SUNNEI Wants to Swipe Credit Cards, Not TikTok Feeds
During Milan Fashion Week, the theatrical label swapped its usual viral runway tricks for something more tangible: the opening of its new flagship store.
SUNNEI, touted as “Milan’s Craziest Fashion Brand,” is often remembered for its viral runway stunts. In previous seasons, designers Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina have hired models to crowd surf across the front row, receive live ratings from the audience, and share their inner thoughts over their venue’s loudspeakers, all with the intention of halting doomscrollers’ thumbs and claiming a larger stake on fashion’s radar. But SUNNEI turned 10 last season (the Spring 2025 show’s noticeably older cast was a commentary on the passage of time), and serious business moves are rightfully beginning to overshadow the decade-old brand’s youthful antics.
On Thursday, SUNNEI’s Fall 2025 runway doubled as a store opening, and its models doubled as customers. All 29 looks were outfitted with multiple white bags reading “SUNNEI” in big black text, promoting the Italian label’s new shopping destination (or “community hub,” as the brand is calling it), complete with a café and gallery space, that will open to the public on March 1.
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The show itself was about “undressing,” the designers explained. They didn’t mean that literally—take a scroll through the images above, and you’ll find that SUNNEI’s models are tastefully covered in colorful knit turtlenecks, fuzzy mohair sweaters, tight zip-ups, and swirly long sleeves. Instead, Rizzo and Messina stripped the expectations from their typically theatrical label and left viewers with what was tangible: the clothing, the people, and, now, the new store. “Buying, trying, checking, commenting,” as they put it.
“Fall 2025 is about a brand and its formula—the SUNNEI Formula,” the show notes continued. “You can buy into it, or you can walk away. That decision, at its core, is fashion in its rawest state: a transaction. A point where desire meets reality, where something moves from us to you.”
To put it bluntly, SUNNEI is now less interested in stopping your scroll and more interested in swiping your card, as any business should be. But that doesn’t mean the label has done away with its clever marketing ploys: around Milan, SUNNEI has posted advertisements with fake reviews from parody publications, like Vague and The New Work Times, that read: “The store you really didn’t need” and “The old store was better.” SUNNEI might be growing older, but not without its wit.
In the end, the label’s Fall 2025 show was a straightforward remark on its current goals: to open a store, connect with new consumers and build a bigger brand. “Nothing more. Nothing less. And no, we are not here to make a conceptual statement. This is a concept-free area,” the brand concluded. That’s growth.
See SUNNEI’s Fall/Winter 2025 collection in the gallery above, and stay tuned to Hypebeast for more Milan Fashion Week coverage.
