MERYLL ROGGE

Exclusive Interview & Photography by Filep Motwary

At first glance, Meryll Rogge’s work emerges as the quintessential starting point for the very notion of layering—not merely as a dressing technique, but as a narrative act. And not only because her clothes stubbornly insist on this logic—knitwear embracing shirts, slip dresses that refuse to obey conventional rules, garments that seem to carry memories—but also because her own journey unfolds in layers. Nothing arrives suddenly; everything accumulates slowly, almost underground, with a quiet yet uncompromising persistence. I understand this the moment I sit across from her, at a folding table beneath a tent hastily erected the day before her show in the inner courtyard of the National Archives Museum, formerly known as the Museum of French History. In the same space, a casting session is underway, models moving back and forth while the designer’s team prepares the looks for her summer collection. Watching her, I realize that her silence and gaze function exactly like her clothes—in layers. She is in no rush to compress herself into a single narrative.

She speaks to me the same way she designs: intuitively and generously, leaving room for another perspective. And while we are in Paris, her mind travels elsewhere with ease—to Ghent, where she grew up; to classrooms, where she drew instead of listening to her teachers; to New York, where she learned how fabric falls and why that matters; to the Belgian countryside, where her studio is now located, in a white stone house with a red-tiled roof, set amid farmland and removed from the usual noise of the fashion world. “When I was little, I was always drawing,” she tells me, almost apologetically, as if she is still surprised it became a profession. From the moment she could hold a pencil, she rarely put it down—during family gatherings, sporting activities, in the corners of rooms. Drawing was her refuge. “Of course it wasn’t fashion drawing; there was no ambition around that. They were simply my observations,” she emphasizes, recounting a memory from a children’s clothing store in her hometown, staring at a sweater and wondering why a particular print had been added when there was no need for it. “I thought it was a stupid idea,” she recalls, laughing. “My intolerance for the unnecessary was always there, as was my opinion about decisions that disrupt harmony.”

The idea of fashion as a career arrived by accident. She was a teenager when her Ancient Greek teacher caught her sketching during class. The teacher took the drawing from her hands, looked at it briefly, then handed it back, suggesting she might become a fashion designer. The seed was planted deeply. This was something she could do, she thought. At home, glossy Spanish magazines her grandmother brought back from her travels—runway images wedged between advertisements—filled in the gaps. She also began developing preferences: haute couture left her cold, while prêt-à-porter—and Marc Jacobs in particular—electrified her. His work felt like real life: wearable and emotionally specific. Reality intervened, however. Her parents were unconvinced, believing fashion was something secondary that could wait. A compromise followed: Rogge would first study law, prove herself through something “respectable,” and then go wherever she wished. “Luckily, bachelor studies were only two years back then,” she notes. Antwerp came later, and certainly not smoothly. A foundation year preceded it, but once she entered the Royal Academy, she relaxed. The legendary Walter Van Beirendonck was one of her professors, yet what mattered most to her was the atmosphere and the absence of a single aesthetic, the refusal of a uniform “Belgian identity.” “There wasn’t this idea that you had to do grey or black to be a minimalist,” she explains. “Everyone was presenting something completely different.”

New York entered her life the way it often does when you are young: suddenly and irreversibly. A summer internship at Marc Jacobs evolved into something much bigger. She was only twenty-three and knew no one in the city. Besides, she intended to return to Antwerp to complete her master’s degree. Then, two months before the global financial crisis, she was offered a permanent position. “I called Walter, and he told me, ‘Take the job—you can always return to your studies,’” she recalls. “At that time, nobody put their studies on hold, yet I did, and I stayed long enough for New York to become home. Gradually, the city’s rhythms and contradictions became part of my way of thinking. At Marc Jacobs, I learned everything the Academy had not taught me: how to choose fabrics, build a collection, communicate with patternmakers, conduct fittings, refine a garment so it endures over time. What I loved was that nothing ever repeated itself. Every season was completely different.”

It was, as she describes it, a complete PhD in fashion—not conceptual, but entirely focused on the garment and the fabric. She experienced fashion in its real dimension. Europe eventually called her back, though not away from the work she loved. Her collaboration with Dries Van Noten taught her values such as scale and independence. Working beside him, she learned to think about the customer and to view compromise as a creative tool rather than a limitation. They worked early in the morning, quietly, combining ideas and fabrics overlooking the harbor. “We were inseparable,” she admits. If Marc taught her how to make clothes, Dries taught her that the people wearing them have lives. Her departure from his company involved no dramatic rupture. She was already in her thirties and wanted to start a family, reclaim time for herself, and weigh her own thoughts and desires. “I didn’t resign; I simply announced I wanted to do something else,” she says. Their collaboration continued, evolving into consulting work for both Marc and Dries, while the idea of her own brand remained patiently in the background.

