Moschino announced today that Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, founders of Milan-based Sunnei, are the brand’s new co-creative directors. The news follows the announcement of Adrian Appiolaza’s exit on Friday, after two and a half years at the helm of Moschino.
“In the evolution of a fashion house, the ability to balance identity and innovation is essential. Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo possess the qualities required to embrace this challenge: a contemporary creative vision, a deep cultural sensibility, and the ability to develop relevant and distinctive creative languages. We are confident that their contribution will further strengthen Moschino and support its growth in the years ahead,” said Massimo Ferretti, executive chairman of Aeffe S.p.A.
Ever the fans of satire, Messina and Rizzo are well-equipped to take on Moschino’s long legacy of ironic, surrealist design. The pair’s last Sunnei show in September 2025 wasn’t a show at all, but a mock auction house bidding war in ‘fashion dollars’. They announced their departure hours later.
Sunnei was founded in 2014 as a direct-to-consumer men’s brand before expanding to womenswear in 2018. After steadily growing the brand, the pair sold a majority stake to the Vanguards Group in 2020 for €6 million. This meant, at times, making safer decisions, Rizzo told Vogue Business in February 2025, as the company geared up to open a retail space at its Milan headquarters.
Never ones to shy away from cult fashion gimmicks (who can forget the SS24 show where they handed the audience paddles to score each look out of 10?), the designers have the design chops to back up their acts of showmanship. They also have the business savvy to match: both founders came from non-traditional design backgrounds, having risen through the ranks on the more corporate side of fashion brands. Messina worked in visual merchandising at Gucci, and Rizzo had worked as a digital manager and buyer.
“We have always admired Franco Moschino’s ability to challenge conventions through creativity while maintaining a clear and consistent voice. It is a rare quality. Moschino has always embodied this attitude as a cultural house driven by a strong, recognizable, and radical point of view, using pop culture as a critical tool rather than merely an aesthetic language. Taking on the Creative Direction of the House means embracing this legacy and projecting it into the present, reinforcing its relevance and its ability to shape the contemporary cultural imagination,” said Messina and Rizzo.
The pair’s ability to embrace the legacy of the house, however, will depend on the capacity of the Moschino brand under the struggling Aeffe Group. This creative director switch-up comes less than two weeks after Aeffe Group, which also owns brands including Alberta Ferretti and Pollini, named Riccardo Bagolin as general manager on June 3. In May, Moschino announced to its shareholders that the brand was insolvent, following over 200 group-wide layoffs at the end of 2025. Bagoli has been tasked with steering a turnaround for the Aeffe group alongside chief restructuring officer Stefano Falliti.
The designers’ debut for the House will be unveiled in September 2026 during Milan Fashion Week.
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