Sunnei (Q9247)
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Sunnei is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Sunnei |
Sunnei is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
You wouldn’t expect anything less than radical from Sunnei’s Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina as they marked their 10th anniversary. There wasn’t a traditional birthday cake in sight at their show; instead, it offered a reflection on aging, the passage of time, and growing older. But in true Sunnei fashion, it was irreverent and far from conventional. The entire cast consisted of individuals of a certain age, artists and friends of the house not younger than 70 or 80, proudly showcasing their wrinkles and graying hair with absolute aplomb.They looked fantastic (and inspiring) in Sunnei’s straightforward designs, which this season took a celebratory turn for the theatrical. A cotton shirred top featured a humongous cloudlike ruched capelet; an impactful, voluminous trapeze dress with billowing proportions was printed with bold diagonal stripes; and enigmatic illustrations by Messina’s mother, Marylène Fantoni, from the 1980s were reproduced on what resembled a kooky ball gown—the first specimen of Sunnei couture perhaps?Ten Years Feel Like a Hundred was the title of the show, staged in the minimalist, polished white gallery of art-world powerhouse Lia Rumma. Marina Abramović and Juergen Teller sat on small wood stools alongside a select group of loyal friends and editors who have supported the label’s bravado over the past decade. “We’re turning 10 and we still haven’t managed to get a Wikipedia page,” they joked amid the joyful mayhem that followed the show.For once, they chose not to over-ruminate on the deeper meaning of their performative show, leaving the audience to reflect on what was likely the first fashion show in history with an all-senior cast. The message was powerful enough to need time to sink in. “It can’t be fully conveyed in words, and that’s intentional,” they explained. However, true to their intellectual nature, they still offered their own insights.“Nobody knows what Sunnei will look like in 90 years—and none of us will be here to witness it,” they mused. “These past 10 years have been so intense, they felt like a century. So we thought, why not stretch that idea and project the fashion show a hundred years into the future, to 2124? We wanted to enter a no-time zone—a distorted future where time becomes so dense that it almost dissolves, ceasing to exist. No trends, no overthinking, no overdesign. There’s no pressure or anxiety about growth, whether personal or as a brand—the obsession with constant growth is absurd.
The fashion industry is aging. Milan is aging. We’re merely amplifiers of these paradoxes. There’s no need to celebrate anything. Age is irrelevant—whether it’s 10, 100, 2, or 85. They’re just numbers. There’s no melancholy or sorrow in growing older. At Sunnei, nobody is old.”
21 September 2024
The Sunnei designers are mercurial and unpredictable. They like to unsettle and provoke, but their nerdy sense of humor makes their show (more performative interaction than conventional fashion week material) a moment of clever entertainment sandwiched between not equally as clever and entertaining shows. The fashion industry and its paradoxes are a favorite target of their critique. This season they treated their audience to a more intimate gathering, held in the showroom space of cc-tapis, a company that produces rugs created by artists or designers. The models walked on a huge 72-square-meter striped carpet, unfolded right before the show started. What were they up to? “We asked ourselves: what does a model think when she/he walks the rehearsed walk in front of the audience?” The musical score was replaced by voiceovers, 30 of them for the 30 models, that supposedly described what was in their minds. “Who ever cares about what models are thinking when they perform?” asked Simone Rizzo. “This season we’re giving a stage to their mental spaces—just to create a new layer of madness,” added Loris Messina. Here a few examples of possible mental formations during a catwalk walk: Look #10: “Okay. Walk straight. Don’t bite your lips. Try not to fall. Walk straight. Fuck. The bag is falling.” Look #16: “Nah, nah man, these clothes are nice but put together like this… We all look like a bunch of clowns. Gosh this brand. They want us to look ridiculous or what?” Look #23: ”Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie. Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie.” Look #26: “Oh gosh… The noise in my stomach. Oh gosh, I can’t wait to eat some pasta. Mmmm, Italian pasta, fusilli, ravioli, risotto. Mmmm…” Look #30: The world is on fire and we’re talking about fashion? These people are so superficial. I can’t do this anymore. Jesus. Look at them. Look. The blonde in the second row, she thinks her review will change the world.” The hilarious commentary was actually a smart way to keep the focus on the co-ed collection, limiting the audience participation of previous performances that somehow distracted from the clothes, which here could be seen up-close. The feel was that of a more elevated offer; the Sunnei repertoire of wardrobe basics looked more polished and concise. Oversized jumpers in fluffy mohair with matching berets and trailing scarves were standouts.
