Francesco Risso on His Spring 2025 Marni Show, His Years at Prada, and the Backstory Behind His Instagram Handle

0:04This is The Run Through. I'm Nicole Phelps. Today on the show, I'm joined by Francesco Riso, the creative director of Marni. I think of Francesco as an artist philosopher, so I was really excited to get his thoughts on the state of fashion, what inspires him, and of course, his Instagram handle, a slice of Bambi. Here's my conversation with Francesco Riso. Thank you, Francesco, for being here today on the Run-Through podcast. Thank you, Nicole. It's such a pleasure to see you, even with the word farm. I am so glad you're here. I don't know if you saw this, but in the days after the shows, we often talk about our favorite collections on Vogue.com.

0:48And I named your show, your Marnie show, my favorite of the season. I was so moved. And everything came together for me. The set, the live music, the way the collection built from almost spare to quite extravagant. And I was wondering, when you're backstage, how do you know something is working? Oh, you know, this is actually a great question. I didn't know that anything was working until I had done my bowing and I came back to the backstage. And suddenly I look around at people and I see everyone's crying. and that actually made me really like uh stop for a second and I was like wow wait a minute I didn't understand what was actually really happening there I was like too taken by putting things back together like stitching the last things actually I had to stitch like a coat that was like, by mistake, was ripped.

1:55And I was there, like so taken by that, that I didn't realize anything until I came back from my bowing. And then, unfortunately, or fortunately, I started crying too. Well, I have cried at other of your shows in the past, which we'll get to later. But I want to talk specifically about spring 2025 and to hear about the genesis. It was so different. It was so different than what you did for fall 2024 when we were in this cave and you had hand painted these very simple sort of garments. This, in contrast, was almost like couture. There were couture shapes. So can you talk a little bit about what you set out to achieve this season, what you wanted to do?

2:44You know, in this particular time where I think we all can feel these like radical changes that happen like minute by minute. Like we look at the world outside and it can be so inspirational, but also equally so scary. I think after that show in February, we had to stop again and think what is beauty for us. And it might sound banal because, you know, beauty is, it can be anything for anybody. And for us, I think it's like about chasing rabbits somehow and entangle things, break things. So this is what was about this show. And that's maybe why it felt so couture in a way. I think for us, Chasing Rabbits was almost like this idea of resistance.

3:51And beauty is an act of resistance to me, especially right now. So for one time in many collections, this collection started from cotton. And that is like the most incredible tool of resistance. If you think about time, it's that fabric that lasts forever. And it's that beauty that can kind of accompany us like in every day's life. so it really started from the material and then into looking back into a sort of like nostalgia and thinking how can we combine these two elements together like this material that feels really about resistance that it's almost like militant and this idea that the material can express a lot of feelings.

4:52And maybe we have to look back in all those universal beauties that are so important for us to make us grounded. So let's talk a little bit more about Marnie in general. You've been there, I think, going on nine years. And one thing that all of your observers have noticed since the beginning is that you often refer to the team as your family. I do. Why is community and collaboration such an important part of your work? You know, it's, I have to do it in my hands. Yes. So tell us what, what you have, you have tattoos on your hands and they're of moons, is that correct? On the palm of your hands.

5:36It's two moons, yes. And it's, it reminds me every day that to me, the most important thing about what I do is about a symbiotic way of moving. And I think I've learned that since I was a child, as I needed to find friends as a family in my pathway. And that I have brought with me in these years, also with Marnie. And Marnie manifesto was a sort of like click of a change into that even more when COVID arrived and we did that show that was like presented in 16 different cities around the world simultaneously simultaneously live. That was a moment in which I felt the urge to, for the brand to be expressed by people and to be owned by people rather than the opposite.

6:50And, you know, in all the collections that I've made since I've started here, I have come across like people in the streets and then they have become our interpreter or even people that I've met in the stores, our clients that have become interpreters. And little by little, all these conjunctions became more and more important. And why I love this symbiotic way of working is because people that comes and goes, they inform what we do, the designs, their lives informs our designs. Talk about your own family. You grew up in quite a unique way on the boat for five years, I believe. But then you also lived with a large extended family.