Meryll consciously chose the countryside near Ghent as her new base, settling in a house that feels deliberately awkward. It is quiet there, “grounded,” as she describes it. “We can do whatever we want, and that freedom matters.” Her namesake label launched quietly—and disastrously, timing-wise. Orders had been placed, and then the world shut down. Factories stopped production, deliveries collapsed, and deadlines became meaningless. “We launched two weeks before the pandemic arrived—it was a disaster,” she says. Yet that first collection stayed with us. The clothes spoke: slip dresses slightly off-center, knitwear that felt luxurious without being precious, boxer bloomers combining humor and comfort. She introduced a new aesthetic language. Customers returned not only for the viral pieces but also for the elastic-waist khakis, deconstructed shirts, and sporty separates that looked lived in. A red duchess-silk glove doubling as a boa suddenly became internet-famous, mistaken for lobster claws. The comments were relentless.

“But that’s what a designer wants—people reacting,” she says with a laugh. From there, things found their course. She joined Paris Fashion Week, presenting her work in unconventional spaces, and began collaborating with artists. Her shows resemble environments more than events: a bowling alley beneath the Arc de Triomphe, a school basement lined with lockers, courtyards steeped in history. Other avenues opened too, including consulting projects that allowed her to step outside the logic of her own brand—such as a knitwear initiative born from the desire to create things that exist beyond seasons, the “eternal” sweater crafted with precision and care. Her logo, a discreet swan, carries ideas of elegance, wildness, and independence simultaneously. What is particularly striking about Rogge is that these multiple worlds do not fragment her identity—they clarify it. “Everything becomes easier,” she believes. “I know what belongs where.”

Belgium hovers quietly over it all. Not as an aesthetic, but as a mindset. She speaks with relief about the freedom of not depending entirely on a single influence, the absence of pressure to conform, the constant intersection of cultures. “As Belgians, we feel the need to be ourselves—each of us does our own thing,” she says. That ease—earned rather than inherited—feels especially relevant now, as Belgian designers increasingly occupy pivotal positions within the fashion industry: Raf Simons, Pieter Mulier, Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Glenn Martens…

When the conversation turns to Marni—Rogge became the Italian house’s creative director last year, the first woman in the role since Consuelo Castiglioni—she describes it less as an upheaval and more as a return to familiar territory, since working for a major brand is something she knows well. She speaks about the house with a directness that can only be sincere; her wardrobe contains several archival Marni pieces. Her first paycheck, she informs me, was spent on Marni shoes, as well as a green knitted skirt she wore to her brother’s wedding years ago. “Marni was in my top three when I was still at the Academy,” she admits. Entering a house shaped by Consuelo Castiglioni and following a path defined by instinct, independence, and personal vision carried a weight that some might have found overwhelming. “I feel deeply connected to Marni in all its chapters,” she says, and I am struck by the complete absence of anxiety surrounding the legacy she has inherited. She approaches it with respect, gratitude, confidence, and the certainty that her own language has been carefully developed enough to sustain these new responsibilities. That was already evident in her first collection for the Italian brand, presented last February.

As for Meryll Rogge Spring/Summer 2026, titled *I’m Not Wild*, it felt like an effortlessly understood thesis. Loosely inspired by actress Cookie Mueller’s autobiography, it treated clothes as biographies: punk codes met classical tailoring, glamorous dresses confronted roughness, there was no hierarchy and no theatrical finale. “It’s a wardrobe you build,” as she describes it. Closing Paris Fashion Week, the atmosphere was filled with joy and lightness rather than grand declarations. Perhaps that is ultimately the essence: not ambition or disruption, but truth. She prefers to think nobody is watching, that she can still create quietly. “I’m not doing it for fame,” she tells me later. As we finish our conversation, she speaks about her children and husband, about the practical challenges of setting priorities and maintaining balance. It is demanding, she admits, but she has a clear vision and serves it consistently. And clarity in fashion is the rarest luxury of all.

Portrait by Jorre Jansens