If fashion is fate, Meryll Rogge has long been destined to land at Marni.
With her first paycheck as an assistant at Marc Jacobs circa 2008, the young Belgian designer bought a pair of wooden platform Marni sandals from Saks Fifth Avenue. “I wore them until they broke,” she admits. But even before that, as a teen discovering her own colorful, eclectic style, she chose a green Marni skirt for her older brother’s wedding.
Thinking back to her youth, Rogge remembers: “It allowed me to represent myself in an expressive way without looking not like me. The people that were wearing Marni at that time, they weren’t loud, but they had personality—that’s what I liked.”
Rogge accepted the creative director job at Marni last July, a month after picking up ANDAM’s Grand Prize, where Renzo Rosso, Only the Brave founder and Marni owner since 2012, is a member of the jury. Her appointment came amidst a rush of new hires that saw many established designers swap one European luxury brand for another, but if she was among the lesser known names—not to mention one of the few women in a pool of mostly men—she isn’t short on credentials.
Rogge was still a student at the Royal Academy of Antwerp when she landed an internship at Marc Jacobs in New York. That internship turned into a seven-year gig. “It just just clicked for me, all the books that were there, all the artworks, the references—I just felt super at home,” she says. Eventually, though, Belgium called her back, via Dries Van Noten. “I wasn’t looking for it, but I got to be head of women’s there, taking on more responsibility, and I worked really closely with Dries—it was an opportunity to step up.”
Round about 2019, she felt ready to go solo, a plan of hers since adolescence. “At first it was 25 then it became 30 and then it became 35—that’s when I just couldn’t resist anymore,” she says of launching her eponymous brand. But the timing was tricky: It was March 2020 when she introduced her collection at a showroom in the Paris Marais. Ten days before the world shut down, she’d secured orders from 35 stores; ultimately all except one stuck with her, even though Covid restrictions forced her to deliver that debut offering late. Her Meryll Rogge collections are full of color, wit, and sophistication, but always with a dash of the unexpected.
Blame it on that Marni skirt she wore as a teenager—Rogge has a flair for off-kilter elegance and bricolage not unlike the kind once practiced by Marni founder Consuelo Castiglioni.
Launched in 1994 as a spin-off of her husband’s family business Ciwifurs, Marni’s early days were minimal by 2026 standards: no bags, no jewelry, just lots of knee-length coats and knee-high boots, though it soon became known for a quirky kind of individuality. Castiglioni’s approach, as she told Vogue in 2007, was to treat fur “like a fabric, maybe dyeing it, doing it without a lining, with just a little bit of string to close it, so the pieces looked modern and wearable.” Once the furs took off, clothes followed, in unlikely prints and vintage shapes that could only have been put together with a woman’s eye and a woman’s touch.
Rogge’s new job required a change of address. She and her husband Clement Van Vyve moved with their young children, five and three, to Milan from Antwerp. They spend their weekends getting to know their adopted home town. But the assignment didn’t necessitate a change of aesthetic. “I really grew up with Marni,” she says. “So I have a memory of what it means in an abstract way, and what it meant at different stages.”
The key, she says, will be “bringing the clothes back to life—daily life—in a way that really accompanies us for special occasions and for everyday occasions. Francesco Risso, who helmed Marni after Castiglioni’s departure in 2016 through last year, took the brand in a more avant-garde, experimental direction. “Marni Chapter Three,” as Rogge has taken to calling it, will “feel very feminine while being a bit more active. She’s not precious.”
To start, Rogge has resurrected Castiglioni’s little knee-length coats—“we thought they looked extremely fresh,” she says. Dots, a brand hallmark, are another recurring motif, both thanks to holes knit into chunky sweaters and paillettes stitched onto delicate, straight-as-an-arrow slip dresses. The crafty, almost DIY-ish jewelry is back too. Remembering a popular necklace dripping in colorful plastic leaves from Marni’s 2012 designer collaboration with H&M, Rogge remade it in hand-painted metal.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Seventy-two hours before her debut, with the sky turning purple outside Marni’s headquarters, Rogge is in the studio with her stylist, the Brit Tamara Rothstein, who’s best known for her work with Martine Rose, waiting for the last bits of the collection to be delivered. It’s the women’s knitwear, a crucial part of the puzzle, but Rogge, her long blonde hair loose and wearing a baggy button-down over a cotton pointelle tee from her knitwear line B.B. Wallace with belted jeans and flats, is attentive yet calm.
For models, she’s working with Piergiorgio Del Moro, the prominent casting director whom she met through a “mutual friend back in the day” and has had an “ongoing collaboration with, from close or far, for a long time.” Together they focused on characters: “beautiful, interesting faces, people with personality that can carry the clothes, like people do in real life.” Real life—that seems to be Rogge’s message.
What did all the debuts of the last year teach her? “I’m just trying to do what’s right for this house more than trying to understand what’s been done elsewhere,” she says. “This house is very personal. It has a lot of identity. It’s always had an independent character, and that’s how we approached it.” And will fans of her little line recognize her in tomorrow’s Marni collection? She plans to continue working on both Meryll Rogge and B.B. Wallace. “Working on different brands like Marc and Dries and my own label,” she riffs, “I always compare it a little bit to being a musician that plays in different bands. You’re probably going to like all the bands from the same artist, but they are very different expressions.”
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
