“You Just Do the Work and Let it Go”: Marni’s Meryll Rogge on Her Excellent Debut
Meryll Rogge is being kept alive on Diet Coke and leopard print. The new creative director of Marni is just 20 hours out from her debut fashion show, and the 42-year-old is being pulled through her brand’s Milan showroom by a team of focused publicists dressed like extras in a long-ago WB Network show about cool people who happen to be nice.
Rogge, too, falls into this category — a ketchup-colored cardigan, a brown checked button-up underneath, with a flash of one of those pointelle tees you’d get at Petit Bateau in 9th grade to look like Dionne from Clueless, plus baggy jeans. Rogge’s only overtly Marni situation is a pair of pointy black kitten heels that lace up the front like soccer cleats, paired with a deep red sock. “Marni — it’s always got a shoe,” Rogge says, smiling as she kicks her foot in the air just a little. The publicist takes this as a sign to hand her more Diet Coke. She accepts.
Rogge can barely catch her breath for a reason: Marni’s Fall 2026 runway was spectacular, and it's all her fault. There were burnout floral pencil skirts the color of melting Creamsicles, shiny gray-and-green skirts that snap up the sides, a perfect zip-front dress made from yellow parachute fabric, and a cotton leopard-print topcoat that is already the subject of a custody battle between an editor-in-chief and a celebrity stylist. The overtly Marni heels were there, too.
“This is a very Belgian thing to say, but you just do the work and let it go,” says Rogge, who grew up in Ghent. “I didn’t really wake up wondering what people thought of the show. I woke up wondering if I was gonna be on time for work.” (She was on time for work, arriving at Marni’s headquarters in Rome’s boho-luxe Porta Romana district well before 9 a.m.) Rogge’s calm demeanor and focused work ethic are the combination of her past — she spent seven years at Marc Jacobs in New York, then helmed womenswear at Dries Van Noten in Antwerp before creating an eponymous line in 2020. It was so good that it sold out at department stores, even though people had nowhere to go. Rogge still has her line, along with B.B. Wallace, a knitwear range that’s home to the pointelle tee of our dreams (and Rogge’s post-show outfit).
After winning the 2025 ANDAM Fashion Award Grand Prize last year for her independent work, Rogge was appointed Marni’s new creative director in July 2025. Along with Miuccia Prada and Maria Grazia Chiuri at Fendi, she is one of the only female brand leaders working in luxury today. As an “old millennial,” she is also one of the youngest.
Rogge declines to admit this is a big deal because: cool/nice. But she does have a lot to say about her famous fashion mentors, her fixation on Disney villains, and why we’ll never know all of her names. After one last swig of Diet Coke.
You have to do the dorky thing where you say your name.
My name is Meryll. I’m the Creative Director of Marni.
What’s your middle name?
I have like five of them, actually.
Oh. Are you a Hapsburg? Are you actually Meryll Van Antoinette Rogge or something?
It sounds like that, but I promise, this is very normal in Belgium. My first name really is Meryll, but then I have a name which I will not reveal, which my grandfather said “no” to but my parents kept it anyway. Then they gave me a second [middle] name because it was a bit more commercial, so they thought, “maybe that's a good option.” So I have those three names, and then my godfather and my godmother’s names, and then my last name. So that's my passport situation. It’s all there.
Your passport has six names?
Yeah. It’s a bit of a weird situation. But the godmother and godfather is a classic thing in Belgium.
I heard you wanted to be a Disney animator as a kid. Me too!
What? No.
Did you come home from school and just start drawing and trying to copy the characters?
Oh yeah, all of them! All the time. I was a kid during Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. It was a good era for animation. A good moment. Did you know that Ursula from The Little Mermaid is based on Divine, the drag queen? I recently discovered this, and I found it amazing. The depth of the research of these characters is truly astounding. It’s a lot like fashion in that way. The animators must have gone down so many holes to find new things.
What made you stop drawing cartoons?
I remember thinking, “I’m never gonna be talented enough to be doing this job. It’s impossible. And also, I would have to move to America. I don’t want to leave my family. I can’t do this!” But you have to remember, this is an eight-year-old talking. Of course, I did move to America to work for Marc [Jacobs]. But I couldn’t imagine it when I was little.
What did you learn from Marc? And what did Marc do that you disagreed with?
What I learned from him is absolutely everything. Sorry, that’s so big, but everything. Design, branding, tailoring, fabric, everything. But what I disagree with him on — and it kind of revealed itself this season — is that when I was there, there was literally no allowance for self-reference. We could never! It was always about looking forward in all ways. You would never do the same technique, never do the same shape, never do the same pattern. It was forbidden. Marc’s ethos was that every collection is always starting from brand new things. And it was so interesting to see that this season he did reference himself a little bit. And I thought it was great.
You certainly referenced OG Marni in your debut.