7:47How would you say your family informs your design? Yeah, I have, after I have born on this crazy adventure with my dad and my mom, we have moved finally on land. And that's where all the families kind of like collided together. So I have a big family that is the composition of many different families together. So my dad had a previous family, my mom had a previous family. There was a moment, a crazy moment where they decided to live all together. So I was living with my five brothers and sisters with their parents, their grandparents. It was really hectic. And I was the youngest. I was very silent until I started to make.

8:40And I think I found the expression of my language through making. Specifically, I started to attack and steal from the wardrobes of my family. So from my sisters, from my grandmother, from my mother. Like, I have to tell you, like, my grandmothers had, like, incredible things. And yet I started, like, literally Frankensteining and collaging things. And that, yes, became controversial, even in the family, because my sister, trust me, they still remember those moments and they still probably have some hate around it. But for me, it was like my drug. And I couldn't live without that feeling of making and making for myself.

9:31And that was my way of expressing myself.

9:39Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

9:55Right now, in movies, in the opera, even in pop music, divinely inspired women are everywhere. This week on Critics at Large, we make our case. Saints are having a moment. Look, I can spout off any number of cliches, but they're all true. The world is moving faster and faster. Materialism is now reaching every single corner of the globe. It's very hard to say no and to say stop and to say I will do without. And I think that explains some of the modern cultural appeal. I'm Vincent Cunningham. Join me and my co-hosts on Critics at Large from The New Yorker. Find us every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

10:45And we're back. I did want to talk a little bit about your collaborators or your ambassadors. I think you call them interpreters. I know you work with Dev Hines, the musician. Paloma Elsesser is a model that you work with a lot. What attracts you to these people? Is there something in general about them? I mean, what makes you groove with people? You know, it's like just the way your question is coming in and it's giving me goosebumps, you know, because every cycle that we go through together, it's such an incredible journey. I, you know, I work with Dev from the start of a collection till the moment our interpreters are walking in the show.

11:33and he's an incredible musician that have taught me so much. He actually even baptized me into learning cello and this is like combining a sound to what we make. You know, it adds so much dimension to it. So, um, so this is how, how we make it. It's not just like, oh, Dev comes and make a playlist for the show. There's actually an intention that starts with maybe for instance, like the radicalism of the last show, let's make it all one in cotton. It was, I was like, oh, maybe they should all be, combination of three. And then we were like, oh, let's have three pianos together. And that's how the last show came in.

12:32But we knew from the start of the collection that we didn't even need speakers in the venue to amplify it because we wanted to go raw. We wanted to go as raw as the cotton, but as beautiful as beauty can be. You worked for many years for Prada, and I wanted to ask you what you learned from Miuccia Prada as a designer. Well, I've learned to be brave in the first place because I remember so many times

13:12being like swollen in these like meeting rooms where, you know, you find yourself with this incredible woman. I was so young, I was 24. And suddenly you have to speak up for yourself. And there's a lot of talking. And, you know, I remember like months of talking and then like making a collection in one week, basically. So in those times you have to be brave and you have to embrace the braveness. Braveness, yeah, I guess, I don't know. As she demands for it. And so that was great. But also like one of the most important things, and that's one of the reasons why in the first place I wanted to work for Prada since I was a kid, is that there was like this amazing contrast between and this balance between this like ferocious creativity, but also the fact that she and Bertelli wanted to see those clothes in the streets on people.

14:22And so that was an incredible balance that was always like at the center of our making. And I remember like months and days where you would push for the maximum of creativity and then days in which you would flip the cards and just like think about the world and the world that we live in. And that was very important and a great school. After Prada, you land at Marni and, you know, Consuelo Castiglione, who had founded the company, had sold it to Renzo Rosso of Only the Brave. And I'm curious, as you arrive there, what did you see as your mission? Did you look at all at what Consuelo had done at Marni?