Humongous puffers in colorful satin came with interchangeable covers like a bedroom duvet; a few pieces were crafted from a striped rug fabric in collaboration with cc-tapis and put together with snaps, so when un-snapped they can return to their original carpet stage. “We aren’t interested in fashion trends, we want to offer our audience an artistic journey that is food for thought.” Craziness and cleverness—a combo the Sunnei designers manage with consummate aplomb.
24 February 2024
One goes to Sunnei’s shows with feelings of anticipation bordering on anxiety. Knowing that the interaction with the audience is part of the game, one doesn’t know what to expect. The label keeps us on our toes. So far, we’ve never been disappointed, anxiety notwithstanding. It has been quite consistently brilliant.This time we had to trek to a desolate, uninspiring television studio in the middle of nowhere, where, after taking our seats in a cavernous theater as if we were to participate in a cheap reality show, we were handed numbered paddles and asked to rate each of the outfits in the show. While we waited in the dark space, we were entertained by a rather disquieting recorded voice blasting out messages, sort of aphorisms à la Sunnei: “Expressing your opinion feels great, do it now!” “This time you’ll be more than just a part of the show’s set design!”Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina use fashion as social commentary; they do it with a sharp, almost ferocious wit that is utterly endearing. “We start from the urge we feel to unravel paradoxes, translating that into artistic gestures,” said Rizzo. Here, demystifying the destructive power of media was on the agenda. “Everyone has an opinion, everyone is a judge, an advocate, a writer, a reviewer, and there’s a widespread blah blah, [and the idea that] all opinions are legit regardless of whether they’re grounded in knowledge,” chimed in Messina. So they give the audience permission to unleash their murderous inner fashion critic. “Sunnei is the opportunity to not hate fashion,ancora!” admonished the booming voice. “Having an opinion is natural, just release it! Follow your gut! Don’t overthink, just judge!”The collection certainly scored high. The pace was fast, focused; the looks were reduced to just 30. “We already have too much information in the world,” stated Messina. If only more designers listened, fashion would be a much healthier place instead of being perennially overstuffed. What the Sunneis sent out was a concise proposition that riffed on their best-ofs—exaggerated volumes they called Maxi Over pitted against slender silhouettes in the Ultra Stretch category.Surfaces were treated with a textural approach; rubber was reused from bags’ leftovers; layering was consistent with the practical need for protection. Illusionistic effects were as inventive as they were disquieting, as in a dress in sheer organza, onto which the scanned image of a naked body was 3D-printed.
Subsequently, an entire look—underwear, a pair of trousers, a shirt—was also scanned and printed onto separate layers of organza, which were then assembled into a sort of mille-feuille dress. Making it must have been labor-intensive: The dress looked like a pretty amazing specimen of next-level trompe l’oeil.Speaking about their creative mindset, Messina said, “We’re becoming more and more introspective in how we relate to our work. We continuously revisit, hone, and perfect what we’ve done since the beginning.” The designers are quiet, obsessive radicals. “There’s no middle ground,” they said in unison.
