Wednesday afternoon in January and Marni’s creative director Francesco Risso is standing in his office in Milan reading fragments of a poem. ‘Beauty is a white rabbit scampering across your yard,’ he orates. ‘You chase it, though you fall short, capturing it in the mad rush, you find yourself somewhere wondrous.’ It’s an unedited version of a text he wrote to be placed on each guest’s seat at his S/S 2025 runway show, which took place at Marni’s headquarters on Viale Umbria last September.

Models arrived to an intense score composed by longtime Risso collaborator Dev Hynes, played live on three baby grand pianos, while the clothes they wore were at once sparse and extravagant. When asked how he hopes people feel when they wear Marni’s clothing, Risso says: ‘To feel they can have any possible day that they want, and any kind of personality they want to engage. I feel that’s one of my missions.’

Inside the fantastical world of Francesco Risso’s Marni

Since taking over at Marni in 2016, Risso has proved a refreshing voice. He has frequently subverted the runway show, particularly the idea of the front row: he’s had people sit on exercise balls, random pieces of furniture, and stools of differing heights, and has regularly presented shows that unfold like performance art or theatre. His S/S 2022 show dressed the 400 guests in upcycled Marni ensembles, sporting hand-painted stripes, and featured performances by Mykki Blanco and Zsela, reducing many of the audience to tears. ‘We are trying to deliver emotions from the start,’ he says. And ‘no celebrities!’ He laughs when he says it, but he’s serious. ‘I love talented people, I just don’t love this endless circus that means fashion shows have become red carpets for celebrities, and therefore more important than the clothes.’

The designer throws off a floor-sweeping striped scarf and furry trucker hat and sinks into a chair. He is backdropped by the word ‘Marni’ crayoned over a door behind his head, which leads to the artistic studio. Ricocheting between topics, he compares the feelings he gets from painting (a central part of the Marni design practice sees the team evolve ideas for garments by first making art) to those he experiences from his own creative writing. ‘It can really envelop you. I kind of go into a trance,’ he says. He has recently written a fable about wolves as part of his upcoming collection – which will also feature a collaboration with Nigerian artists Slawn and Soldier – that he is particularly excited about.

Risso joined Marni from Prada, having trained at Polimoda in Florence, FIT in New York and Central Saint Martins in London. He was born on a boat in Sardinia, in 1982, and once on dry land, lived in Genoa with his parents and their extended families, where he found his way into fashion at an early age by ransacking their wardrobes. He would cut up their clothes and create his own designs. (His mother now frequently wears Marni.) This unconventional backstory goes some way to explaining Risso’s arthouse approach to the Italian house, which was set up in the mid-1990s by Consuelo Castiglioni and her husband Gianni and spoke to a creatively orientated crowd. In 2013, it was sold to the Only The Brave fashion group, owned by Diesel founder Renzo Rosso.

Unpicking the layers of his S/S 2025 show saw the designer circulate around the theme of resistance. ‘Resistance is beauty right now,’ he says, reflecting on the state of the world. This idea was expressed in the use of cotton across the entire collection, albeit in a myriad of finishes. ‘Cotton is the most resistant material. It’s the most sustainable and has existed since the start of time.’

It also spoke to a desire to strip things back – a continuation of the design mindset of the previous A/W 2024 season whereby the atelier occupied a cave of blank white paper devoid of all references so they could focus more on emotions – but also to celebrate fashion. Specifically, how fashion shows once proposed day looks, followed by cocktail and eveningwear, and wedding gowns.

The S/S 2025 show kicked off with models, sporting exaggerated eyebrows, dressed in simple micro jackets and stretch cotton leggings (some of Risso’s favourite looks) before evolving into a more flamboyant world of trumpet-skirt silhouettes and swishy boas that looked as if they’d been crafted from paper. Exuberant signature florals gave way to couture-like dresses featuring hand-cut poplin feathers finished with embroidered crystals. Many looks were topped off with experimental blown-up bucket hats, partly inspired by a 1960s Audrey Hepburn shoot featuring her in 18th-century-style hats.

‘One of the great lessons I took from Prada was to never sit in a comfort zone,’ says Risso of his decade-long stint working for Miuccia Prada. He says the combination of Prada’s push for extreme creativity alongside a desire for clothes to wear on the street remains a driving force for his work at Marni. ‘I don’t design things that aren’t…’ He pauses. ‘OK, yes, there are four feather dresses in the last show, but I like to make things that exist in a beautiful reality. They have to be out there in the world. I don’t want to make things for a museum.’ (Side note: the word ‘reality’ is a favourite of Mrs Prada.)

One of the challenges Risso feels acutely is that creativity increasingly exists in a metrics-driven universe. ‘The only thing we talk about now is the numbers. Oh, “This brand did 90 per cent” or whatever,’ he says. ‘Who cares? What about the good clothes? What about the good ideas? And it’s not that they aren’t there. There are incredible ideas, but still, society lives through metrics more than anything else, and it’s very sad.’

Risso is determined that the future of fashion needs to be making beautiful things by hand. He flicks through his phone, looking for a quote from Walter Gropius’ 1919 Bauhaus Manifesto that sums this up. He reads, ‘Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all return to the crafts. For art is not a profession. There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman.’ A recent show at London’s National Portrait Gallery, ‘Francis Bacon: Human Presence’, spoke deeply to him. He also loves Van Gogh. ‘They were both, in different periods, really beyond [what was happening in] society. They were capable of portraying real emotions and the shifting passages of time.’

Risso wishes fashion could find a way to be more empathetic within culture. ‘I believe we can make projects that expand empathy in some way,’ he says. ‘We have a role to engage with different forms of expression so that the clothes we make can live and speak to people. We make, design, conceive, we fantasise, we romanticise, we push it to the maximum… Making clothes is like making emotions. That is actually how Marni exists, to allow people to express themselves easily, and incredibly, and loudly.’

Models: Mia Harcourt at Models 1, Gordon at Menace Model Management, Wenqing Liu, Kate Moore and Minnie Hadley at Next Management London, David Oyinloye at The Squad Management, Zyla Pan at PRM Agency, Will Glen at Brother Models, Atem at Established Models, Nami at Anti Agency. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Masayoshi Fujita at Of Substance Agency using Oribe. Make-up: Emma Regan using Shiseido. Photography assistant: Ezra Evans. Fashion assistant: Leonie Dennett. Hair assistant: Miki Ide. Make-up assistant: Margot Schifano. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

A version of this article appears in the March 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.