15:13Were you looking at other icons of yours? Where did the ideas for what you did come from? Well, of course, I was a huge fan of Marnie and Consuelo, actually. And I still have printed in my head this image of them on an island, dressed in twiles and very naively sewn together, because that's how they used to wear clothes in the 90s. And I love that imaginary of them. And yet like Consuelo and her family did it in such a mysterious and different way than the normal fashion schemes. So I guess like that image of the family for me became a quest into what is going to be moving from that family business into like a chosen family sort of expression.

16:15And I think it was a combination of looking into that and into that naive approach into making things. And I think also be truth to myself as, you know, I cannot be any close to a copycat of Consuelo or a clone of it. So I think maybe at the beginning, like things were, you know, difficult in terms of combination or like harder to understand, but it's just like, it's just about time. And people, you enter into a new organism where people function in a certain way. And it's almost like you're starting to seed new plants. And then little by little they bloom. And it's really about a conversation that goes double ways.

17:09So I think time kind of brought the flowers in here. um speaking of time i want to ask you about uh the spring 2022 show which was in fall of 2021 it was the first time we were back in person i believe after the pandemic and you did that very uh fun project where you had all of us go into a fitting with you all of us who were guests and we we got to choose marnie outfits and we wore them uh to sit in the in the show So where did that idea come from? And would you ever do it again? Oh, my God, I would love to do it again. That was a natural evolution of what was the start of, I would call it, the training towards the final outcome of that collection.

18:08It was the first time we were coming back from our homes where we were all of us completely secluded. And we were sitting at a table and suddenly we were like, oh, we have to really get physical about things. And so we covered the entire office. We have like this big room where we work all together with canvas. And we started to work together painting. And so we started painting for at least like we said, let's give us 10 days. Then we had to expand it into another week. We just like painted stripes and we thought, oh, that's our uniform. And from that moment, we thought that we had to kind of like create this unison of what we experienced in that moment till the show.

19:01And so we decided to dress everyone, which was one of the most incredible experience I had had in my life, because I remember this room, you were there. We had different changing rooms and I was like floating from one to another with part of my team split in different changing rooms. But in that month, that week was even more emotional for me than the show itself as I truly felt what it is about what we do, which is making clothes for people. So I had this like direct connection with everyone. And it was just such a special moment. We got to keep the clothes, which was very generous of you and of Marnie.

19:52And I thought you would like to know that the shirt that I wore to the show is very oversized. So now I have the pants, but my husband wears the shirt. So he... I love it. Yes, he was sort of there, I guess you could say, in absentia. Of course, of course. I love that.

20:14More with Francesco Riso after the break.

20:25You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

20:54So I think of you—well, I was talking to Tiziana, who, of course, is my colleague at Vogue Runway, and she writes a lot about your collections, and I write a lot about your collections. And I said, I think of Francesco as a philosopher, and she says, I think of him as an artist. And so I guess let's think of you as an artist philosopher. Obviously, you're a very thoughtful guy. And I wonder, do you look outside at what's happening at fashion and what your contemporaries are doing? And what do you think of the fashion world today? Oh, Lord.

21:32Well, I think if I have to be completely honest, if I have to pick the fashion world, but I think we're living a similar situation I think in many of let's say the sections that are about expressing creativity but also selling something with it I think there's like a huge stagnancy and yes there are things that are incredibly inspiring and I think we we're all trying to find the right, the right pathway, but I believe the world is in a, in a sort of like question mark mode right now. Um, you see all these bubbles happening, but if I have to be completely honest, um, that's one of the reasons why I had the necessity to, to focus on beauty on in the last collection we did, because there's, there's a lot and there's maybe,

22:52there's maybe like we, maybe we, the recipe has been pushed a bit too much. This is my feeling. I feel in all, even in art, even in music, I feel people has been more focused on what is the end rather than what comes in between and what is about the making. And people think often about the outcome rather than what does it take to make it and the patience and also like allowing just for that to exist. this is what I really think. I think maybe we should just be focused a bit more on what it takes to make things rather than what are those things representing when they are already like on another planet.

