“It’s not a cocktail, nor a presentation—it’s like, whatever. Just an appointment with Marni.” That’s Francesco Risso for you. The ever-unpredictable creative director of Marni, spinning a web of eccentricity, poetry, and pure artistic aura. His latest project, The Pink Sun, is less of a traditional fashion collection and more of a three-way artistic brawl—with Nigerian artists Slawn and Soldier joining him in a Milanese residency that doubled as a fever dream of color, culture, and insurgence.
In a time when luxury fashion feels like it’s scrambling to define itself, The Pink Sun couldn’t care less about the labels. “My mission is creativity,” Risso says. “And that is the pollinator of everything.” This time, that meant sharing a studio with Slawn and Soldier, where baroque Italian furniture got a street art face lift and Risso rediscovered his childhood love of painting. The trio’s collective energy exploded onto canvases, walls, and antique chairs, creating a body of work that bridges aristocratic grandeur and raw urban grit.
“It was like a dance of hands,” Risso says of the collaboration. “Slawn is instinctive, Soldier is methodical, and I’m somewhere in between. There were phases where I was calculating compositions for them, or vice versa, and moments where we were all just throwing paint like kids. That sense of freedom—that’s what I fell in love with about Marni, and that’s what this collection is about.”
The paintings are presented in Risso’s own Milanese residence—because, of course, a sterile gallery just wouldn’t do—The Pink Sun is as much an experience as it is an exhibition. The setting is a disorienting dreamscape where walls blend into artworks, and furniture blurs the line between relic and contemporary. “Imagine a cocktail in a film noir,” Risso teases. “A salon where the floor is melting with the canvases, so you don’t know what’s real and what’s not. Then you drink too much and don’t know what’s happening anymore.” Sounds like a fab night out.
Beyond the exhibition, The Pink Sun bleeds directly into Marni’s Fall show, where guests sit among the artworks as models walk in looks inspired by the DNA of the residency. The silhouettes balance structure with spontaneity—coats that cocoon, skirts that shift between tailored and pleated, gowns that play tricks on the eye. “It’s almost like a 360-degree Marni, condensed,” Risso explains. “Muted browns, greys, and blacks, so you don’t get weirded out by what we’re doing—only later do you realise it’s actually kind of strange.”
For Risso, the project was personal. Slawn and Soldier didn’t just collaborate with him; they reawakened him. “I wasn’t ready to paint,” he admits. “I hadn’t painted in years. They brought me into their practice, and I had a sort of rebirth.” And what did he learn from them? “From Soldier, I learned gentleness, calmness—this wise softness that comes from everything he’s had to go through,” he shares. “From Slawn, I learned the power of a volcano—this immediate, electric energy that’s somehow also deeply respectful.”
What did they learn from him? He laughs. “You’d have to ask them. I’m too shy.”
Music was the trio’s invisible fourth collaborator. Risso credits Soldier with introducing him to the deep archives of ’70s Nigerian sounds—though not every song was an instant hit. “Sometimes I was like, what the fuck are we listening to?” he laughs.
The whole process felt like an act of osmosis—artists influencing each other until boundaries dissolved completely. It’s also how Risso sees his approach to community: “I can’t stand when people use ‘community’ as a business trick. For me, it’s not about numbers—it’s a living organism. And uniting with these amazing talents is a way to overcome limitations.”
Limitations were definitely present—bureaucratic ones, anyway. The residency itself was delayed for months because Slawn and Soldier were stuck in the UK, their passports held hostage by the Italian consulate. “It was a fight just to be in the same room together,” Risso says. “But when we finally were, we felt so free.”
That fight made the work even more urgent. The Pink Sun isn’t just an exhibition, a show, or even a cocktail—it’s a testament to breaking barriers, whether they be artistic, geographical, or institutional. It’s a reminder that, in Risso’s world, preservation doesn’t mean nostalgia—it means keeping creativity alive at all costs.
So what, exactly, is The Pink Sun? It’s a painting that became a collection that became a movement. It’s an 18th-century dining chair covered in wolves and wildflowers. It’s a Milanese palazzo turned inside out. It’s three artists fighting to be in a room together. It’s a jazz Preservation Hall meets a ’50s cabaret meets a surrealist daydream in an art gallery.
It’s an appointment with Marni. And you’re invited.