SUNNEI SHOWS HOW EMERGING BRANDS MIGHT TRANSFORM THE FASHION SHOW AS WE KNOW IT
Photo Courtesy of Sunnei
30 sep 2022, for frame
Location
Via Vincenzo Vela, 8, 20133 Milano MI, Italy
Design
Brand
Music
Sunnei amused the audience of its SS23 fashion show in Milan with a dynamic white lab designed by Studio Mare.
Key features
Sunnei's SS23 catwalk took place at the Palazzina Sunnei showroom, a site that once belonged to a recording studio. The brand’s clinically white 200-sq-m set was dressed in soft carpet and hosted only 280 spectators, who were asked to wear white laboratory overshoes at the entrance. Two three-step tribunes on both sides of the narrow room made a catwalk on the lowest level, turning the traditional idea of the runway being an elevated platform upside down. The show started with one of the spectators wearing their own, non-Sunnei clothing, getting up to parade into a rotating white door at the end of the catwalk. It took just a few seconds for them to return, dressed in a new outfit from the Sunnei SS23 collection. As the fashion show evolved, more spectators turned into instant models behind the Alice in Wonderland-like door.
Frame take
This is not the first time Sunnei – founded by duo Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo in 2015 – has challenged the notion of luxury fashion environments. With its AW22 fashion show earlier this year, the brand created a cinematic stage for ‘analogue virtuality’ at Milan's historical Porta Romana. Now, moving the event from the open cityscape to their intimate Palazzina, Sunnei questions the meaning of performances – and performance spaces – within the fashion system. The tiny area behind the rotating doors carved out a playful symbol for one to consider the hierarchy in fashion and the relationships between designer, model and user.