Castiglioni Family Launching New Fashion Brand
MILAN — Two years after the exit of her mother Consuelo Castiglioni from Marni, Carolina Castiglioni is launching a new ready-to-wear fashion brand called Plan C. At Marni, Carolina Castiglioni held the title of director of special projects.
Plan C will bow for spring/summer 2019, which will be presented in June and designed by Carolina in the role of creative director. Her father Gianni is serving as chief executive officer and her brother Giovanni as operations director.
Positioned in the high-end of the market, Plan C will present two collections per year, including ready-to-wear, knitwear and accessories, all made in Italy. They will be sold from the brand’s Milanese headquarters on Via Visconti di Modrone.
That location is where Carolina’s great-grandmother created the fur company Ciwifurs in the early Sixties. It later became a storied licensee for several designer brands. Marni, which launched in 1994, was founded and run by Gianni and Consuelo Castiglioni. It began as a fur collection and was meant to diversify and broaden the offer of Ciwifurs, as retailers had started asking for apparel, and later accessories, to go with the furs.
Renzo Rosso’s OTB took full control of Marni in 2015 and the Castiglioni family exited the following year. Marni is now designed by Francesco Risso, a Prada alum, whose first collection for the brand bowed for fall 2017.
At Marni, Carolina Castiglioni worked on inclusion and opening up the brand to a wider public. She spearheaded the Flower Market as part of the company’s 20th anniversary celebrations in 2014, and the Becoming Marni event in collaboration with Brazilian artist Véio at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
During Milan’s furniture and design trade show Salone del Mobile in 2016, Marni transformed its multifunctional space into a ballroom named Marni Ballhaus, inviting visitors to discover Cumbia, an ancient Colombian dance.
Also that year, in February, to mark the launch of Marni’s eyewear, she conceived the Looking For Marni theatre event, reflecting a deeper interest for the performing arts. The dreamy pièce was inspired by Oskar Schlemmer and the Bauhaus movement with dancers wearing Marni costumes and eyewear produced by Marchon, on swings suspended from the ceiling or supported by surreal props such as an oversized table and chair set.
Consuelo Castiglioni, who shunned the limelight and cherry-picked her interviews, built her brand with constant research into new fabrics and materials, unusual color combinations, artistic references, eccentricity, deftness with precision, and asymmetric cuts.
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