IOpening Plate
Bespoke Couture, Crafted for the Modern Heiress
Atelier Celine Ricci 47 West 57th Street, Manhattan Est. MMXVII
IIThe Commission
A private contract, not a purchase.
Every Celine Ricci gown begins with a letter, never a cart. Fewer than eighty clients are admitted to the atelier's annual ledger, and each commission is signed by a single master seamstress from the first chalk line to the final stitch.
The atelier accepts fewer than eighty commissions a year — a deliberate thinning of the calendar, designed so that no two gowns ever compete for a seamstress's attention, a fitting room, or a hand-beading frame. Once a commission is opened, the same hands carry it through: the toile, the muslin, the silk floss hand-tacks at every bodice seam, the final fourteen-thousand-five-hundredth embellishment.
The work is unhurried, because the calendar is small. A bridal trousseau may take eleven months. A red-carpet commission, begun in late autumn, will not see its first fitting until the snows have passed. There is no express lane. The atelier does not promise delivery in under six months — a written policy since the founding in 2017.
What is promised, instead, is signature. Each gown is finished by the seamstress who cut it, signed in silk floss on the interior seam, and recorded in the atelier's private ledger under the client's name in perpetuity.
IIIThe Atelier
A named, countable place — thirty-two hundred square feet on West 57th Street.
Seven master artisans work beneath a single ceiling. Among them, two Lalique-trained crystal workers, three hand-beaders, and one seamstress whose signature — a length of silk floss tacked in the bodice seam — appears on every gown that leaves the floor.
- I.Atelier Director & FounderParis-trained under John Galliano; ten years at Maison Valentino before founding the house in 2017.
- II.Master SeamstressSole signatory on every gown, first chalk line to final hand-tack.
- III.Head of Bridal TrousseauArchitect of the complimentary second-gown fitting, introduced 2023.
- IV.Crystal WorkerLalique-trained; the atelier's first crystal hand, joined 2018.
- V.Crystal WorkerLalique-trained; the second of the two crystal hands.
- VI.Beading Artisan14,500 hand-applied embellishments per gown, audited annually.
- VII.Beading ArtisanSpecialist in lace appliqué and passementerie.
IV
The Fitting Room
Eleven months, in five private fittings.
The arc from muslin to final basking unfolds across eleven months and five fittings in our Manhattan atelier — a private ritual no two clients share, since fewer than eighty commissions are undertaken in a year.
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I
Fitting One
The First Consultation
Two hours at the atelier. We listen, we measure, we record your hand in your wedding photograph, the way your mother wore her collarbone, the rooms you wish to enter. No sketches are shown; the cloth is not yet chosen.
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II
Fitting Two
The Hand-Cut Toile
A working toile in unbleached muslin is drafted against your body — never a mannequin — and refined over three successive sittings until the silhouette is silent.
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III
Fitting Three
The Embroidery Sample
An A4 panel — the embroidery sample — is worked by two of our seven master artisans in silk floss, crystal, and the Lalique-trained hands of our crystal atelier. The 14,500 embellishments that will eventually carry the gown are decided upon this one page.
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IV
Fitting Four
The Second-Gown Trousseau
Complimentary since 2023 — and offered by no other New York atelier — the second-gown trousseau fitting reserves a private afternoon for a reception look, a civil ceremony dress, a honeymoon supper gown. One less decision on the eleventh hour.
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V
Fitting Five
The Final Fitting
In the chosen silk — drawn from a single Tuscan mill running on geothermal power — the gown is hand-tacked at every bodice seam with a single thread of silk floss. A technique abandoned by ninety-nine per cent of designers after 1985.
A single master seamstress carries each piece from first toile to final basking. No handover, no assembly line, no assistant.
V
House Note
We will not promise you a gown in under six months. We will not offer you a gown that was begun before your name was written. We will not let another hand finish your seam.
What we will do — and have done, for fewer than eighty clients a year since 2017 — is to keep your gown in a single room, under a single seamstress, for the eleven months the work requires. We will return it to you for the rest of your life. Paris, Milan, Dubai — wherever the alteration finds you, our flagship partners will honour the lifetime alteration guarantee on every gown we have ever cut.
If this is the kind of patience you are willing to keep, the atelier is open.
Celine Ricci Founder & Director, Atelier Celine Ricci
Six-month minimum · Lifetime alteration guarantee · Complimentary second-gown trousseau fittings since 2023
Reserve Your Atelier AppointmentVI
Reservation Slip
Reserve Your Atelier Appointment.
A private consultation at the Manhattan atelier — two hours, by appointment only. Fewer than eighty clients are commissioned each year; the calendar is opened eight months at a time.
- Atelier
- 47 West 57th Street, Suite 1204
New York, NY 10019 - Concierge
- [email protected]
+1 212 555 0174 - Calendar
- By appointment · Mon–Fri, 10:00–18:00
Six-month minimum lead time
A reservation is a correspondence, not a form. You will be answered within one business day.