SUNNEI Fashion Brand Founders Depart After 11 Years of Critical Fashion Practice

Italian fashion brand SUNNEI, founded in Milan in 2014 by Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, has seen its founders depart the label they created. The brand emerged as a critical voice within Italy's fashion system, distinguished not primarily by a recognizable aesthetic but by a rebellious, sometimes ironic attitude and a narrative that questioned fashion itself. Both founders brought cross-disciplinary backgrounds—Rizzo as a menswear boutique buyer and Messina in visual merchandising at Gucci—and approached fashion with an almost curatorial perspective, treating clothing as a medium rather than an end goal. The brand name SUNNEI is an intentional misspelling of 'sunny,' inspired by Stevie Wonder's 1968 song, signaling distance from polished global fashion English. From 2016, SUNNEI transformed fashion shows into conceptual spaces: empty pools where models appeared as suspended presences, dark hangars creating unstable perception, and sidewalks turned into runways staging industry performance anxiety. Shows often shifted focus from the garment to context, with audiences voting on looks like a talent show, hearing models' inner thoughts via voiceover, or even watching employees carried by crowds in crowdsurfing. The constant was challenging fashion rituals rather than confirming them. The brand expressed impatience with forced seasonality and luxury rhetoric, engaging in critical negotiation rather than pure anti-system rebellion. Projects like SUNNEI Canvas—a modular platform for retailers—suggested a more fluid, almost open-source approach to fashion. Despite receiving investment from Vanguards fund in 2020 and structural growth, SUNNEI continued operating more as a laboratory than a traditional maison. Over time, the brand expanded into home objects, vinyl records of show soundtracks, Murano glass, a continuous streaming radio, photobooks, editorial events, and artistic installations, evolving into an ecosystem. Its Milan headquarters, Palazzina Sunnei, served as a hybrid space combining retail, café, and exhibition areas, shortening the distance between ideation and consumption. In 2025, SUNNEI staged a performance-auction in collaboration with Christie's, featuring a fictional auction where lots included the brand itself and its founders, using imaginary 'fashion dollars.' This highlighted the paradox that the brand's value could surpass that of its creators. Shortly after this performance, Messina and Rizzo announced their departure from the brand, describing it not as a goodbye but as the coherent final chapter of an eleven-year discourse. Rizzo stated during Vogue Italia's FoF event in Rome that creating without total freedom no longer suited them, calling the decision urgent rather than planned. The departure raises questions about whether SUNNEI's philosophy—treating fashion as critical space, cultural practice, and reflection device—can survive without its founders. The brand has suggested fashion can exist as language beyond just talking about itself, with its most radical gesture perhaps being the implication that to truly move beyond fashion, one must push it to the point of crisis. The future of the SUNNEI brand remains uncertain.