In a Vast, Empty Swimming Pool, a Fashion Show

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/t-magazine/sunnei-show-pool.html

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In a year when we’ve all felt at the mercy of natural phenomena, a thunderstorm might register as a mere nuisance. But last Wednesday, after several months spent planning their alfresco spring 2021 runway show, the team behind Sunnei — one of Milan’s most exciting emerging fashion brands — was consumed by the ominous weather forecast for the following day, ordering scores of umbrellas for an audience they fretted would face raging winds and biblical downpours.

“Look, it was supposed to rain already today, but it didn’t,” said Simone Rizzo, who founded Sunnei with his partner, Loris Messina, five years ago, when the pair was not long out of school. They were eating lunch in the courtyard garden of the Palazzina Sunnei — their newly renovated headquarters in a three-story ’80s-era former recording studio in the same eastern corner of Milan as the brand’s flagship store — and sunlight streamed down from a then cloudless September sky. “It wasn’t supposed to rain yet,” Messina countered (his mother had just called in distress about Thursday’s forecast). Rizzo’s optimism withered: “Are you saying it’s going to storm tomorrow? Are our guests going to be miserable?”

“It could be beautiful with the rain,” Messina offered.

The show, held in the vast, emptied pool of the 1930s-era Lido di Milano, would be one of just a handful of live events during a mostly digitized fashion week. Conceived by the designers as a rousing love letter to their city, still scarred by the pandemic, the occasion would also mark an epochal transition for the label: Just hours before start time, it was announced that the Budapest-based Vanguards fashion group had made a $7 million investment in Sunnei, which had previously been independent, in order to gain majority control. “Maybe it’s time to finally move into a bigger place,” said Rizzo, of the 400-square-foot apartment he and Messina have shared since before they launched their brand.

In the intervening years, Sunnei has been a rarity in Milan: a youthful, scrappy and successful upstart among the corporate leviathans that dominate Italian fashion. Rizzo, 32, and Messina, 31, lead a dozen team members, all in their twenties, who together create subversive, reimagined Italian tailoring — like this season’s long-lined, velcro-cuffed blazer and boxy, rose-colored neoprene trench coat — along with ’90s-inflected staples like cargo pants, button-up denim dresses and crop tops. Inspired by the coolly offbeat crew that surrounds the designers, the line avoids trends and instead creates clothes that feel like a uniform for a forward-looking subculture — while also continuing the Italian tradition of privileging exceptional construction and materials, from smooth gabardines to high-tech nylons and experimental wool knits. “This is still a very difficult period,” Rizzo acknowledged of hosting a live event, “but it’s an investment for our brand but also for our values, and for Milan.”

The day of the show, Rizzo and Messina stood lost in the immensity of the pool’s blue basin under a rapidly shifting sky and talked more of rain — until they were reminded about the investment. “Today’s important. It’s the last runway show that will be entirely ours,” said Rizzo. The pair had shared the news with their team at 2 a.m. the previous night, after a seemingly interminable day of fittings. The step will be fundamental, explained Messina, in easing the burden on the duo and their staff. “You lose the energy you need as an independent after a while,” he said. “Fashion seems easy, but it’s extremely complex to make it work. Eventually, you need some help.”

Just after sunset that evening, help also arrived from the heavens, which unleashed an icy hailstorm farther afield in the center of Milan, but only glossed the pool’s concrete with enough rain to render it a dramatic, reflective backdrop for the collection. Umbrellas went up in the audience, but the sky mostly held for the finale, when the models trouped across the pool into two spotlighted rows and Rizzo and Messina emerged from the darkness to give the triumphant last bow of the first chapter of their brand.

Wednesday, Sept. 23, 1:03 P.M.

Messina and Rizzo spent the day before the show fitting models in catwalk looks at the brand’s new headquarters, which they’ve named Palazzina Sunnei. They devised the space as both a studio and a hub for Milan’s often-overlooked young creative community: a place to host exhibitions, concerts, garden dinners and an online radio station (when normal social activity resumes).

1:45 P.M.

Recalling a ’90s-era trend for candy chokers, Rizzo and Messina paired several outfits with glossy double-cabochon necklaces, alongside other accessories, including a hand-painted cigar-case purse for men and women, fly-eye sunglasses and Sunnei’s signature boxlike Bauletto bag.

2:27 P.M.

Messina scribbled notes for each runway look on a corkboard. Sunnei “only works because we work together,” said Rizzo. “On my own, I’d make something too commercial. But Loris on his own would never have sold a thing!”

2:49 P.M.

This season, the brand’s playful riffs on Italian tailoring were paired with platform sandals and psychedelic swim shoes covered in rubber nubs.

3:15 P.M.

Models waited in the studio’s courtyard for their appointments in the marble-tiled showroom, where Rizzo and Messina, together with the stylist Vittoria Cerciello, rotated accessories in and out to experiment with each look’s impact. “Is it too polished?” they would ask each other before switching sandals for sneakers. “It needs to be more cazzutta!” — or politely, “tough” — declared Rizzo.

3:38 P.M.

Among the many fabrics Sunnei developed with its textile makers was an undyed canvas sprayed with an innovative denim-like finish. “Living in Italy, we’re able to work in close collaboration with the very best workshops,” said Messina, adding that the brand’s silk and technical fabrics are made near Lake Como, its shoes in Le Marche and its garments in the nearby Veneto region.

5:20 P.M.

Sunnei’s signature striped poplin punctuated the collection, and even composed the masks worn by the team and friends of the house.

6:05 P.M.

For the studio’s courtyard, Rizzo and Messina commissioned a geometric table in laser-cut reflective steel from their friends at the Milan design studio NM3. Within the white-walled headquarters, where the onetime recording studio’s pyramidal soundproofing still covers the ceiling, art from Sunnei’s extended creative community — including ear-shaped hanging sculptures by the New York-based artist Sam Stewart — fills the rooms.

Thursday, Sept. 24, 5:20 P.M.

As the wind picked up, models wore their own clothes — paired with Sunnei’s platform sandals and swim shoes — for a run-through in the Lido di Milano’s empty basin. The Rationalist public pool is so monumental in its scale that boats sailed its waters alongside swimmers when it first opened in 1931.

6:40 P.M.

Inside the pool’s classically inspired pavilion, which provided a backstage area, the makeup artist Claudia Malavasi and her team blotted noses and combed eyebrows in preparation for the show, for which models would sport a natural look. Hairstylists, led by Paolo Soffiatti, tousled and lightly sprayed locks to create a subtly undone effect, wrapping a few ponytails in scrunchies.

6:48 P.M.

As the sky darkened, arriving guest received umbrellas while backstage, models were helped into wide-leg pants, sheer tartan caftans and thick pleated tunics.

7:03 P.M.

The collection’s woven wool tote bags were made using the brand’s surplus yarns and in collaboration with a friend of the designers’ who passed the lockdown interval by learning to crochet.

7:17 P.M.

“We need to hurry,” warned Rizzo as the sky threatened a deluge, but when the audience watched the first models stride by, there was only a sprinkling of raindrops.

7:33 P.M.

For the finale, models illuminated by spotlights marched in two rows into the center of the pool.

8:01 P.M.

While dressers packed away the runway garments, Rizzo and Messina stood outside the pavilion elbow-bumping and blowing kisses to well-wishers. “I can’t believe how lucky we are today,” said Rizzo.