Harris Reed Wants Nina Ricci to be “for Everyone”
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With micro-pleated tulle dresses, sequin-embellished loungewear, Chantilly lace tailoring, and colorful faux fur outerwear worn by models of all gender identities and sizes, Paris Fashion has never looked quite as gloriously queer as it did at Harris Reed’s Nina Ricci debut. The front row was packed with stars beloved by the LBGTQ+ community including Kiernan Shipka, Lisa Rinna, Richie Shazam, Aly and AJ Michalka, Ciara, and Blake Abbie. When he came out smiling to take his bow—standing seven feet tall in his signature eight-inch platforms, his auburn beach waves cascading over the exaggerated satin lapels of his black velvet tuxedo—Reed looked like every bit the resplendent queen of his own fashion world.
Though the young American-British designer has ascended fashion’s Mount Olympus in record time, becoming the creative director of a historic French maison at age 26 and just three years out of fashion school, he keeps it real in the voice note he sends me the day before his big debut. Reed is sitting on the rooftop of the building where he’s holding castings, soaking in the panoramic view of Paris with an espresso and a croissant. And though the sun is shining it’s a bit colder than he was expecting, which is making his nose run. A lot. “Sorry, so much snot!” he says, apologizing for his sniffles.
Born in Los Angeles to a British talent agent/producer and an American model/candlemaker, Reed possesses a rare combination of British politeness and American candor. He talks openly about his struggles with bullying and finding solace in fashion magazines as an out kid with severe dyslexia in early 2000s Phoenix, where he moved his mother and sister after his parents split. It was one of some 29 moves around the US the family made before Reed finished high school.
“My mom really helped me learn how to read by getting me fashion magazine subscriptions,” Reed recalls. “They were so stimulating with all the imagery and kind of dreamlike escapism and beauty, especially at that kind of pivotal point of coming out at nine years old and being in Arizona.”
Fashion magazines are where Reed first became acquainted with Nina Ricci, a Paris couture house founded in 1932 by a self-taught Italian-born seamstress. “It’s so funny because Nina Ricci was always one of the top three brands that I wanted to become the creative director of when I was a child,” Reed says. “It was always Christian Lacroix, Nina Ricci, Lanvin. And I mean, always Chanel, so I should say the top four brands.”
Reed saw studying fashion design as his ticket out. “It was this idea of French romanticism and fantasy that I think really got me through adolescence,” he says. At 18, he enrolled at Central Saint Martins, the London art-and-design college whose famous alumni include Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Stella McCartney, Kim Jones, and Phoebe Philo.
Even at the world’s top fashion school, Reed stood out. Though his professors often critiqued the theatricality of his designs, celebrity stylist Harry Lambert commissioned pussy bow blouses with ruffled collars for Harry Styles to wear on tour during Reed’s sophomore year. (Lambert now styles both the Harris Reed and Nina Ricci collections.) An internship at Alessandro Michele’s Gucci soon followed.
After graduating during the Covid lockdowns of 2020, Reed made his London Fashion Week debut once in-person fashion shows were able to resume in September 2021. His intimate salon-style shows have featured an acoustic set by Sam Smith (Fall 2022) and a spoken word performance by Florence Pugh (Fall 2023), making them feel like major events rather than emerging designer presentations. And global brands from Dolce & Gabbana and Etro to MAC Cosmetics and Lexus have all clamored to collaborate with him.
Fashion is an industry that’s been more welcoming than most of the LGBTQ+ community in leadership roles. Still, the representation has been fairly narrow with gay male creative directors creating “womenswear” for cisgender—and mostly straight—women. At a house best known for its feminine and romantic dresses and Parisienne elegance, Reed, who identifies as queer and gender fluid, is flying the flag for more inclusive representation.
“For me the word ‘femininity’ is something that comes before your sexual orientation or gender presentation,” he explains, “Femininity is something that can be represented by transgender individuals, by nonbinary individuals, men, women. Femininity is something that I think has been seen a bit through like a pinhole lens especially within Europe and especially within France.”