22 September 2023
One has to expect the unexpected and then some when heading to a Sunnei show. Although the team has staged various memorable performances—if you scroll through the VR reviews you’ll have an idea of how their shows can be bonkers in the most exquisite, nerdy way—today they surpassed themselves.Staging a crazy crowdsurfing fashion show at the Palazzina Sunnei was the last frontier of Sunnei-ism, a status on par with Gucci-fication, or Prada-ness, terms that ratify a sort of uniqueness. Because yes, the Sunneis are a unique, peculiar entity—provocateurs with a tech conscience, sharp-minded and mathematical. Poetically algorithmic. Cautiously successful. With a fierce sense of community. In a word, brilliant.They’re also quite the shrewd, meticulous showmen. In the stark white showroom of their headquarters today, they squeezed the audience like sardines around a tall white box catwalk, at the end of which their whole team—assistants, designers, web whizzes, product managers, accountants—wearing outfits from the fall collection, dived into the friendly mosh pit of the exhilarated, delighted, exultant audience. It was a rare fashion moment of participative, loudly joyous fun. For their finale, Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo also took their bows in a triumphant act of crowdsurfing.“This show is the greatest expression of Sunnei-ism,” enthused Rizzo. “It’s about freedom, trust, confidence, taking risks, interaction, participation. When we work on collections, we crystallize it into a suspended image. We wanted to celebrate our team, as they are our daily inspiration. And we wanted the audience to participate in a circular moment of beauty and freedom. We thought at crowdsurfing as an intense act of purification, a cathartic ritual of unconditional trust.”And what about the collection? Obviously the situation didn’t make it very readable, but flashes of fluorescent colors, flares of crocheted fur textures, and bursts of flocked denim were absorbed by the audience’s over-stimulated senses. It was enough to get the Sunnei energy for uncomplicated, wearable, cool fashion. Messina and Rizzo consider Sunnei as a cultural container rather than a fashion company, yet their designs are considered and attractive, clearly perfect for vigorous activities.Swallowed by backstage mayhem, Rizzo and Messina weren’t up for a deep-dive into exegesis; they handed over the show notes, on which the portraits of all the members of the team were printed.
Below are some of the quotes they wrote to prep the audience for the crowdsurfing experience.“1. Leave your expectations outside this building. Drop preconceptions, shake off assumptions. 2. Now, forget perfectly perfect perfection and welcome reality. 3. Okay, you’ve finally entered a Sunnei state of mind.”
24 February 2023
Sometimes in fashion weird things happen—part magical, part spooky. The very same ideas and inspirations travel unpredictably in the ether from designer to designer, and, unbeknownst to them, get teleported and pop out in their fashion shows. This was the case at today’s Sunnei presentation, which shared the idea of twins with no less than Alessandro Michele, whose Gucci show was staged just hours before with a similar casting of twin models.“We’ve been working on our concept for months on end, and getting the twin casting right was quite the nightmare,” said Simone Rizzo with a hint of despair in his voice. “Our concepts are clearly different, but still…” chimed in Loris Messina. “What can you do? But it’s okay. You just keep marching on.”There’s always a social commentary in Sunnei’s practice, and this season the designers’ show, “which actually was more of a performative act,” they said, was about how the fashion system can alter the perception of identity, distorting the sense of self into multiple, often illusory and fractured representations. The rather highfalutin and abstruse concept seemed impossible to be rendered in fashion show form, but the Sunneis have the stubbornness of conviction and were unfazed by the challenge.Their Palazzina Sunnei was transformed into a white box, a sort of daunting operating room. Guests were asked to wear surgical protective overshoes. At the end of the catwalk, a revolving door opened into mysterious nothingness. That’s when the identical twins situation came into play. Sitting among the audience, one of the twins, dressed in their own clothes, walked through the revolving door, while the other twin emerged from the opposite rotating side dressed to the nines in Sunnei’s spring collection, with full-on makeup and the appropriate coiffure.“It’s a metaphor of how fashion can act as a transformative force, which is as magical as it is utterly crazy,” the designers explained after the engaging yet rather puzzling show. As for the collection, it was quintessentially Sunnei, with plenty of utilitarian pieces cut with clarity of purpose and a playful, sunny side. “It doesn’t need many explanations,” they said. “We just update it season after season like software.”
