Frankie Morello reboots with Damir Doma as creative director

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Sep 10, 2019

Busy times at Frankie Morello. The ready-to-wear label founded in 1999 by Maurizio Modica and Pierfrancesco Gigliotti is making a big come-back this season, with Damir Doma as new creative director. The Croatian designer, based in Milan since 2015, will take care of the label’s menswear and womenswear lines. The latter had been discontinued, and will be relaunched at the next Milan Fashion Week, with a co-ed show scheduled on September 20.

“Damir Doma has been tasked with rewriting the label’s codes. The idea is to start from new foundations, with a style that is very different from the label’s original one,” a spokesperson for Frankie Morello told FashionNetwork.com. Renowned for a fun, cheerful and slightly eccentric fashion, Frankie Morello will no doubt change significantly under Damir Doma.
 
To emphasise this break with the past, the label has also unveiled a new, much more minimalistic logo, and changed its name to Frankie Morello Milano, in simple black capital letters on a grey background.

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The Italian label changed hands in 2016, when it was bought by the Ammaturo family, Neapolitan oil and fuel distributors and the owners of the Ludoil group. In 2014, the brothers Donato and Giuseppe Ammaturo bought a 25% stake in the label via FMM, a company they created ad hoc. Two years later, Donato increased his stake to 100%, after he bought out his brother Giuseppe - already active in fashion with the Arav group and the Silvian Heach label, founded with his wife Mena Marano in 2002 - and also acquired the stake held by founders Maurizio Modica and Pierfrancesco Gigliotti, who then left Frankie Morello.
 
The new owner's goal is to relaunch Frankie Morello, currently generating a revenue of nearly €20 million, both in Italy and on the international market. In early 2019, the label inaugurated new offices and a showroom in the heart of Milan, at 18 Corso Venezia, while a new management team took charge, led by General Manager Stefano di Nezza.
 
Damir Doma founded his eponymous label in 2007 in Paris, where he used to show before moving to Milan. In the last few years, he has signed collaborations with Lotto and Rossignol.