Meryll Rogge has never been one for playing it safe. ‘I was always a bit jealous of musicians. They can be solo artists, they can play with this band or that band… or even architects. I love the idea of doing something completely different with approach or aesthetic,’ says the Belgian designer over the phone from her Milan studio, where she has just unpacked boxes.
Earlier this summer, Rogge was announced as the new creative director of Marni, the first woman to step into the role since founder Consuelo Castiglioni. It marks another milestone in what has already been a landmark year for the 41-year-old mother of two: there’s the relocation to Italy, being a finalist for the Woolmark Prize, and scooping the Andam Prize (an industry award whose previous recipients include Martin Margiela and Christophe Lemaire).
How does she keep pace? ‘I can only credit the amazing people that I work with, because they really have been super, super humans, and they, you know, really know what they’re doing,’ she says, modestly. ‘Now, of course, things are a bit different, so me and my family have to get reorganised, but I have an amazing husband who also has a full-time job, but who takes a lot of the pressure off.’
Alongside Marni, there is her namesake label, which is set to close Paris Fashion Week, plus her new venture, BB Wallace, a knitwear brand founded with knitwear expert Sarah Allsopp. The project began as a jumper designed for her own line. ‘It never got the space to develop, so I thought it deserved its own platform,’ she explains. The label focuses on knitwear spun from natural yarns, designed to be passed down through generations. For Rogge, who studied at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts and honed her craft under Marc Jacobs and Dries van Noten, it’s another hat to wear.
Her aesthetic is an energetic disruption of tradition, combined with a clarity that makes her a force at the centre of fashion. With so few women at the helms of fashion houses does she feel added pressure? ‘Of course. But I won’t let it get to me,’ she says. ‘It’s an unfair to judge the entirety of women’s design talent by the few women who are at the head of fashion houses, when most of them are men. It’s not fair to put this pressure on the few of us who have the luck to even get there. It’s a thing for sure, but I will just continue to focus on my task at hand.’
Henrik Lischke is the senior fashion news and features editor at Grazia. Prior to that, he worked at British Vogue, and was junior fashion editor at The Sunday Times Style.