Design Duo Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo to Lead Moschino
Well, it looks like @boringnotcom and Puck’s Lauren Sherman were right: after two and a half years, the kitsch-loving Italian luxury fashion house Moschino has parted ways with designer Adrian Appiolaza in favor of Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo — the design duo behind the now defunct Italian ready-to-wear label Sunnei.
“In the evolution of a fashion house, the ability to balance identity and innovation is essential,” said Massimo Ferretti, executive chairman of Aefe S.p.A, Moschino’s parent company, via a press release. “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.”
Moschino (and the Aeffe group as a whole) has struggled in recent years to achieve profitability. At the end of 2025, the group laid off more then 200 people and then, in May of this year, Moschino was forced to admit to its shareholders that the brand had become insolvent.
Messina and Rizzo’s previous brand, Sunnei, faced its own financial troubles after the duo attempted to scale the business in 2020 following a €6 million investment from Vanguard. In 2025, Messina and Rizzo announced they were leaving the brand via a live auction stunt with Christie’s during what should have been their Spring Summer 2026 show. The stunt saw the designers unboxed within the auction house and sold for “95 million fashion dollars” (aka fake money, which is, honestly, so funny and almost too on the nose) to an anonymous phone bidder.
Sunnei has since entered liquidation, but the designers themselves now have a second chance at Moschino, a brand that, at it’s best, deals in the same wit and theatrics that seem to fuel Messina and Rizzo.
“We have always admired Franco Moschino’s ability to challenge conventions through creativity while maintaining a clear and consistent voice,” said the designers. “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.”
The duo will show their first collection for the brand this September, during Milan Fashion Week.
fashionweekdaily
