There aren’t many luxury brands like Marni. And we like that. Its founder, Consuelo Castiglioni, was one of the few designers who could make the ordinary look thoughtful and the peculiar look luxurious. You often hear words like “quirky” or even “ridiculous” used to describe Marni’s sensibility. A kind of organic playfulness that never has to explain itself. Under Castiglioni, odd proportions, improbable colors and art-project jewelry could coexist with a remarkable lack of self-consciousness. A woman might wear a boxy coat, a flowered skirt and a necklace resembling something made in a school craft room, and somehow the question was never whether they matched. She liked them. That curiosity was enough.
So when watching Meryll Rogge’s S/S 2027 collection for the Italian fashion brand, I was a little disappointed that I was asking a much less flattering question: has the Marni woman become too timid?
Rogge knows the vocabulary. There are cropped tops, boxy jackets, flat sandals, conspicuous socks and carefully mismatched colors. The opening striped coat and shorts, interrupted by a tiny yellow top, make a convincing introduction. Elsewhere, a checked coat towers over a short skirt and yellow socks; an orange halter meets a pale-blue skirt. The ingredients are familiar, and several combinations are appealing. But the collection approaches eccentricity cautiously – as an accent to be added, measured and carefully rationed. It’s Marni with its indoor voice on.
Consider the run of sleeveless shifts and short dresses. Narrow, clean shapes are punctuated by embroidered patches and metallic rings, as though peculiar objects had wandered onto respectable clothes. The hardware intrigues me. But I wanted it to pull, distort or interfere with the dresses rather than merely decorate them. Instead, the garments remain well behaved and their oddities sit politely where they have been placed. Any deviation is small, calculated and safely leaves any conventional silhouette intact.
The tailoring follows suit: generous blazers, straight skirts and easy trousers, interrupted by a bright sock here or an unexpected knit there. There is nothing wrong with useful clothes, least of all at Marni! Castiglioni did not build a fancy-dress shop. She made ordinary garments extraordinary through cut, texture and unexpected associations. Rogge’s clothes, by contrast, sometimes look as though they have been asked to pass a visible eccentricity test. Their oddness feels styled rather than discovered.
There may be an institutional logic to this good behavior. Marni’s CEO, OTB Group’s Stefano Rosso, has acknowledged that its women’s ready-to-wear business had been struggling. In a June interview with Vogue, he described the brand’s values as “modern elegance,” emphasizing sophisticated clothes for everyday use. He also identified attracting new customers as a central challenge. The house is not merely revisiting its archives; it is trying to make its identity intelligible to more people, in more wardrobes.
Rosso has also said Marni needs to accelerate its leather-goods business, particularly bags and shoes. Rogge highlighted the new Trunkette bag, commercially important knitwear and growing interest in jewelry. She described designing her debut around separates so customers could assemble their own looks. That is faithful to Castiglioni’s idea of personal dressing, but it’s also very familiar retail logic: recognizable bags, versatile pieces and distinctive accessories that can travel well beyond a runway outfit. OTB is investing across its brands in direct retail and closer relationships with customers. These are stated priorities, not evidence of an order to design safer dresses.
Still, they sharpen the question raised by this show. What happens when eccentricity becomes a brand asset that must be recognizable, repeatable and easy to buy? A bright sock or unusual bag can make clothes look like ‘Marni’, but Rogge rarely lets the garments wander too far from convention. The dresses keep their tidy shapes, the tailoring stays recognizable, and even the boldest colors or oddest details leave the outfit looking safely familiar. Any small transgression is quickly escorted back into good taste.
Perhaps that is why the Prada and Miu Miu comparisons are difficult to shake. Boxy tailoring, modest skirts, conspicuous socks and deliberately odd shoes have become an established (and tiring) language of clever luxury styling. Here, those elements read less like an impulse and more like a calculation. The problem is not that the collection thinks too hard. It is that you can see it thinking.
To be fair, the show is not joyless. The oversized red-and-navy utility jacket, dark shorts and extravagantly scrunched brown boots create a wonderfully quirky silhouette. An intricately decorated jacket worn with relaxed brown trousers lets a strange object coexist with ordinary life without turning the wearer into an exhibition. Some menswear looks especially convincing: a utility jacket, leather trousers and red footwear feel like choices made by someone who likes clothes, not a stylist tasked with displaying a house code.
Nor should corporate ownership be a convenient villain. OTB also backs emphatically experimental design elsewhere in its portfolio, and Rosso describes creativity as central to the group. Rogge may sincerely believe this restrained wardrobe best captures Marni’s origins. Commercial purpose and creative imagination need not be enemies. Yet a brand can preserve the visible signs of its identity while domesticating the attitude that once gave those signs meaning.
Rogge has assembled the wardrobe of a peculiar woman, but she has not always allowed that woman to be peculiar. Marni need not become louder or more chaotic; it needs to stop tidying up after itself. Castiglioni made the strange feel ordinary. This Marni often makes the strange feel marketable. The brand was most beguiling when its clothes seemed to ask, without defensiveness or explanation, “Why not?” S/S 2027 too often answers: “Only if it looks appropriate.”