23 September 2022
Social commentary always lurks in the background of Sunnei’s practice. The pandemic has offered Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina plenty of open questions to chew on, fashion being rich food-for-thought territory, with game-changing actions still slow to come about within the industry.For starters, fashion’s high-pitched, fast-paced beat hasn’t slowed down, and running from one physical show to the next has become normality again—digital presentations already seem archeological. Collateral effects of frenzy, stress and nerve-racking timetables are once again part of the picture, despite all the good intentions flaunted when the fashion world was in a state of pandemic shock.Their fall show seemed a good occasion for Messina and Rizzo to pick up on our collective scatterbrained state. They rallied their community in an open air set on the outskirts of Milan, where they orchestrated a sort of “performance within the performance” as they called it, with the audience commanded to stand on metal benches, facing the sidewalk near a wall of an industrial building. “We wanted to make people stop for a moment and reflect on what’s happening, especially today, which is such a delicate, disquieting moment,” said the designers. With Russia and Ukraine clashing violently, and war looming on the horizon, the mood was one of uncertainty and worry. Today, fashion felt both reassuring and irrelevant.Instead of walking, models came running along the wall, while the audience was invited to follow the show in slow motion through their iPhones. As a sort of metaphoric “crystallization of the moment,” as the designers called it, it was quite fitting—and also good fun. The Sunneis are not moralists, intending to chastise the industry—in the end, they’re as much a part of it as the rest of us, running around like crazy. They keep their refreshing sense of humor, but their execution is always impeccable. Fall’s cinematic set was made in collaboration with Studio 2050+, whose founder Ippolito Pestellini, is an OMA alumni.As for the collection, it was quite hard to see the details with models running at lightening speed, but the clothes looked fit for such an athletic performance. “We’ve used a new technical fabric that extends and stretches, perfect for layering,” said the designers. They riffed on their core items, “focusing on what we do best, experimenting on making our favorite shapes more extreme and radical, without detracting from their identity and character.
” While keeping their offer sleek and minimal, they went quite eclectic, playing with colors and textures with a more tactile appeal on balaclava-capes in furry wool and chenille woven into wavy 3D motifs. “We tried to upgrade our collection to the max,” they said. “It’s the first one we’ve made with the help of a strong, structured new team, with creatives coming from everywhere in what we call ‘liquid collaboration.’ We said we wanted Milan to be at the intersection of creativity, to be open and making a difference. So far, we’ve kept our word.”
24 February 2022
For all their inveterate minimalism, Sunnei’s Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina love a grand gesture. Today’s show was held in a vast warehouse, where a massive 180-foot parallelepiped-cum-tunnel was installed smack in the middle, painted in a blinding, almost clinical shade of white, which made it look like some kind of entity floating absurdly in mid-air. Said object was designed by Milan’s 2050+ studio, founded by former OMA architect Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, who has no shortage of über-cool projects under his belt. He’s part of Sunnei’s artistic community, which recently gathered to fête the opening of Salone del Mobile (Furniture Fair), dining in al fresco splendor on an extra-long communal table set up in the street which runs outside Palazzina Sunnei, the four-story building which is their creative beehive.To make the life of their guests not exactly easy, the Sunneis had the audience not sitting but standing, not before having struggled to find where to stand, as each assigned spot was marked with an undetectable white-on-white number. It didn’t help that sunglasses—called Prototipo 3, which looked like goggles held in place by a sort of seat belt—were distributed at the entrance to help protect the eyes from a furious blast of white light that marked the show’s start. After that, everything went pretty smoothly.Rizzo and Messina have always experimented with a variety of different media to present their collections—avatars, videos, all sorts of abstruse digital renditions. This was their first physical show in a long time; the proximity of the audience to the diverse cast of models (friends, members of the design studio, guys and girls working in various capacities at Palazzina Sunnei) made it possible to get a real appreciation of Sunnei’s accomplishments as designers. They expanded their restrained fashion vocabulary to include a broader range of options—unafraid of playing with color, layering with gusto, perfecting silhouettes, juxtaposing volumes and proportions with balanced punch.Pushing the Sunnei envelope, they introduced unexpected decorative flourishes of beading and fringing, which gave some swing to their otherwise quite firm, solid shapes: a beaded and fringed top paired with pooling XXL slacks was a standout, as was a pair of extra-heavy trousers entirely covered in tiny beaded fringes—the show’s pièce de résistance.
