In the same way that a lover of Louis Vuitton luggage may want to dine at an LV-branded cafe, or a Dior addict may want to rest their head on a Dior pillow on a Dior bed at a Dior hotel, why wouldn’t an aficionado of Ferrari sportscars not want to wear a plush jacket or a sleek pair of pants from the Italian automobile company?
“Look at what Louis Vuitton is doing—they are becoming the first sponsor at F1,” says Rocco Iannone, creative director of Ferrari’s ready-to-wear collection. “They are too big to sell only small leather goods and bags. So they need to enlarge their experiences.”
“Luxury,” he added, “is becoming very multidimensional.”
Iannone was at Ferrari’s newly opened Soho boutique, in a former Nespresso space directly opposite the Prada store (all three brands are Italian icons, in their own way, if you think about it). The store is all sinuous lines of burnished steel, evoking the monumentality of a Richard Serra sculpture, set off against concrete, glass, and leather. Downstairs is the brand’s more commercial collection, with a stand of logo baseball caps and small accessories like pens and keychains on display, plus a collaboration with Swizz Beatz, the kind of Ferrari owner who has to pause and go through a mental checklist when you ask him how many cars he owns from the company. Upstairs, the recent runway collection hangs by a table where shoppers can customize their Ferrari-shaped bags (to match their own, a common request), plus a curtained-off space for VIPs.
A few days later, the brand held the show for its latest collection in a downtown gallery. “America’s the most important market for us,” said John Elkann, the brand’s chief executive, before the show. “And [Ferrari] is very intertwined with America—there is no better place to be than here in New York.” Alongside the runway were oversize tapestries that recreated the covers of a magazine the company once produced with the textile manufacturer Rubelli, in vibrant shades, including, of course, the fiery Ferrari red.
On the runway were creamy tailored pieces with a subtle rippling effect, slouchy tracksuits, slick leather skirts and cropped bombers, and body-hugging intarsia knits in swirling, sometimes chaotic patterns, that evoked either marble or the busy branding on a race car driver’s uniform. It closed with a passage of lush pieces in mocha brown, where denim “melted” into a leather printed to look like turtle shells—something Iannone was particularly pleased with—or lighter silks with a puckered appearance.
In recent seasons, Iannone has mellowed the more dynamic, in-your-face aesthetic he launched with—all those graphic hits of neon and showy logos!—but in doing so, has lost some of the flashy, swaggering bravado that’s foundational to the brand. Ferrari is sleek, sexy, and ostentatious in its desire for speed and excitement. This collection was reserved and tasteful, but it missed the visceral, gutsy element that makes Ferrari—and fashion, for that matter—roar like an engine.
