Davide Renne died suddenly earlier this month, only 10 days after starting his new role as creative director of Moschino. The 46-year-old designer had built his life in Milan, where he worked in the Gucci studio for almost two decades. To borrow the words of his friend and colleague Alessandro Michele, Renne had over the years become integral in a close-knit “ramshackle family” of friends in the Italian fashion capital. Here another member of that family pays tribute. This article was originally published in the December issue of Vogue Italia.
The first time we met was more than 20 years ago. We frequented the same nightclub, a free and irreverent place. It was among the most underground of clubs in Milan and one that no longer exists today. You wore a frilly collared shirt, skinny pants, and ankle boots with pointed toes, you looked like a bohemian, a romantic Robespierre with a dark soul. Former goths can recognize each other right away. That Saturday night I was wearing a rare Smiths T-shirt that I had bought on eBay. You asked me how I had found it because there are so few of them out there, and from that moment on our evenings, and our lives, were joined forever.
Over the years we moved from the smoky lights of the night (yes, they still smoked in clubs back then) to aperitifs in Milan, dinners of spring rolls and dim sum, to 5 a.m. panini, to arthouse cinemas, to passing moments on trips between Rome, Florence, Milan, and Paris, to endless phone calls, to vacations in Umbria and Greece, among your favorite destinations. You always liked the Greeks—the cult of beauty, antiquity, summers in Hydra. You would finally relax a bit, enjoy the weather, friends, love. You would tell us about your rebellious adolescence, about how you dressed in Comme des Garçons, Kawakubo, Yamamoto, and Margiela wandering around the town of Follonica where no one understood fashion that was “too strange” and light years ahead of its time.
It wasn’t hard to imagine you, at a desk in the liceo scientifico (the secondary school you attended), hunched over white sheets of paper, intent on drawing with the magic hand you always had, sketches of women wrapped in incredibly feminine and avant-garde clothes. You would bring out everything you had inside and turn it into beauty, gently. You were like that when you decorated your home, with your impromptu styling, when you got dressed in the morning to go to the office. Just like all the great creative minds do.
You loved art, art films, antiques (looking for rare pieces and browsing through old books at Cascianelli in Rome) literature, music, Richard, your wonderful Italian greyhounds: Nana, Rosmarina, and Maui. These passions were intertwined with your innate gift for drawing, applied to fashion (luckily for us, because you once wanted to be an architect). “Fashion, like life, gives us a way to discover ourselves. I don’t like fashion that dictates answers, I’m more inclined to find the right question, then the answers will come in the designer’s dialogue with the public: Fashion is, by its very nature, tailor-made,” you wrote on October 16, 2023, when you were appointed creative director of Moschino. You had managed to keep it a secret until the very end, and then we celebrated your achievement with you. Franco had taught you “that fashion cannot be explained, it can only be lived because it is essentially, intimately about life and the world around us.”
How far had you come? How much tenacity did you have? You worked, and you worked hard. When you were preparing for a show, there was no way we could get you to stop and have dinner at a decent hour: Until you were finished, nothing else existed for you except the collection. When we managed to drag you out, you would then talk late into the night, almost bordering on exhaustion. As fits your zodiac sign, Cancer, you weren’t the type to easily change your ideas; you were stubborn and sensitive, deep, and reflective. I would have liked to silently enter your thoughts—often impregnable—to understand you better. The doors of your home, on the other hand, were always open for friends. Your neighbors became roommates, like actor Alice Pagani, whom you welcomed into your arms from the first moment you met. “Davidino for me was a dear friend, a noble soul, we loved each other beyond measure,” she says. “He deeply inspired and directed my artistic path. I cannot forget his voice, his sweet greeting, his happy eyes. There was never a shortage of candles glowing in the living room. He was a generous person, my memories of him will stay with me forever.”
