Toscana & Chianti News

Fashion

A homage to Vettriano

He has paraded his total look around the world, from Dubai to Shanghai to the sumptuous Moscow show some time ago, but without ever forgetting his beloved Tuscany.

So much so that he has chosen the beaches of Versilia as the location for his new catalogue, inspired by the paintings of Jack Vettriano, a Scottish painter of Italian origins.

The Atlantic coasts that form the backdrop to the painter’s works have been reused by the Stefano Ricci fashion house to introduce the clothes in the new collection as if they were “reinterpretations” of the artist’s paintings.

A painstaking reconstruction, finessed down to the most minute of details, which the Florentine men’s fashion house (which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year and 23 boutiques around the world) unveiled at the Pitti Immagine Uomo exhibition in January.

After taking inspiration from René Magritte last June, this time creative director Filippo Ricci turned to the paintings of Vettriano, “copying” situations and moods, instructing his models to strike the same poses as the paintings’ subjects and cladding them in garments evoking the soft elegance of the Scottish master.

Repeating the crushing success of six months ago, with a similar blend of fashion and art, seemed an unlikely feat, yet Stefano Ricci’s youngest son, Filippo, who chose a famous bathing establishment in Forte dei Marmi as the location for many of the photographs, has succeeded in doing so.

He has reinterpreted Vettriano’s most famous paintings (including The Singing Butler, sold for 750,000 pounds) using models photographed (by Fredi Marcarini) on the beach in the exact same position as the paintings’ characters.

Filippo Ricci has also used the same procedure, losing nothing of Vettriano’s hyperrealism, for the other paintings featured in the catalogue, which are all accompanied by their photographic reinterpretation.

“It is a collection told through Vettriano’s paintings,” a beaming Filippo Ricci confirmed.

And 2012 could not have hoped for a better start: the fashion house’s turnover, as artistic director Niccolò Ricci explained during the unveiling of the catalogue, reached 46.6 million Euros in 2010 and its 2011 turnover is estimated to be in excess of 56 million Euros.

A standout among the new openings and renovations are the stores of Beverly Hills (on Rodeo Drive, following a careful restyling), Paris and Ankara.

With such premises, the catalogue has already set its stakes for June.

“We already have some ideas in mind, but they’re still top secret,” Filippo smiles knowingly, fully aware of the fact that Stefano Ricci – the man who succeeded in importing silk garments into the country that invented its textile use several centuries ago – is perfectly able to rise to a challenge. And win.