Spring

In fashion, designers almost never get to script their own farewells. The industry is partial to the pomp of a corporate beheading, delivered with a press release dipped in rosewater by the executioner. You’re “parting ways amicably,” though your head’s already neatly in the basket. What follows is the usual mess of bruised egos, crocodile sobs, and bosses pretending the guillotine is just a warm handshake.

But Sunnei’s Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, who received a majority stake investment from Nanushka and Aeron owner Vanguards Group in 2020, weren’t having any of that corporate theater. They staged their own death instead—campy, snarky, and gloriously unhinged. A parody funeral, complete with humor sharp enough to slit through the industry’s polyester veil of respect. These two wrote the obituary themselves and performed it live, a final genius middle finger.

True to their sharp critique masquerading as brilliant showmanship, the Sunneis, in cahoots with Christie’s, staged an auction where nothing was actually for sale but everyone pretended it was—a case of peak fashion logic. Guests were handed scratch-off lottery cards preloaded with “fashion dollars.” My personal jackpot was a measly F$30,000, while my seat mate casually revealed F$200 million. Even in the realm of fake money I’m still in the wrong tax bracket.

The first lot came as a giant Sunnei logo, because let’s face it, branding is the only real currency left. It was sold for a staggering F$111 million. Second lot: the founders themselves, who were encased in a wooden box and wheeled in like rare collectibles, auctioned off at F$95 million. The spring collection shuffled around the room on Sunnei team members who were cosplaying as telephone operators. There were the usual laughs and cheers, and everyone floated out wearing the Sunnei afterglow—pensive yet weirdly sunny. Never mind it was pouring outside.

But this performative tour de force was actually a background act to the real performance: brand implosion. Moments later, the designers surprised everyone by announcing online that they were stepping down, transforming the entire spectacle into a going-out-of-business skit. It was a true shock-and-awe moment that has left their fashion watchers still scrambling to understand what happened.

Sunnei has always been a beam of incisive intelligence cutting through the haze of trend chasing and musical chairs at the big conglomerates. Fiercely independent, it has operated more as a nerdy, artsy platform than a bona fide brand, skirting the usual fashion affiliations and refusing to play by the industry’s often cruel, self-consuming rules.

Messina and Rizzo vanished after the auction, declining to elaborate on their departure—a gesture of discretion, leaving the room charged with unanswered questions. In the press notes they circulated, they wrote: “Fashion is finance; creativity is for sale. More than ever, today’s industry is governed by hidden yet powerful dynamics. This performance is not a direct critique, but a hyperbolic, theatrical metaphor of that mechanism. The Sunnei auction is a stage where the contradictions of the system are enacted, where what’s symbolic challenges what’s real, and desire itself is questioned.”

Arrivederci, Sunnei. Thank you for the exhilarating ride—and for reminding us that, sometimes, genius leaves as mysteriously and suddenly as it arrives.