Inclusive casting is key to Reed’s vision for the new Nina Ricci. For the show, he partnered with the rising London casting director Nachum Shonn who he’s worked with since the beginning at his own label and who helped to define the Harris Reed look of bare pecs with bridal lace. “It’s always been about showing what femininity can look like across boys, non-binary individuals, trans models,” Reed says.
Precious Lee opened Reed’s Nina Ricci debut, which featured plus and mid-size models in nearly a fifth of the looks. Reed sees size inclusivity as another facet of his expansive understanding of femininity. “I want to really push how we look at body diversity in France, because that’s something that has always been a thing that bothered me when I would go [look at the runways] and just see a bunch of skinny cisgender women,” he says.
Reed takes the same sort of thoughtful approach to dressing celebrities. In December, he created his first Nina Ricci custom VIP look for the inimitable Adele, who has spoken openly about body image. She took the stage at her Las Vegas residency looking radiant in his off-the-shoulder gown with voluminous circle sleeves in black velvet and tulle and sequin polka dot embroidery.
Next, in February Reed put two of his Fall 2023 Nina Ricci runway looks on celebrities before they hit the catwalk: the smoking he would also take his bow in and an orange pleated tulle ruffle bustier top and matching mermaid skirt inspired by a Spring 1988 archive dress, “previewed” by Styles at the BRIT Awards and Pugh at the BAFTAs, respectively.
“When it comes to the celebrities as hopefully people will have seen whether it’s been Adele that for me really caters to one audience or Harry Styles that for me caters to a completely other one, or Florence Pugh, it’s really about finding strong individuals,” Reed says. “I think every single one of them magnifies femininity completely in their own way.”
Fashion labels today can feel like a revolving door of creative directors, and Nina Ricci, at which Reed is the eighth appointment since the start of the millennium, is no exception. The brand had a consistent ethereal romanticism under Olivier Theyskens (2006-2009) and Peter Copping (2009-2014), but more recently the house codes have proved more challenging to define.
Reed believes the answer lies in taking cues from Nina Ricci archives, specifically the bold 1980s and early 1990s designs of Gérard Pipart, who served as creative director for three decades—eight years longer than the founder herself—beginning in 1963. Reed’s touch points for his first collection are boulder shoulder tailoring with wide lapels, kick flares, and bright jewel tones.
“I always joke that I’m not bringing anything to Nina Ricci because it’s already there in the treasure trove of beauty and decadence and femininity that, in a polite way, has kind of been lost,” Reed says. “When you go on Pinterest or Google ‘Nina Ricci,’ a lot of the iconic silhouettes and shows and pieces are mislabeled as Lacroix or Yves Saint Laurent or Lanvin.”
Designing two labels in two different cities has brought Reed back to a peripatetic lifestyle. “I’m spinning a lot of hats which is quite lol, if you will, because I’m a person who’s quite known for my hats,” referring to the enormous circular headpieces that have become his trademark, several of which featured on the Nina Ricci runway.
Reed manages to keep them all in the air because his process is—like most things in his world–fluid. “So instead of me saying one week, one week, it really is a mélange, if you will—my new favorite French word—of kind of diving in from my studio in London, getting inspired, running to Paris maybe that night to jot a bunch of things down and put them all over a moodboard,” he explains. He’s on a Eurostar three to four times a week, but he’s loving it: “I get to have a little bit of a Jane Austen moment and look out a window and journal!”
In its heyday, Nina Ricci offered democratic high fashion, with prices that were a third less than other major French houses. That’s also a priority for Reed: a tuxedo jacket like the one he and Styles wore will retail for around $700.
At his London label, Reed has popularized a new fashion category of demi-couture, couture-like work that can be done without the full resources of specialized ateliers. (He’s resorted to Super Glue in a pinch.) Nina Ricci hasn’t made couture since 1998, but was once a major player in the space. So would Reed like to bring it back?
“Of-fucking-course!” he exclaims. “The first thing I said to my CEO when I started was just ‘get ready.’ It’s time to really bring back the dream days of haute couture. I’m trying to do accessible luxury—ready-to-wear—and then literally juxtapose it with haute couture and feathers and sequins and everything that makes this queer boy dream.”
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