Every detail came from her and her alone. This hands-on confidence and sensitivity to materials puts Ricci alongside Alix Gres in terms of technical skills. She never sketched, preferring to create directly on the dummy and, once satisfied, hand over the prototype straight to the workroom. Nina Ricci fully entered couture in 1932 and, unlike any other entrant to that world, she had nothing to learn. A surprising omission until one remembers their remit: to keep foreign readers, tourists and possible clients (especially Americans) aware of what was being done by the couturiers whose remit was worldwide. Unfortunately, the chroniclers of the inter-war period in France - Cecil Beaton, Edna Woolman Chase (editor-in-chief of American Vogue) and Janet Flanner (The New Yorker’s correspondent in Paris) - whose duty it was to inform their readers of the doings of the top houses, made no mention of Nina Ricci. She transformed what had, under its previous name, been an average establishment into a house to be recognised and respected by the women who dressed there. While Robert’s business acumen was trusted by investors and business collaborators, it was his mother who was the figurehead. Robert Ricci secured a premises on the Rue des Capucines for an atelier and fitting rooms and the pair set to work.įrom the very first Nina Ricci show, the mother and son collaboration - unique in the history of couture - was a success. In 1932, the haute couture house of Nina Ricci was founded. He acquiesced, although shrewdly continuing to pursue some other business activities on the sideline, just in case the project failed.
Ricci agreed - but on one condition: if the new firm were to become a reality, Robert must be responsible for the entire business side, while she was left to exercise full creative control.
But Robert, who had trained in advertising and had a very good business head, knew how to reactivate the ambition that had made his mother so successful, not to mention wealthy by bourgeois standards. He was 27 when, on the death of Monsieur Raffin, the firm was wound up, leaving Nina Ricci, aged 49, very comfortably off and ready for a well-deserved retirement.
Nina Ricci’s son Robert grew up to be a gifted entrepreneur, inheriting his mother’s streak that had made her as good at business as with creativity. In fact, Ricci had a lucrative side business selling her patterns to regional dressmakers and seamstresses as well as selling her creations direct.
Her creativity, although not entirely to bourgeois tastes, was not so Parisienne that she alienated her core customer - the provincial upper middle class woman. In 1908, Ricci joined the House of Raffin, where she would work for the next 24 years, controlling her own entirely autonomous department within the organisation, with her own workshops, seamstresses and clientele. Aged 23, she gave birth to a son, Robert, the man who would later play an even longer-lasting role in the brand than its founder - and who she raised singlehandedly after becoming a widow at only 27 years old. A few years later, while riding a bus, she met Luigi Ricci, the son of a Florentine jeweller, who she shortly married, changing her name to Nina Ricci. Although only 14, she obtained a job as a seamstress. After his death, the family scattered and Nina, along with her mother and sister, went to Paris.
Her father was a shoemaker and when Nina - one of five children - was young, he moved the family and his business to Monte Carlo. Nina Ricci, was born Maria Nielli in Turin, Italy in 1883 - Nina was a childhood nickname that stuck.
(By the 1920s, there were 80 such establishments registered.) It was from this level that the house of Nina Ricci was created. Nina Ricci, the house and its eponymous name, grew out of a retail company called the House of Raffin that, although enjoying financial success, was otherwise considered as just another of the many small dressmaking and couture establishments common in Paris in the early years of the 20th century. Its clientele, which gave it great financial success for much of its life, was much more French haute bourgeoisie than aristocratic and international, as most other French houses were. Although for many years it was one of the most successful couture houses in that city, it was never considered to be on the same level as its rivals at the time - Chanel, Vionnet, or Lanvin. PARIS, France - The house of Nina Ricci is a slight oddity in the high fashion world of early 20th century Paris.