Equally captivating was an abstract floral motif, inspired by the pictures that Rizzo’s father takes of herbaria and rare plant species; it was printed on a pale-blue denim ensemble in delicate watercolor-like transparencies or in brighter tones on elasticated rubberized cotton, ruched, and molded into a form-fitting top-skirt two-piece.Rizzo and Messina were already dead-serious digital geeks and savvy businessmen; now they’re confidently growing into accomplished designers and entertainers—in their pristine, slightly clinical, exacting way. Yet they nurture a sense of community that’s warm and authentic. In the Milanese fashion landscape, which often lacks truly unconventional and inventive talents, they’re unique creative specimens.
24 September 2021
Sunnei’s Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina are minimalists when it comes to style and maximalists when technology is involved. Their Palazzina Sunnei is a sort of immaculate parallel universe where a plethora of avatars, 3D video screens, scanning paraphernalia and massive sound system walls reign supreme. Yet the atmosphere is lo-fi and preternaturally serene; the very young, very nice, very good looking people moving softly about the three-story space look more like members of a hip creative community than actual employees of a fashion brand. They all seem rather happy to be there.“When we started Sunnei from scratch in 2015, it was just the two of us,” said Rizzo during an in-person appointment. “Today we provide jobs for thirty people. It’s our greatest pride.” They celebrated their crew by having them morphed into avatar superstars wearing the third installment of their Canvas project—a personalized selling model so progressive and innovative it’s currently the subject of a case study for fashion graduates at NABA and Politecnico, two major universities in Milan.From the accountant to the temporary CEO to the receptionist, all avatars looked cool in their customized Canvas outfits, cut with generous proportions following the minimalistic, straightforward template the designers favor. In the airy showroom space of the Palazzina, the collection’s samples were neatly displayed, ready to be personalized by buyers and retailers, either online on a dedicated platform or via physical appointments. Starting this season, Sunnei’s customers and enthusiasts can also order their DIY wardrobe of wide-legged drawstring pants, oversized hoodies and knitted jumpers in the fabrications, prints and colors of their liking. The outfits will be made and shipped in the record time of two weeks. “Sunnei is about extreme practicality applied to the madness of our radical virtual narrative,” joked Messina.The Canvas project reduces overproduction waste to a minimum, as samples are limited and production is tailored to the customized quantities eventually sold. “Sustainability for us isn’t only sourcing organic materials or upcycling deadstocks,” said Rizzo. “What’s important for us is to create intelligent circular processes to radically change the system.” It sounds like a manifesto of two utopian digital alchemists, but Sunnei’s achievements so far are proof that whenever Rizzo and Messina set their eyes on a goal, however ambitious it may be, they’ll probably make it happen.
19 June 2021
Sunnei’s projects are more the artistic outcome of a web of like-minded creatives than fashion renditions of a moment in time. Designers Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo have been consistent with this practice since the inception of their label. Today they’re the tip of the iceberg of a dynamic movement shaping Milan’s fashion future; it’s based on communal creative experiences, where bringing together shared visions and expertise is much more valuable than solipsistic celebrations of egos.Messina and Rizzo are digital natives. They look down with polite condescension at designers scrambling to catch up on the latest technology and collateral digital paraphernalia; they smile at the widespread “digital performance anxiety,” as they call it. Nonetheless for fall they came up with a humorous, lo-fi critique of the cybernated time we all spend around the multiple devices infesting our quarantined lives.“We looked at the non–physical reality of the space behind our iPhones,” said the designers during (of course) a Zoom call. They wanted to achieve the impossible mission of making it real, tactile. How to make the virtual entities perceptible as if they were tangible? How to make an infinite space with no limits relatable as if it were finite? While I was scratching my head virtually, they quickly answered: “For the look book, photographer Alessio Bolzoni had the models look as if they had crashed on a screen—bang! They looked squashed on the surface on the phone screen, very close to us. You have the feeling that they can actually be touched. Scrolling through our digital images on Vogue Runway’s feed should feel as realistic as possible.”In Sunnei’s fall look book, the models seem to be trying to escape from the perfect fashion shows held in the illusory, frigid “behind the screen” infinity. Clothes appear creased, crushed, and distorted; if you enlarge each image, the textures of the outfits pop up in sharp focus, blown up to 3-D effect. They seem almost tactile. To achieve that effect, the collection was made with nonflat but textural, visually dense fabrications: extra-large-ribbed velvets, quilted and padded paper nylons, crinkled cottons. Denim was elasticized and embroidered or lacquered and embossed. Imperfections were embraced as spontaneous creative accidents. “It’s the screen that molds the garments,” said the designers.
