Nina Ricci
In 1932, Turin-born Parisienne Nina Ricci cashed in on 35 years of dressmaking experience when, in partnership with her son Robert, she founded her eponymous house of couture. Under her creative direction, the brand steadily built a favourable reputation in France before finally stepping out with a series of internationally acclaimed collections in the late 1950s, delivered under the supervision of Ricci’s former assistant Jules-François Crahay. Following Crahay’s departure, the easy wearability and aesthetic maturity synonymous with Nina Ricci would be refracted through a stream of creative directors, the latest of which are Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh, appointed in 2018. The pair bring a formidable combination of youth, audacity, and institutional recognition: Botter is a recent graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, and as a team, Botter and Herrebrugh were finalists in the 2018 LVMH Prize for Young Designers. With such a lengthy existence, Nina Ricci has meant and continues to mean many things to many people; under Botter and Herrebrugh, it takes on a playful vibrancy in both color and shape, all while embracing the sublime tailoring and dramatic silhouettes favored by Madame Ricci herself.