You used to host us all, all the time. We celebrated so many successes, especially yours which followed one after another, but you never bragged about them. I lost count of all the incredible shows that left us speechless. “My friend, did you like it?” you would ask me after each one. You didn’t realize how good you actually were. Fashion was everything to you, but you were different from everyone. “Davide was a special person in a world, the fashion world, that is certainly not known for humility or kindness,” says Katie Grand. “He was not only immensely talented—one of the best—but he was gentle, humble, and extremely sweet. He had that irony that amused and entertained you endlessly, especially over a glass of wine in a dive bar in Milan. He listened, he cared about others, he never looked over your shoulder. He was incredibly respectful and respected. His style was beautiful, sexy, and bright. He was looking forward to a new path at Moschino. It’s all so sad.”
You were dreaming big, and this was your new adventure. Later you were going to retire to the country, to that house where we spent beautiful summers, surrounded by unspoiled nature or joining in the traditional flour fight in Città della Pieve, in Umbria. But it was still too early to retire; you had a lot you still had to do.
You took your first steps in the fashion world when you were very young, with Alessandro Dell’Acqua. “I remember when he left my office, we didn’t speak to each other for months, I was quite angry. One night we met, he came to me, hugged me tightly and told me we had to become friends again, he couldn’t go on like that. What a good, humble, honest soul. He made himself loved,” Dell’Acqua says. It was during those years at Dell’Acqua that you met Walter Chiapponi, the newly appointed creative director of Blumarine. “There is not much to say when you lose a brother, one of the greatest talents in fashion,” Chiapponi says. “It’s painful. Without him it seems like nothing makes sense anymore. But you have to move on, be brave, and try to do better and better. This is what Davide would want and what would make him smile. He was the person with the most zest for life, the sharpest sense of irony, and the greatest determination that I have ever met. His life was wonderful; I am proud to have been a part of it.”
Many people got to be part of your “large, if not long, life,” my friend. We were a rowdy “ramshackle family,” as Alessandro Michele, with whom you shared an extraordinary 20-year adventure in womenswear at Gucci, described it in a heartfelt Instagram post. You knew celebrities, pop stars, actors, and models, but you always remained down-to-earth and grounded. “We met when we were two kids taking our first steps in fashion,” says model and actor Mariacarla Boscono. “We laughed so much, at every moment. Today I am choked up. Davide was brilliant, sly, sweet, and true. We shared the dark moments and the happy ones, because that’s life!”
What an incredible journey you’ve had, with years when you have been happy, sad, strong, pissed off, and reflective. I saw you cry—how many tears you have shed out of sorrow, but also out of love and joy and laughter to the point of tears. Sometimes you would deliver certain jokes with such cutting irony. You were brilliant at that, too. Those who knew you were familiar with that Davidino, or little Davide. That’s what we called you, using a diminutive we give to children, because your character was always cool, naive, and fearless—like a child who says what he thinks to anyone’s face, without thinking twice about it. You were sincere, you were real, and the false and opportunistic sides of fashion never changed you. Maybe you didn’t even see them. “There are so many adjectives to describe
Davidino—loving friend, funny, irreverent, curious, stubborn but also absolutely unique. A person with crazy talent,” says designer Alessia Pellarini. “We often disagreed about fashion and life, sometimes we had very different points of view, but there was always great mutual respect and esteem. Now that he is gone, the only consolation is to think about how much beauty and love he left us.”
That laugh—we will all miss your laughter. Do you remember how much we laughed when you made five of us get on a tractor out in the country, risking breaking our necks? You could convince us to do anything, I really don’t know how you did it. You were a force of nature. At dusk, we would all sit together on those lawn chairs on the green lawn, sipping our aperitifs and waiting for the sunset, listening to music, daydreaming with open eyes.
“There is a light that never goes out,” sings Morrissey in the Smiths song with that title. That’s right, there is a light that never goes out, and it’s yours, Davidino. Keep shining as you continue on your journey.
Davide Renne, fashion designer, born July 7, 1977; died November 10, 2023.