28 February 2021
The Sunnei community of artists, avatars and digital geeks has a new member: Angelino, the two-year-old French bulldog who is modeling the label’s first foray into dogwear.Angelino’s dedicated collection of striped padded coats and backpacks, engineered to comfortably accommodate him during walks with his owners, Sunnei designers Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, isn’t the only new addition to the label’s growing roster of digital/physical activities (they abhor the word phygital, ‘trans-medial’ being a preferred option). This season the designers are expanding the efficiency of the progressive Canvas platform they launched a year ago, right at the beginning of the pandemic. It’s a platform intended to creatively engage the label’s retailers and buyers to create their own Sunnei collections digitally, assembling different outfits, choosing shapes, colors and fabrications as they see fit. After initial skepticism from some fashion industry pundits, the formula has proved extremely successful. It’s also sustainable, as it eliminates the need to produce huge sample collections that usually end up going to waste. The fact that it operates as a sort of video game was almost prescient, as other mega brands have been quick to pick up on the idea. But the Sunneis aren’t claiming ownership of anything—they’re too coolheaded for that. They’re just following their own path and trying to stay well ahead of the curve.Gaming has obviously become a big thing in fashion of late. Being digital natives, for Messina and Rizzo such language is just part of who they are. Presenting their expanded second Canvas collection during Milan Men’s Fashion Week through a video game was an organic extension of their experimental trans-medial practice, which is quite artistic in its own right. The video game will launch today on a dedicatedwebsite, with the duo introducing it virtually to their audience. Transformed into avatars of themselves, they will lead customers, editors and their community at large into a game “with no beginning, no end and no prize,” as they explained in a preview. “It’s a rather bizarre idea, we know,” they said. “The way it’s conceived, it underlines a sort of critique of the alienation gaming and extreme VR can induce. The virtualization trend isn’t going away anytime soon though: the decade from 2010 to 2020 was all about social media; the next one, from 2020 to 2030, will be the gaming decade,” they continued.
“What we’ve worked at is something visually quite nostalgic, friendly,simpatico. We don’t like all those extremely aggressive VR optics, they’re actually quite scary. We like something almost melancholy, low-fi so to speak. Our avatars last season danced la macarena—they weren’t up for anything not-human, or worse, inhuman.”In this whirlwind of virtual action, is fashion at risk of getting lost along the way? The Sunneis don’t think so: they’re presenting what they call “highlights” of their actual collection, modeled by their friendly avatars, outfits they have edited and assembled following their personal taste. On the Canvas platform, every look can be dismembered and reassembled at a buyers’ whim. As usual with Sunnei, the collection was almost 60% genderless and, as the designers were keen to point out, ageless: shapes were streamlined, minimalist and forgiving, comfortable, able to accommodate diverse body types. Outerwear was puffed up and padded. Pieces can be layered at leisure. White is Sunnei’s favorite color (this is why the platform is called Canvas, as in a blank canvas), but more chromatic choices have been introduced this season to add a jolt of energy and humor—which are much needed today, more so than the hottest it bag or the latest hyper-glamorized sneaker. Gaming and virtual proficiency is all well and good, but no one, especially now, wants to look stark-white, dressed as if he came out of some science lab.
17 January 2021