She spent her first paycheck on Marni shoes. Now she runs the house

Marni CEO Stefano Rosso installed Meryll Rogge as creative director in the midst of an industry-wide creative reset. It was easy for designers making their debuts to get lost in the noise. That did not happen to Rogge: her first runway collection for the 32-year-old, OTB-owned label was critically lauded for being true to founder Consuelo Castiglioni’s aesthetic while marking the start of a fresh chapter.

At the Vogue Business Global Summit in Chantilly, France, Rogge and Rosso discussed Marni’s next era.

The conversation opened on a review noting that “with Marni back in a woman’s hands, it karmically feels like the universe is tidying itself up.” “Starting with not an easy question,” Rogge laughed. “I think what’s important in our case is that the founder of the brand was a woman, and, from what I understood, the brand really originated from a sense of wanting to design for herself.”

“For us, talent has no gender,” Rosso added. “A talent is a talent, and we were looking for the best talent to take Marni to its next creative chapter. The fact that she’s a woman, it’s probably added value, because we really wanted to focus this new period on bringing back attention to women’s ready-to-wear, which had been struggling a little for the company in the last few years. So it was a natural choice, but mainly because we recognized in Meryll an amazing creative talent.”

There is a telling story about her first paycheck. “I started my career in 2008 at Marc Jacobs in New York, and with my very first paycheck, instead of paying the rent that was due, I went straight to a store uptown and bought a pair of Marni shoes that I’d been eyeing for a few months. That was my very first purchase ever with the very first paycheck.”

On the archives, the designer is careful: “What we’re interested in doing is working from the spirit of Marni: what the brand means, what the values of the brand are, and how we can bring the brand forward in a new context, a new world. What we will be focusing on is the value system, even more than the actual archive, even though the archive will always play a role.”

Rosso puts it more briefly: “Two words: modern elegance. We believe a lot in having a point of view that stands a bit outside the lines. In our brand book we have an essence phrase, ‘color outside the lines,’ and I truly believe it represents perfectly what Marni is.” He recalls the beginning: “When the company started, there was a moment of fitted dresses and all dark colors, and Marni was interpreting modern elegance in a different way with color-blocking and geometric shapes. We believe we need to bring customers a sophisticated elegance that can be worn at every moment of the day. It’s not just for occasions, it’s really for everyday use.”