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Atelier Celine Ricci · 47 West 57th Street, New York · Established 2017
The Manhattan atelier interior at 47 West 57th Street, with a single ivory gown on the central dress form.
Chapter I

The Atelier

A quiet studio above Fifty-Seventh Street, where fewer than eighty gowns a year are cut, beaded, and finished by hand.

Manhattan · Established 2017

A technique

One thread of silk floss, drawn by hand through every bodice.

Since the room above Fifty-Seventh Street opened in 2017, every bodice that has left this atelier has been tacked by a single seamstress, with a single thread of silk floss, in a stitch that the rest of the industry abandoned before the century turned. The technique takes longer. It cannot be hurried, and it refuses to be mechanised; it asks for the kind of patience that only an unhurried hand can give. We have kept it because the alternative — the invisible machine tack that ninety-nine per cent of designers accepted after 1985 — leaves a gown that can be recognised from the inside as something other than a Ricci.

A bodice finished this way holds its shape across decades, not seasons. It can be let out, taken in, and inherited. The single thread is, in the end, a small architectural decision: a refusal to design for the next collection, and a quiet promise to the woman who will wear the gown that the garment was made to outlast her first fitting, her wedding day, and the daughter she may one day hand it down to.

Chapter II

The seven hands behind every gown.

A workshop roster, set in the order in which a gown passes through the room.

  1. I

    Céline Ricci

    Founder & Creative Director

    A decade under John Galliano, four years at Maison Valentino. Drapes each first toile by hand.

  2. II

    Marguerite Aubry

    Head of Atelier · Twelve years tenure

    The single thread of silk floss runs through her needle. Cuts and tacks every bodice.

  3. III

    Séraphine Vallois

    First Hand, Embroidery · Nine years tenure

    Translates every sketch into the embroidery map that guides the studio for weeks.

  4. IV

    Inès Marchetti

    Master Embroiderer · Seven years tenure

    Applies the average of 14,500 hand-set embellishments per gown.

  5. V

    Lou Béranger

    Lalique-Trained Crystal Worker

    Trained at the Lalique crystalworks in Alsace. Sets every faceted stone by hand.

  6. VI

    Hélène Drouet

    Lalique-Trained Crystal Worker

    The second of two Lalique-trained artisans; pairs cut crystal with vintage glass bead.

  7. VII

    Yvonne Petit-Lacombe

    Finishing Hand · Eleven years tenure

    Hand-hems every gown, presses every seam, and signs each garment on the inner facing.

Chapter III

The 280 to 1,200 hours.

Five chapters of how a single gown is made — from the first paper pattern to the final hand-hemmed finish.

  1. I 40 – 90 hrs

    Pattern

    A toile is cut from unbleached muslin, draped on the client’s form, and taken apart at least twice before the silk is ever touched.

  2. II 30 – 60 hrs

    Cut

    The Tuscan silk or French lace is laid on the cutting table by Marguerite and a single assistant, and every panel is hand-cut with shears that have been sharpened in the studio since 2017.

  3. III 120 – 700 hrs

    Embroidery

    Séraphine maps the embroidery in graphite on tracing paper; Inès and the studio apply the 14,500 embellishments, one setting at a time, against the soft hum of the beading lamps.

  4. IV 60 – 250 hrs

    Assembly

    Bodice, skirt, and sleeves are united by hand. Each bodice is tacked with a single thread of silk floss — a stitch the industry abandoned in 1985.

  5. V 30 – 100 hrs

    Finish

    Yvonne hand-hems the gown, presses every seam, and signs the inner facing in graphite. The dress is then hung in the fitting suite for forty-eight hours before the client’s third visit.

Raw silk skeins from the Tuscan mill, resting on pale travertine under soft daylight.
Chapter IV

One Tuscan mill, one geothermal line.

Every metre of silk, every bolt of wool, every panel of lace that enters the atelier has been woven at a single mill outside Siena.

The mill has run on geothermal power since 1998. We have counted our own use of it carbon-negative since 2021 — a figure verified by an annual audit conducted by the Atelier Qualité Council and reported in our yearly provenance ledger.

Working with one mill, on one line, means the dye-lot of an evening gown can be matched against a trousseau robe twenty years later. It means the silk of a 2018 bridal can be re-spun for a 2024 editorial piece in the same off-white. It means, quietly, that a gown commissioned today is made from fibre that has done the smallest possible harm to arrive on the cutting table.

Source
Single Tuscan mill, province of Siena
Power
Geothermal, since 1998
Status
Carbon-negative since 2021

Two years from launch, a small studio above Fifty-Seventh Street had already redrawn the map of what a New York atelier could ask of itself. The Council’s recognition belongs not to a season, but to a method.

Council of Fashion Designers of America Emerging Couture Recognition · 2019

By appointment

The studio is open to fewer than eighty clients a year.

A private atelier appointment lasts ninety minutes, in one of the two fitting suites on the twelfth floor. Bring a single reference image, if you wish, and the questions you have not yet asked.

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Concierge · [email protected] · +1 212 555 0174 · 47 West 57th Street, Suite 1204, New York