23:50I don't know. It feels like people is obsessed about, oh, it's going to be like that. I appreciate that, of course. Like you have to sort of enjoy and thrive in the moment to moment. And it's not just about those 10 minutes of the show, right? But also like market-wise, I'm talking about, like, I think, you know, in a way, this capitalism that we're living in is bringing brands and clothes and art just for the sake of what numbers they will bring. But I can think about so many incredible stories of the 90s or the past, where people weren't so necessarily so like obsessed about what was the end outcome.

24:45So this is what I'm talking about. I'm not saying that companies shouldn't grow or shouldn't make money, but I think it has become so formulaic that we have lost maybe the sense of the beauty of making. I have been working with a lot of universities right now, right now. And I have noticed that there's a lot of like people that tend to, to push to, to become very high and to, to aim for this like creative positions and not so much, not so much energy is put into how a thing is made, how we can make our hands dirty and enjoy that. You know, there's an enjoyment into a bit of fatigue and a bit of discipline in order to understand what is really the know-how of making.

25:48And this is for everyone, from music to art to writing. I truly believe that. Right. You have to put in the hours to get something good at the end. So why are you working so much with universities and schools right now? because there was a period in which I at the start of my journey let's say many times I was asked to to work with universities and to give you know to give my contribution I kind of refused it for many years and then one day I was like you know what let me tap into it again I want to understand because I want to understand what I lived back in the days as a as a young student how young students are living it now.

26:40And I had some great experiences in this joint venture. I've worked with different types of schools from super alternative artists schools in LA to SCAD to the Anthropia Academy. me. And in all of it, I found this unfiltered emotion from students and from teachers, which are still extremely passionate about what they have to, a mission, a mission which is guide young people towards the future. And so it's not merely only about business. And there's still like a lot of, a lot of intention and, and it's not necessarily filtered by the mechanism of the market. You know, not yet. I found that like a spontaneous energy that I find very inspiring.

27:57So I think we should all, in a way, look into it as it feels quite energetic. So are you doing any scouting for the Marnie studio when you're at these schools? And I wonder what you can say about your next show. I know it's very early, but in terms of, you know, doing the work, what are you thinking about at the moment for your next show? Too soon. No, actually, no, actually, you know, it's an evolution for us. And I'll tell you that I'm thinking about wolves. Wolves. Yes. Yes, wolves. Go ahead. No, please. I was going to say that leads me to a question that a lot of us here at Vogue have, which is your Instagram account is called a slice of Bambi.

28:59And we want to know why. Okay. Well, it started, that was born at a dinner as a joke with actually with some journalists and some friends. And we were all trying to figure out what could have been my search, a name I could use for Instagram and be completely hidden. Because at the time when we made up this name at a dinner, there wasn't even Francesco Rizzo. Like it was just a slice of Bambi. And I think it's the combination of this like fable that it's so sweet and so dreamy. And yet it can be so harsh if you look at it from another perspective. And if you look underneath some of the real meanings of that fable.

30:13So I think my character probably encompassed many of those aspects as I'm not yet sure that I am romantic, but then I make these very romantic actions and yet they are driven sometimes from darkness. It's true. I think I have learned in the years that it's a balance between the two. And so wolves. Wolves is a little dark. Yeah, but aren't they the most ancient and wise animals? And yet they resemble freedom. So that's why. That's a beautiful note to end on. Thank you, Francesco. Thank you so much. It was such a beautiful conversation. Thank you. It's great to see you. Great to see you too.

31:24That's it for The Run-Through. See you Thursday.

31:32The Run-Through is produced by Chelsea Daniel, Alex DePalma, and Joanna Solitaroff. It's engineered by Jake Loomis and James Yost. It is mixed by Mike Kutchman. Stephanie Karaoke is our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's head of Global Audio.

31:53Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford, senior awards correspondent at Vanity Fair and co-host of Little Gold Men. Oscar season is upon us. Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood. There's a hundred wrestlers in the room, but only one can be Oscar nominated. Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.