Nina Ricci

The company logo of Nina Ricci

Nina Ricci (born January 14, 1883 in Turin as Maria Adélaide Nielli ; † November 29, 1970 , buried in Courances near Milly-la-Forêt ) was an Italian-French fashion designer and founder of the French fashion house named after her. The company Nina Ricci SARL since 1998 owned by the Spanish perfume - and fashion group Puig SL .

Madame Ricci

The company Nina Ricci S.à rl was founded in 1932 by the native Italian Maria Adélaide Nielli . She came to France with her family via Monaco in 1895 at the age of 12 and began an apprenticeship as a tailor in Paris . In 1904 she married the jeweler Luigi Ricci, with whom she had a son. From 1908 Maria Ricci, who was called Nina by those around her, was a fashion designer at the Raffin fashion house for two decades. For her own company in Paris, which she established on Rue des Capucines not far from Place Vendôme with financial support from her husband , she designed luxurious haute couture robes in a romantic, emphatically feminine style made of light, elegant fabrics, often with elaborate decorations and embroidery. The high-priced fashion by Nina Ricci, favored by Madame the model draped was enjoyed in France with the well-off society very popular and was himself immediately after in the years Great Depression commercially very successful.

At the end of the 1930s, Nina Ricci was already employing around 500 people. The company continued to operate during the war years. After the end of the Second World War, Nina Ricci's son Robert Ricci (1905–1988) became managing director. The company achieved its international breakthrough by participating in a fashion show by Parisian couturiers in the Louvre Museum, in which Balenciaga also took part. This was followed by exhibitions in Europe and the USA with other French designers, and the rise to today's international fashion group had begun. In 1946 Robert Ricci created a first perfume, Coeur Joie , which was followed in 1948 by a more modern second, L'Air du Temps , in collaboration with perfumer Francis Fabron . This perfume, filled in bottles based on a design by Marc Lalique, son of René Lalique , became the company's best-known and best-selling fragrance to this day. In 1952 the women's fragrance Fille d'Eve was launched. In the clothing sector, the US market was opened up as early as 1946. At the end of the 1950s, Nina Ricci retired from active work; she died in 1970 at the age of 87.

Company history

In 1959, Robert Ricci appointed the Belgian Jules-Francois Crahay (1917–1988), who had been with the company since 1952, as the new chief designer. Crahay's designs brought Nina Ricci an overwhelming success internationally. The first prêt-à-porter line from Nina Ricci, called Mademoiselle Ricci , was first launched in 1962 under Crahay for the US market and renamed Nina Ricci in 1966 . When Crahay moved to Lanvin in 1963 , Gerard Pipart († 2013) came as the new design manager and stayed for over three decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, the company presented numerous perfumes, including the women's fragrances Capricci (1961), Mademoiselle Ricci (1967), Bigarade (1971), Farouche (1974) and the men's fragrances Signoricci (1967) and Signoricci 2 (1976). In 1979 the company headquarters and the associated flagship store for prêt-à-porter fashion were relocated to the elegant Avenue Montaigne in Paris, where both are still located today. Over three quarters of sales were achieved with the perfume division during this time. In 1986 the men's fashion collection Ricci Club was launched, under the name of which men's perfume appeared in 1989. Over the years, uniforms for flight attendants , e.g. for Air France or KLM Royal Dutch Airlines , have also been designed by Nina Ricci.

In the late 1980s, the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi - at that time a subsidiary of the state oil company Elf Aquitaine - took a financial stake in Nina Ricci - until then an independent family company - and in 1988 became the largest single shareholder with 38% of the shares. That same year, Robert Ricci died at the age of 83. His son-in-law, Gilles Fuchs, then took over management of the company. The perfume launches of this time included Fleur de Fleurs (1980), Nina (1987), Deci Delà (1994), the fragrance series Les Belles de Ricci (1996) and the men's fragrances Philéas (1984) and Ricci Club (1989) .

In 1998, the Spanish Puig Beauty & Fashion Group , which now includes the cosmetics manufacturer Payot and the fashion brands Paco Rabanne and Carolina Herrera as well as the perfume divisions of the fashion brands Comme des Garçons , Prada , Massimo Dutti , Zara and Mango , bought Sanofi, which is now 56, 7% increased stake in Nina Ricci. At the same time, Puig held the shares of the remaining shareholders in Nina Ricci (the families around Gilles Fuchs, son-in-law of Robert Ricci, and Wladimir de Kousmine, partner of Robert Ricci since 1953, who had resisted a takeover by Sanofi after the death of Robert Ricci ) and has been 100% owned by the company ever since. Under the leadership of Puig, the Haute Couture division of Nina Ricci was closed and in 1998 and 2001, respectively, the designers Nathalie Gervais and Massimo Giussani were hired for prêt-à-porter fashion at Nina Ricci; they left the house in 2001 and 2002, respectively. Gervais had re-established the Nina Ricci brand with elegant designs as a hip Parisian luxury fashion brand.

In May 2002, the American James Aguiar took over the position of chief designer at Nina Ricci. However, he was replaced in April 2003 by the Swede Lars Nilsson. Since his designs, which were commercially successful, received little approval from the critics, the Belgian Olivier Theyskens , who had previously worked at Rochas , led the design of the Ricci company since November 2006 . Theysken's design received high press reviews, but was not commercially successful. In March 2009, Theyskens left the company before his contract expired in order to devote himself to his own fashion label again. Since then, the company's accessories division has been expanded. The company's men's fashion is licensed. The artistic director of the house Nina Ricci from April 2009 to October 2014 was the Briton Peter Copping, a former Christian Lacroix , Sonia Rykiel and Louis Vuitton designer. In 2013 a home furnishing series including bed linen and towels was launched under the name Nina Ricci Maison in collaboration with the French Vanderschooten Group. The former carving designer Guillaume Henry followed Copping. In March 2018, Puig did not renew Henry's three-year contract. The drafts were then adopted by an in-house design team. Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh have been at the creative head of the company since August 2018. Nina Ricci's women's fashion is presented on the catwalk twice a year at the Paris Fashion Weeks.

In 2010, product designer Philippe Starck designed an abstract version of the L'Air du Temps bottle. Of the classic perfumes, Puig kept L'Air du Temps (and variations) in its range and combined more - Cœur Joie , Fille d'Eve , Capricci and Farouche - in high-priced Lalique bottles in a prestige collection. As a result, all NR men's perfumes were discontinued, the women's perfumes Nina (2006) and Mademoiselle Ricci (2012) were reissued, and the Premier Jour (2001 and later variations), Love in Paris (2004 and later variations), Ricci Ricci (2009) ), L'Extase (2015 and later variations) and Luna (2016 and later variations).

Web links

• Nina Ricci company website
• Website of the Nina Ricci Maison brand

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nina Ricci goes to Spanish Puig group textilwirtschaft.de, December 18, 2017
2. ↑ Puig celebrates 100 years of fashion and fragrance frontiermagazine.co.uk, February 10, 2014
3. ↑ Designer Olivier Theyskens leaves the Nina Ricci fashion house diepresse.com, March 17, 2009
4. ↑ Guillaume Henry leaves Nina Ricci fashionnetwork.com, March 15, 2018
5. ↑ Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh become creative directors of Nina Ricci. Retrieved September 28, 2019 (German).