Yahoo Finance Stefano Ricci Explores Cambodia for Spring ’25 Campaign
NEW YORK — The family behind the Stefano Ricci brand has always had a love of the outdoors and nature. The children of the founders, who are now running the company, have ridden horses in British Columbia, visited Africa more than 30 times and traveled to some of the most isolated and beautiful places around the world.
To share that passion with others, the Florence-based luxury menswear brand created Stefano Ricci Explorer, where it would use the wonders of the world as the backdrop for their seasonal collections. So far the company has visited Luxor, Egypt; Iceland; the Galápagos Islands, and Mongolia. For the spring ’25 collection, the brand visited Cambodia and brought along famed nature photographer Steve McCurry to shoot the look book and campaign.
More from WWD
Chief executive officer Niccolo Ricci and his brother Filippo Ricci, creative director, on Wednesday unveiled the campaign at the Explorers Club in New York City, where they showed films of the shoot that took place at some of Cambodia’s oldest and most historic sites such as the Angkor temples, the Mekong River, Tonle Sap Lake and the Kulen Forest Elephant Reserve.
Those sites served as the inspiration for the new collection, which included aloe linen shirts, white evening outfits, Sahara jackets, field jackets, and logoed backpacks with ruthenium hardware in natural fibers.
Their visit to Cambodia also served to support local institutions that protect cultural heritage and embrace sustainability. Toward that end, Stefano Ricci has partnered with Wild Earth Allies, a group that is working to reverse biodiversity loss globally while protecting Asian elephants by preserving millions of acres of key habitat for the animals and planting 5,000 trees in degraded areas.
McCurry said he first visited Cambodia in the late 1980s when the Angkor temple complex was deserted, the roads were made of mud and barely passable and there was still warfare in the jungles. But the changes that he witnessed when he returned in April with the Stefano Ricci team was “a real pleasure.” He said that time of the year is the hottest in Cambodia and the models and crew arrived before dawn to set up and prepare for the shoots. And while the ancient stones in the temples were riveting, it was the elephants that he found the most pleasure photographing. “They’re such majestic animals,” he said.
McCurry said this wasn’t his first fashion assignment — he had shot the Pirelli calendar and also did a campaign for Valentino, as well as some smaller Italian brands. “Every photography project has its own challenges,” he said, “but for this job, the models were great and the locations were incredibly historical so I just tried to create images that would show the clothing in the best possible way.”
He also liked that this campaign helped the local community. “When you go in with 30 people, it’s a huge boost to the economy,” he said.
Stefano Ricci is able to be philanthropic because the brand has been on a growth spurt of late. Niccolo Ricci said his family still owns 100 percent of the business founded by his parents in 1972 and seeks to create the “highest expression of the luxury lifestyle for men.”
In 2023, he said, the company posted a record $256 million in sales worldwide, up 43 percent from the prior year. So far this year, sales are up 10 percent.
The U.S. accounts for 20 percent of the overall business and sales in this country rose 16 percent last year and are up 15 percent so far this year.
Stefano Ricci operates five stores in the U.S., in New York, Beverly Hills, Miami’s Design District and two in Las Vegas. He said a unit will open in Houston in two months followed by one in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of next year.
Outside the U.S., the company will open stores in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam as well as the Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong, he said.
Stefano Ricci now employs 800 people worldwide, including 50 people added last year along with 100 more tailors outside its hometown of Florence. In addition to menswear, the brand produces leather goods, silverware and jewelry.
“High-end luxury is still performing,” he said, “and we have a very loyal clientele.”
The afternoon included a four-course lunch prepared by the company’s executive chef who was flown to New York from Florence to prepare the baby greens, pasta with spicy tomato sauce, free range chicken and Florentine cheesecake, made from the secret recipe of the Ricci family.
Best of WWD
