FRANCESCO RISSO'S BUREAU OF IMAGINATION OPENS IN MILAN

The former cheese factory in Milan had music playing by the time the seriousness dissolved. Francesco Risso stood in the middle of it, ten months removed from a creative director title he had held for a decade, watching strangers walk through the space he now calls Bureau of Imagination.

"Building the Bureau together has meant making an almost endless number of decisions, from the very practical to the completely irrational," Risso told Vogue. "But then evening arrives, somebody puts music on, something goes wrong, somebody starts laughing, and the seriousness dissolves."

Ten Years at Prada, Ten at Marni, Now His Own Name on the Door

Risso spent a decade designing at Prada before another decade running Marni as its creative director, two of the longer tenures in Milan menswear this century. Bureau of Imagination is the first project carrying only his name and that of his partner, Alex Sossah, since he left the Prada studio in his twenties.

The move follows a pattern this year has made familiar. Prada's own FW26 trench coats reached Dover Street Market under a design team built without Risso in the room, while the designer who once helped shape that studio now answers to no house at all. Twenty years inside two of Italy's biggest fashion companies bought him the freedom to build one with no seasons and no calendar.

Ceramics and Vases Sell Made to Order, Not Off a Rack

Bureau of Imagination does not run a collection calendar. A core line of knitwear, shirts, jackets, trousers, shoes, bags and small leather goods sits alongside monthly releases that change entirely, one of one objects including silverware, vases and ceramics built made to order rather than stocked. Clothes and objects share one room and one production logic, which is not how Risso's last two employers worked.

"We wanted to make objects that are part of our daily life," Risso said of the approach. "That's where we started." The line reads like a footnote until you notice what it excludes. Nothing in that sentence mentions a runway, a lookbook or a retail calendar, the three things a Prada or Marni season could never skip.

Objects built one at a time and sold by appointment put Risso closer to a working method Pace Gallery's own artists use for painting series built over years, not seasons than to anything on a fashion week calendar. A vase made to order is a studio decision. A trench coat on a Milan runway is a production schedule.

Bureau of Imagination confirmed the studio in April 2026, months before tonight's party gave the public its first look inside. That gap between the announcement and the open door matters. A runway brand reveals a collection the same week it starts selling it. Risso spent the better part of a year fitting out a former cheese factory before he let anyone past the entrance, and the sales model that resulted, appointment only in Milan or direct online, treats the building itself as part of what a customer is paying for.

Alex Sossah Is the Name Missing From the Marni Years

Sossah's name never appeared on a Marni credit line during Risso's decade there, and Bureau of Imagination is the first public project crediting the two as partners. A studio that opens with a named second founder is telling its own story about what the last ten years lacked, whatever byline Marni put in its own show notes.

Tonight's soiree was not a trade event. Vogue photographed it for a November issue instead of a fashion week report, and the guests it described were outsiders let into a working factory, not editors seated for a runway. Photographer Pablo Di Prima shot the party the way Vogue usually shoots a show, which is its own signal about how seriously the magazine is taking a designer with no collection to sell yet.

A designer with two decades of runway experience chose a party with no chairs and no seating chart for his first public moment under his own name, which says more about what he is building than any press release from the Bureau would. Twenty years spent dressing other people's houses bought Risso the standing to open one with music, strangers and a cheese factory instead of a runway, and the Bureau's first public test is whether that same crowd comes back once the novelty of the room wears off.