The house changed hands on a Sunday morning. Two days after Adrian Appiolaza walked out, Aeffe put Moschino in the care of Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, the pair who built Sunnei out of a small Milan studio and a lot of nerve.
Messina and Rizzo started Sunnei in 2014. The label ran on colour and mischief, on knitwear that looked serious and then refused to be, on shows that treated the runway as a place to argue with the industry rather than flatter it. It built a following without a conglomerate behind it. That independence carried a cost. Sunnei went into liquidation, and the two founders left in September 2025.
Ten months later they have one of the most watched jobs in Milan. The timing is fast, even by the standards of a year that has moved almost every chair in the industry. Appiolaza's exit was announced on a Friday evening. The appointment landed before the weekend was over.
The house
Franco Moschino opened his label in 1983 and spent the next decade mocking the thing that fed him. He stitched slogans onto tailoring, hung teddy bears from evening gowns, turned the fashion system into the subject of the clothes. The joke had a point. He wanted people to think about what they were buying and why. That tension, luxury laughing at itself, has kept the house legible long after his death in 1994.
Every designer since has had to decide how far to push it. Rossella Jardini kept the archive alive. Jeremy Scott ran it loud, with fast food and cartoon references and a red carpet appetite. Appiolaza tried to bring it back toward the founder's wit. Two years in, that chapter is over.
Messina and Rizzo inherit a brand that trades on a single idea and needs that idea to feel current again. Aeffe has said the two bring a contemporary eye and a cultural fluency the house wants. The Sunnei years suggest they know how to make clothes that comment without turning into costume.
The debut
Their first collection shows in September, during the Spring/Summer 2027 season that runs from the 22nd to the 28th in Milan. The calendar is heavy. Prada opens it. Gucci and Fendi present second collections from designers still settling in. A Moschino show from two new names will be read against all of it.
What they cannot do is repeat Sunnei. The scale is different, the archive is not theirs, and the audience arrives with fixed expectations about what a Moschino garment is supposed to say. The interesting question is whether the pop stays sharp or softens into decoration. Franco used the joke as a tool. The pair have talked about pop the same way, as criticism rather than surface.
A slogan is easy. Meaning it is the whole job.
The Splendid EditAeffe needs this to work. Moschino is the engine of the group, and the house has run through four creative directors in a decade. Massimo Ferretti, who chairs the company, framed the hire as a bet on identity and change at once. That is the balance every appointment claims. Few of them hold it.
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan. Courtesy of Fashion PR Firm
For now the house has its names and a date. The rest waits for the runway, where the two who once made Milan laugh from the outside will try to do it from the inside.