Moschino turns to realism for Rizzo and Messina’s debut

Moschino presented its Spring 2027 collection in Milan last week, giving new creative directors Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina their first opportunity to define the house’s next chapter. Fashionotography.com reports that the pair staged the show on the roof of a parking garage on the city’s outskirts, using the setting to signal a shift away from the theatrical excess associated with the label in recent years.

The presentation began with ordinary people rather than models. Dozens crossed the rooftop in the evening light, accompanied by dogs, children in strollers and the phones that have become fixtures of daily life. They moved in the opposite direction from the models who followed, turning the runway into a meeting point between fashion’s professional world and the streets beyond it.

A new approach to a complicated legacy

Rizzo and Messina arrived at Moschino after establishing Sunnei, the label they founded in 2014. Their appointment came in June, only weeks after Adrián Appiolaza left the Italian house. That gave them less than three months to prepare a complete ready-to-wear collection, making the coherence of the debut particularly notable.

They also inherited a brand with an unusually demanding history. Franco Moschino, the house’s founder, built his reputation by satirising fashion from within it. He played with imitation logos, sent up Chanel’s tweed and used his shows to address subjects including inequality and the AIDS crisis. His successors therefore face a difficult choice: reproduce the old visual jokes and risk seeming stuck in the past, or remove them and weaken the identity of the label.

The new directors did neither completely. Their stated aim was to refresh Moschino without copying its earlier language, while developing something direct and recognisable for the present. The collection largely achieved the second part of that plan. It was less successful at recreating the explosive humour that had long been central to the brand, but it offered a more measured interpretation of what Moschino might be now.

The familiar slogans and obvious visual punchlines were mostly absent. In their place came clothes that were easier to imagine beyond the runway. Bermuda shorts moved with bright raffia fringe, while leather trousers and breeches were finished with tassels that recalled the theatrical costumes Franco Moschino enjoyed without becoming full historical reenactments.

A black lacquer handbag shaped like a life-sized cat provided one of the collection’s clearest jokes. Carried casually over the shoulder, it remained playful without overwhelming the clothes around it. Graffiti-style T-shirts, reportedly linked to Franco Moschino’s interest in painting, offered another connection to the founder, though in a more restrained form than a major statement piece.

Clothes for life beyond fashion week

The most significant choice was not an individual garment but the structure of the event. The extras’ presence made the collection’s central argument visible: clothes should be understood in relation to real people and everyday movement, rather than only through the insulated spectacle of a runway show.

That position is consistent with the directors’ work at Sunnei. They spent more than a decade developing a label around realism and practical engagement with fashion. Their final Sunnei presentation used a mock auction of the brand’s intellectual property, creating conversation through an unexpected idea rather than relying on a lavish set.

Fashionotography.com places Moschino’s debut within a broader change in Milan. Across established houses and younger labels, designers appear to be responding to altered attitudes toward dressing since the pandemic. Comfort and usefulness have become more important, while audiences are increasingly interested in how clothes operate outside fashion week’s enclosed environment.

Rizzo and Messina are well placed to pursue that direction. Their experience at Sunnei gives them a foundation for making a legacy brand feel connected to ordinary life, rather than simply repeating the codes that made it famous.

Not every idea in the show had the same subtlety. A padded muscle T-shirt for men and a dress designed to exaggerate the body’s curves made their commentary on body image more forceful than the rest of the collection. Against the show’s generally light approach, those pieces felt comparatively blunt.

The strongest looks were the quietest ones: garments without prominent logos or punchlines that retained enough character to feel like Moschino while remaining plausible on a city street. For Rizzo and Messina, the most valuable part of Franco Moschino’s legacy may not be his jokes themselves, but his ability to understand the moment around him. At a house defined by provocation, choosing restraint may prove to be the most pointed gesture of all.