Who Is Joe Boffer? Sunnei Teases Fashion Jobs in New Capsule Collection
APPLY FOR T-SHIRTS: Sunnei’s founders Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina are not new to injecting a generous dose of irony into their work and coming up with ingenious gimmicks for their fashion, but the latest product launch of their brand is credit to a member of their team.
An ongoing conversation on job offers at the Palazzina Sunnei headquarters in Milan sparked a question from a staffer, who one day asked who “Joe Boffer” was, meaning the person everybody kept mentioning (an assonance on job offer). When the general laughter settled down, Rizzo and Messina saw in the episode another occasion to make fun of the industry — and capitalize on it — via a capsule collection of cotton T-shirts launching Tuesday.
More from WWD
Available for 48 hours only, the lineup includes plain, white shirts coming with lettering in different retro fonts with titles such as “Buyer,” “Head of Fashion” and “Trend Forecaster” as well as puns, including “He-art Director” or “Free-lance.”
“Those who work in fashion know that when a relative asks ‘What do you do for a living?’ the answer is more complicated than usual. Many job titles are unidentified words to many, and usually explaining your tasks makes things even less clear. These situations make you realize that us in fashion, we live in a bubble,” read a statement from the brand, whose layout was also made to resemble a presentation letter by a job applicant. “But what’s more is that sometimes these neologisms are not self-explanatory to those who work in the industry either….That’s why nowadays everything is accepted and acceptable.”
To mark the launch, the brand also tweaked its website to resemble a LinkedIn page. Here, each shirt is displayed as a job entry and retails at 150 euros.
The Sunnei duo gave a preview of the capsule collection during the brand’s spring 2023 fashion show in Milan last month, when a model walked the runway wearing a “Joe Boffer” T-shirt.
Also hosted at Palazzina Sunnei, the show cast twins to offer an ironic commentary on the deception of appearances. One after the other, one of the twins in the crowd wearing ordinary clothes stepped up, walked the runway and disappeared behind a revolving door at the end of the catwalk. In a Clark Kent-like swish, their twin came out fully dressed in the brand’s spring collection.
Best of WWD
