Daniel Ricciardo is going from the racetrack to the clothes rack

It is all pretty low-key, but Australia’s favourite racing car driver, Daniel Ricciardo, is translating a winning smirk into a brand.

Daniel Ricciardo at last weekend’s Las Vegas F1 grand prix. (Photo: Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images.)

What exactly does Daniel Ricciardo know about making clothes?

The 34-year-old Australian Formula One driver is the sport’s affable golden retriever. He has a smile that sparkles like a set of headlights and is absolutely the driver with whom you’d most want to have a beer. Despite having a middling season for the AlphaTauri team, Ricciardo is universally held up as one of the sport’s most recognised – and relatable – faces.

This year he appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert during a period when he wasn’t even a starting driver. He has co-hosted a streaming F1 commentary show with comedian Will Arnett. A Heineken advertisement in which he starred has been viewed 22 million times on YouTube.

Yet Ricciardo is unsatisfied with just being F1’s Mr Congeniality or, for that matter, focusing on lap times.

For the past three years, Ricciardo has been building up ­Enchante, a resorty fashion brand with clothes that look like something a droll millennial character might wear on The White Lotus – cheery chequered cardigans, a lemony camp shirt, an intarsia jumper with a motorboat stitched on it.

There are, let’s call them normal, side hustles that athletes fall into. They’ll open restaurants (looking at you, Michael Jordan Steakhouse) or start overpriced ­alcohol ventures (as did basketball star Dwyane Wade).

Many of them will lend their faces to a fashion brand – as everyone from tennis prodigy Carlos A­lcaraz to soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has done for Louis Vuitton. But to found a fashion brand? Especially one that doesn’t make athleticwear, doesn’t exist under an athlete’s name and makes scant reference to their day job? That’s not just rare – it’s random. A few weeks ago I called Ricciardo to ask why, at a critical moment in his career, he decided to establish a brand that featured more spritz glasses printed on its clothes than gear shafts.

“I do like some escape,” Ricciardo says, smirking and speaking from London a few weeks before returning to the circuit for another grand prix. (He suffered a hand injury earlier this season.)

He says he doesn’t go to bed each night thinking about engines. “I’m not one to be fully consumed by” racing, he says. Starting a clothing brand, he says, “was something that allowed me to still be creative, get thinking”.

Ricciardo isn’t the most fashionable driver on the circuit. That title belongs to Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champ who treats every walk up to his Mercedes like a solo runway show. Whole Instagram accounts are dedicated to Hamilton’s race-day outfits like a kilted Dior set. He also has his own infrequently released streetwear brand, +44, but it makes more direct references to racing – 44 is his car number, as well as the Britain’s phone code.

French driver Pierre Gasly has sat front row at Louis Vuitton fashion shows and Alfa Romeo driver Zhou Guanyu is a Dior ambassador. Ricciardo’s lack of such haute bona fides is an asset. For a guy who drives a multimillion-dollar race car, Ricciardo is disarmingly of this earth. When he says he is happiest with an acoustic guitar in one hand and a beer in the other, you believe him. The word ­Enchante is something he and a buddy would bandy back and forth during nights out. “It just made us giggle,” Ricciardo says.

“It’s a very magnetic quality that he has,” says Xander Ritz, a co-founder of The Loyalist, a New York-based company dedicated to building and supporting companies occasionally run by famous faces including Enchante. Everything on Enchante’s back end, including product development, fulfilment and customer service, is handled by the Loyalist team in New York.

Ricciardo connected with The Loyalist in 2019 through his agent at Creative Artists Agency.

Initially, The Loyalist wasn’t seeking an F1 partner. Just a year before, Drive to Survive, Netflix’s behind-the-helmet documentary show, had debuted, turbocharging American interest for a sport that once struggled to find traction in the US. In recent years, stateside grand prix in Miami, Austin and last weekend’s debut Las Vegas competition have become marquee races on the calendar, drawing fans and attention-seeking sponsors.

The bulk of Enchante’s customers remain Danny Ric fans. Last month Enchante tested the waters with a pop-up shop around the Austin Grand Prix and there are plans to host more retail events in the future. It is exploring wholesale partnerships.

Ritz says Enchante has been profitable since its first year.

Its next collection is inspired by 1980s ski gear, with colour-blocked puffer jackets and thick-knit beanies. It looks more like something former world champion skier Bode Miller might slap his name on than Ricciardo.

This was the plan all along, according to the driver. The F1 world is already awash with gearhead merch – from McLaren’s vulgar $US40 ($61) papaya-coloured hats to a $US66 logo-dripped Red Bull T-shirt. Ricciardo and co set out to create a brand that you could wear to a bar without looking as if you’re about to yammer on about Ferrari’s inconsistent pit strategy.

“The real goal was to build a brand that no one needed to really know that I was even involved,” Ricciardo says.

For now though, one doesn’t need to dig too deep to spot Ricciardo’s smirking visage.

He models the brand’s clothes on Instagram, and the brand’s website reads Enchante by Daniel Ricciardo. He says he acts as the brand’s ultimate product tester (his current favourite item is a westernish, yoked canvas jacket), communicating with the team over a Whats­App group to share his thoughts on how a garment fits, how it washes in, whether he flat-out likes it.

But he leaves design to the trained designers.

“I’m also not going to lie to you and say I’m there with a sketchbook,” Riccardo says. After all, he still has a race car to drive.

The Wall Street Journal