From devoted fan to creative director, Belgian designer Meryll Rogge returns the Italian fashion house to its original blend of glamour and intellectualism.&nbsp;

This year marks a new chapter for Marni, with the appointment of Belgian-born Meryll Rogge as creative director. Since her debut with the Fall/Winter 2026 collection at Milan Fashion Week, Rogge's objective has been crystal clear: to restore the original Milanese spirit and energy of the Italian brand, which was founded in 1994 by the Swiss designer Consuelo Castiglioni.
"Marni is worn by someone who wants to dress in a very personal way, someone interested in culture and the arts, with a strong aesthetic sense and an innate style," says Rogge. She studied fashion design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp—which nurtured talents such as Martin Margiela, Glenn Martens, Demna, Haider Ackermann, and the Antwerp Six—before moving to New York, where she spent seven years as a key member of the Marc Jacobs design team. (With her first paycheck, she bought a pair of Marni sandals with wooden platforms at Saks Fifth Avenue, wearing them for years until they finally broke.) After returning to Antwerp, she became head of women's design at Dries Van Noten and went on to start her own label in 2020. While her eponymous brand enjoyed success, she continued to consult for Dries Van Noten and played a pivotal role in the development and conceptualization of the house's beauty line, launched in 2022. She also co-founded the knitwear label B.B. Wallace with Sarah Allsopp in 2025.

Portrait of Stefano Rosso and Meryll Rogge. Photography by Maciej Kucia

Rogge's illustrious career has been marked by a series of accolades. She was named Emerging Talent of the Year at the 2021 Belgian Fashion Awards and, in 2024, became the first woman to receive the Designer of the Year award. In 2025, she further cemented her standing within the industry by winning the Grand Prix at the ANDAM Fashion Awards.
Her arrival at Marni signals a moment of revitalized creative energy, deeply informed by her exploration of the house's archives—particularly the beloved collections from the late '90s and early 2000s—while developing her debut collection. The result is a series of silhouettes shaped by natural shoulders and softly cinched, subtly dropped waistlines, evoking the unmistakable thrill of discovering a rare vintage treasure.
The collection stands as a poignant tribute to Rogge's own creative foundations. "I've been a devotee of Marni since my teens, and it is the very landscape of my fashion identity," she says. She recalls her grandmother buying "a magazine dedicated to the collections, and I spent hours flipping through it. The first time I saw a Marni silhouette was in an insert featuring the best runway looks organized by themes or trends. I noticed it immediately among all the others." A few years later, she chose to wear a green skirt by Castiglioni to her older brother's wedding, discovering the pleasure of wearing color without fear. "The people who wore Marni in the late '90s weren't flashy, but they had a certain personality, and that's what interests me."

A backstage image from the Marni Fall Winter 2026 fashion show (Photo by Federica Fioravanti)

With a rare talent for prints, textures, and proportions, Marni established itself as one of fashion's key creative laboratories early on. Born from the Castiglioni family's fur business, the maison progressively built an unconventional and intellectual stylistic grammar capable of engaging with art and design without slipping into empty aesthetic exercise. After the family sold a majority stake in the brand to Renzo Rosso's OTB Group, Francesco Risso took the creative helm in 2016. His exuberant vision introduced a crafty sensibility and punk energy into the collections, bringing the runway shows onto international stages.
Now, Rogge takes up the baton: "The mastery of materials and the meticulous attention to detail are the very DNA of Marni, and they align perfectly with my own passions," she says. "I intend to honor that heritage while evolving it further. I feel deeply happy and grateful to be part of this extraordinary maison."

Marni's birthplace of Milan informed both Rogge's debut collection—a surprising blend of transparent pieces, animal prints and polka dots, naïve-inspired embroidery, faux furs, oversized sequins, and unconventional combinations of materials—and her show's set design by Formafantasma. For the runway, the design duo Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi created a set of hand-painted mirrors depicting fragments of everyday life: a comb on a table, a bar of soap, a lighter, a surveillance camera, and an open Mac window—peripheral details that accumulate in daily spaces without demanding attention. Within this framework, Rogge's garments are neither isolated as spectacle nor reduced to mere documentation. The look was layered, with altered proportions and rooted in the bricolage aesthetic so dear to the label.
"I wanted to revisit the founding spirit of the brand," says the designer, who recently toured Japan alongside Stefano Rosso, CEO of Marni. "I wasn't interested in reproducing Marni's past. I wanted to revive its spirit, its emotional core. Moving to Milan with my family allowed me to understand and discover that the brand is deeply tied to this city and its idea of beauty and elegance. In Belgium and Northern Europe, people are more relaxed. In Milan, people truly make an effort and dress extremely well every day."

When Rogge arrived at Marni headquarters, she decided to begin her journey by studying the archive stored on an old hard drive found in the offices.
"I have always considered Marni an intelligent brand," she says. "It is certainly a taste and a language, but above all it is an attitude. My priority is to offer a wardrobe that is built over time, to design garments meant to be lived in every day. The brand's philosophy has always been this: a curated wardrobe that combines sumptuous embroidery and humble cottons, sporty and feminine elements, industrial components and fluid materials. Marni's ethos is multifaceted by definition, yet also rooted in simplicity and discretion."
As for what lies ahead, Rogge is already focused on expanding key categories. "At the moment we are working on exciting developments for bags and shoes," she says. "Jewelry is another vital part of the brand's identity, and I consider it a fundamental pillar for our future growth; I'm also deeply passionate about knitwear development. These categories will play a significant role in Marni's future."

Inside Meryll Rogge's New Vision for Marni

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