During my interview with Marni creative director Francesco Risso, there is a fabulous moment when I ask him to tell me a secret. He pauses, looks skyward, then settles into his fuzzily upholstered bamboo chair. “I used to wear two pairs of pants [trousers], one on top of the other, when I was young because I was shy of my skinniness,” he laughs. “It was quite awkward to go around with two pairs of pants on, I can tell you.”

This personal childhood nugget – there are others, such as a memory of him skiing in double denim – goes some way to illustrating the designer’s early connections to clothing, while underlining the kind of wondrous awkwardness so associated with the Marni label. Wearing a bathrobe-esque monochrome checked coat, wide jeans, two shirts layered one over the other and a pair of square-toed loafers, Risso, 36, certainly looks the part. He has been at the Italian label’s helm since October 2016.

Asked to describe himself in three words, the designer offers “dishevelled, miaow, nerd”. (He doesn’t have a cat, but he’s fascinated by them.) His office in Milan offers more of a clue to the inner workings of his brain. It features walls of thick-painted coloured stripes with one wall entirely pinned with images, including an actual vintage teddy bear, a shot of David Bowie smoking and another of the stylist Lotta Volkova. It’s like a physical Instagram feed. Risso’s actual Insta handle is A Slice Of Bambi, a reference to the nickname his partner, fellow designer Lawrence Steele, gave him. It, too, features a miscellany: computer consoles, cute critters and classical sculpture are on equal footing. Welcome to the new era at Marni.

All clothes available from Marni . Styling: Helen Seamons. Photography: Daniel Benson. Skincare: Juliana Sergot using Dermalogica. Model: Andrew Denny at Models 1.

Set up in the mid-90s by Consuelo Castiglioni and her husband Gianni, the Italian label became well-known – and much loved – for its unconventional shapes, clashing prints, ugly shoes and statement jewellery, with gallerists, architects and fashion creatives among its dedicated fanbase. In 2013, though, it was sold to the Italian fashion group Only The Brave, owned by Diesel founder Renzo Rosso. Castiglioni walked away four years later.

Risso admits stepping into Castiglioni’s shoes was daunting at first. “At the beginning it was an honour and a lot of anxiety,” he says. Now, though, he’s stretching into his role. He says he utilises the archive but, while acknowledging that the art theme of the brand is the obvious connection between himself and his predecessor, he is firm that he is not “Consuelo’s copycat”.

A model at the Marni show during Milan fashion week spring/summer 2019. Photograph: Victor Virgile/Getty

Initial collections had mixed reviews but asked about this, he simply smiles and says, “I love criticism. I think it’s the best way to grow.” The designer has hit his stride recently. Last June, for his men’s spring/summer 19 collection, he had his audience balance on precarious rubber exercise balls in a cavernous late 50s brutalist car park. I tell him it was a hoot. “I hope so,” he says. “I wanted to recreate a sort of potential gym and the balls were to underline the idea of movement.” This left-of-centre, playful thought process has ensured Risso’s Marni has had bite, with menswear coming out of womenswear’s shadow and offering a strong fashion viewpoint that appeals to those beyond the established arty Marni man and courts new customers.

His take on sportswear this season, then, was never going to be about quad stretches and treadmills. Having discovered images of 30s athletes, Risso says, “I was attracted by the sense of elegance that many of the sports of that time had – tennis suits or cricket suits or baseball – and I wanted to mix it up all together.” Cue grungy colourful sporty layers with swingy cropped sweat pants, loose printed pieces featuring bodies created by German artist Florian Hetz and American painter Betsy Podlach or oversized bomber jackets featuring the likes of 90s rave daisies spliced with utilitarian brown nylon. Put together, it all felt a bit wonky – a perspective enhanced, of course, by sitting on an exercise ball. “I do like men more messed up than uptight,” Risso says of the underlying grunginess in his menswear. “One of the things I think I do is introduce elements that are unsettling. But that’s where I get excited.”

Working with casting directors Walter Pearce and Rachel Chandler, Risso is keen to make his work for Marni feel diverse. He has used older models in previous shows, while for this men’s runway he wanted a mix of body types: “Lovingly imperfect characters, rounded bodies and Egon Schiele bodies.” He used a similar mix of models and characters in his women’s spring/summer 19 show, and the autumn/winter 18 ad campaign featured real families in Nevada. “Maybe a few seasons ago we had more traditional castings, but I definitely don’t want to go back there. There is more of a strength in these characters.” Meanwhile, on fashion’s buzz topic of gender fluidity, also evident in his work, he notes: “Women are buying the men’s and vice versa. It’s just the world we’re living in now.”

All clothes available from Marni . Styling :Helen Seamons. Photography: Daniel Benson. Skincare: Juliana Sergot using Dermalogica. Model: Andrew Denny at Models 1.

The designer’s latest womenswear was in part inspired by Tate Britain’s 2018 show All Too Human, featuring the work of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville. The idea of bodies and flesh was central to the clothes. Risso and his team researched sculpture and statues across the ages, collaging images they painted on with their fingers to create the surfaces of skirts or sundresses that look like collectible art pieces.

Risso’s unconventional beginnings – he was born on a boat in 1982, and learned to count with fish on the deck – clearly shaped this free-spirited point of view. After five years at sea, he and his parents moved on to dry land, settling in conservative Genoa with an extended family of stepsiblings and grandparents. His hippy father, a lover of pink and diamond buttons, is a big source of inspiration. As a child Risso would cut up his siblings’ clothes to make his own pieces, a habit that led to him being referred to by his family as “the virus of the wardrobe”. Following art school, he trained at Polimoda in Florence, FIT in New York and Central Saint Martins in London.

A model on the catwalk of Marni’s men’s spring/summer 2019 show in Milan. Photograph: Marco Bertorello/AFP/Getty Images

Before Marni, Risso spent almost a decade working for Miuccia Prada. “The most fascinating thing about working with Mrs Prada was the surfing of brains. We used to sit down for months, talking, and trying to express ourselves,” Risso says. His role at the influential label was vast and broad. “It was an incredible experience. She taught me to go to my brain. Suffering a bit more, but in a good way – pulling all the secrets out of the brain!”

It was a similar experience with the late, legendary MA course tutor Louise Wilson – who also taught Alexander McQueen and Christopher Kane – at Central Saint Martins. “I learned how to explore references not in the fashion field. She would make me work for months and she would obsess about exploring things… then you’d start your fashion.”

Steele – an American he met while having a coffee with friends on Corso Como in Milan – also works for Marni, as associate creative director. “We’re complete opposite minds which makes it easier,” Risso says of this dynamic. “Lawrence is very pragmatic and mathematical, and I’m completely in the clouds.” It was Steele who first referred to Risso’s spirit as a little like Bambi. The designer has certainly taken up the comparison – from his Instagram moniker to the mini Bambi figurines on his desk and the fact that he is currently reading the script for the never-released Sex Pistols’ film Who Killed Bambi?.

While Risso might be brimming with a certain artistic eccentricity, he also has serious moments appropriate for someone heading up a global brand. Marni has recently stopped working with fur, for example – “I don’t think it’s modern any more,” he says. On the subject of sustainability, he believes as a company they are taking steps to improve certain areas, particularly in regard to fabrics, and they have a charitable programme, Marni Market, that works with communities making artisanal products. It’s about “mindful designing”, Risso offers, and it is this idea that ultimately drives his mission at Marni: “If you are a man or woman, or however you consider yourself to be, it is important that you find the value in the piece [of clothing]. Something that doesn’t feel like a waste, that doesn’t last one season in your closet.”