Yes, yes, yes. And it's more the spirit of it, but there were some real things that we took from the archive, of course. It was more of a wink for the first customers of Marni. I wanted them to feel included, too. A wink for the connoisseurs. And the socks — we had to go there with the heels and the socks, didn’t we?
Part of your Marni lore is that when you were a teenager, you bought a Marni dress for your brother’s wedding. And it was your first designer purchase, right?
That’s true, but it was a skirt. It was a green knit skirt with a dart and a seam — a bright, bright green, like grass green. I still have it. It has a lot of cigarette burns now, but it’s still there. And I didn’t buy it; my parents bought it. My brother’s wedding was a special, special thing. I needed an outfit to celebrate this big moment so my parents bought it.
Did they understand your obsession, or were they like, ‘Meryll, this skirt is very expensive and it’s kind of weird.’
I mean, they didn't completely get it, but parents… I mean.
Yes. Same question for Dries van Noten, who was your second boss after Marc. What did you learn from him, and what did you disagree with?
I learned a whole other side of things. I learned about how to run an independent business. I learned how to pay attention to much more than just the clothes — how they present things at the retail level, how collections are built up. It was such a pleasure and such an honor to work alongside someone that I admired so much for so long.
And I don't know what I disagree with. I've had the chance to work with only nice people, to be honest. Not to say it was easy. It wasn't. But it was hard for the sake of making the best things that exist. So there’s a reason when things are a bit difficult, with both Marc and Dries. They both just want the best. But for Dries, I honestly don't know what I would disagree with.
At Dries, you also got to build out his beauty line. How did working in fragrance and cosmetics change your approach to fashion?
I mean, it was just nice to work on something else! [Laughing.] I’ll just leave it at that.
We just did a story on fast fashion brands making custom outfits. But you took plastic necklaces from the Marni x H&M collection in 2012 and turned them into metal-cast necklaces instead.
We did! I’m so glad you noticed that. I just felt like there were such iconic pieces, and we felt very strongly that they should be included in this show. But we didn’t want to do it in the same way — it just didn’t feel right. So we brainstormed about how to approach it. And that’s kind of where we landed: make it permanent and heavy instead.
What did you fight for in this collection? There’s always a piece, right? Always a thing where other people are like, ‘No, forget it, it’ll never work.’ And you have to stick up for the idea.
Oh, you know what? We almost didn’t put the knit pieces, the fleece textured ones, because of time constraints. But I was like, “I really want to see how this goes. What are the odds we actually get them finished?” Then they arrived — we didn’t think they would be finished in time, but they just showed up in the studio — and it was like a magical thing that happened creatively. They’re so good.
Every creative has to cut things from their work. How do you let stuff go when it isn’t working without making it about ego?
It’s a natural process. It just happens. Things don’t make it along the way. That’s one of the first things you learn in design school. Or maybe one of the first things you should learn. I mean, if I have an idea, I really go for it. But I’m also agile. I don’t get stuck on things. If they don’t feel right, they don’t feel right. There’s no point in holding on — just move on to the next thing.
How do you problem-solve creatively?
I don’t know what that means.
If you have an idea, but you don't know your way through it yet. Maybe you feel a little blocked or stuck.
I mean, you just never get stuck? You just sit down and go, even when you’re not totally inspired. It’s just about showing up to work every day. It’s just about showing up. Some days are going to be really bad, and the next morning it’s going to be good. You just have to keep going. There’s no point in waiting for the creative moments. It just doesn’t happen that way. You just need to show up to work.
You have three brands right now: Marni, Meryll Rogge, and B.B. Wallace. Logistically, how do you keep it all going?
I mean, I didn’t plan for this to happen, obviously. But I wasn’t going to just stop creating… I have more desire to express myself in different ways, and I think many creators feel that way. I don’t want to be stuck doing one thing. I want to explore different things. So for the moment, we have amazing teams in place — very great, responsible, hardworking women. For one of the brands, there’s only women on the team. They just make things happen. They’re incredible.
You’re one of like three women at the helm of a luxury fashion brand right now. Why aren’t there more of you?
It’s boring, constantly having to remind people about this. Like, this should not still be a problem, but I mean, it’s not only in fashion. It’s in all kinds of industries: in business, in politics, all of that. I think it’s a systemic problem. We have to remember that 50 years ago, there wasn’t really a women’s workforce. We have to keep going for it, keep making it clear that women are extremely capable, not just in creative roles but in managerial roles. That’s it. I don’t have anything more to say about it, in the sense that it’s not me to ask — you have to ask the people who are in charge of these things. All I can say is that I’m extremely grateful to [Marni owners] Mr. Renzo Rosso and Stefano Rosso, who have given me this opportunity, and who have always put creation first, and who have done something many other people are not doing, which is to hire a woman. I think that’s extremely cool.
