Mood board: There’s debate to be had about what ‘cool’ might look like in such egalitarian times; is it in the throb of the queue outside Supreme waiting for the latest drop? Is it sat on the conglomerate, curated front rows of Paris? Virgil Abloh’s rise from self-proclaimed ‘image architect’ to creative director at Louis Vuitton and Demna Gvasalia’s ascent via his twisted archetypes to the helm of Balenciaga are the kind of moves that have changed the landscape of the industry. Cleverly marketed, recognisable clothes are the new normal. With their confident, breezy take on dressing, Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo have added something new to the vocabulary of modern Italian fashion with their label Sunnei. Light safari suiting with fluid cargo trousers, elongated crotch pants with mini kick flare and dropped shoulder hoodies were all presented with a subtle pomp.
Best in show: Since 2015 the label has slowly become a quiet highlight of the Milan men’s schedule. With no formal training in fashion (Loris studied Marketing while Rizzo studied Business Management, later completing a Master’s degree in Digital Media Management) they are self-taught, savvy marketers, which is fitting for our times. Their youthful, unpretentious style is a welcome break from the slew of sportswear tailoring and over-designed, over-logoed clothes elsewhere. The S/S 2019 show, they said, was inspired by the innocence and wide-eyed wonder of ‘a boy or girl visiting the Piazza Duomo for the first time’; the clichés of Milanese fashion are never far from the mood board and the duo make sure to subvert our preconceptions about Italian style. ‘This is what we would like to become, who we were before and who we were in the 90s,’ Rizzo said of the look, which included multi stripe knits, graphic striped camo windcheaters and baggy dungarees.
Scene setting: The venue for the show was the 31st floor of Gio Ponti’s Pirelli tower, a wide open piazza with concrete pillars and bold, curved central pod made of double cambered glass at the centre. The show saw the unveiling of a new womenswear line too which riffed on the cuts and prints of the menswear: ‘We don’t want to see it as a ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s’ collection,’ Rizzo said. ‘We needed to start something new, to explore categories.’
