Behind the scenes of Ethan James Green’s raw perception of sensual beauty for the 2025 Pirelli Calendar
Following last year’s success of the 50th docket by Prince Gyasi, which pushed narratives of timeless artistry, Kaleigh Werner joins photographer Ethan James Green on set of the 2025 Pirelli Calendar as he peels back the color and returns to the calendar’s history to center the conversation around raw, sensual beauty
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A few hundred feet away, on a protected beach in the Miami Keys, Ethan James Green transcended the verity of beauty from behind his camera.
I curiously watched as the photographer secured his balance on top of a ladder, peering through his lens at his subject from above. Lying in the sand below him, dressed in a soaked-through gold dress, her long hair swaying with the ripples, was Bridgerton star Simone Ashely. She was still, bent in an alpine twist as if she’d just laid down to stretch while a shallow pool of water crept around her body, forming a lucid imprint on the damp ground.
It was the middle of June, and I was on the set of Green’s 2025 Pirelli Calendar shoot, submerged in intense humidity while mosquitoes nipped at my neck. Though I was sitting away from the swarm of photo assistants and production managers gathered by the water’s edge and ready to adjust at a moment’s notice, Ashley’s valiant vulnerability and Green’s encouragement were palpable. The scene was, for the most part, quiet, with whispers coming in and out with the threat of clouds above. But what was loud was the connection between the photographer and the actress, silent yet deafening. They were complementary, discovering and understanding each other’s vision more by the minute. As Green clicked his camera, shots of Ashley flashed on a monitor before me, each as ethereal as the next. Eventually, my attention settled on Green, the 34-year-old tapped to helm the 51st edition of The Cal.
Shot outside at Virginia Key Beach Park and inside a studio, the 2025 calendar centers the conversation around natural beauty from two vantage points. The Michigan-born creative – whose work has appeared in Vogue, The New Yorker, W Magazine, and more – constructed the concept, “Refresh and Reveal,” a raw, two-dimensional dive that will continue the calendar’s reputation as a cultural vanguard, only this time challenging societal beliefs surrounding contemporary sensuality and nudity. Following last year’s resounding success of the 50th docket by Prince Gyasi, which pushed narratives of timeless artistry, Green sought to peel back the color and return to the calendar’s history, finding inspiration in the treasured works of the past.
In 1964, Pirelli UK Limited, the Italian conglomerate’s British Subsidiary, fought against expansion and competition within the tire industry by devising a marketing strategy to increase its visibility – an exclusive print book only available to its customers. Under the Pirelli name, this new facet would honor its community and present irrevocable work to comment on cultural phenomena from the perspective of a respected visionary.
From Robert Freeman, the renowned photographer responsible for The Beatles’ achromatic images, to Sarah Moon, Paolo Roversi, and Annie Leibovitz, illustrious artists from around the world have impressed contemporary ideals upon the Pirelli Calendar with their singular styles. Avant-garde fashion has been fused with both organic and synthetic set direction, offering an array of model images that have become introspective tools in society. And Green’s Pirelli Calendar will be no different.
His talent for producing profound portraits reflecting identity and sexuality will be demonstrated in the stills of 12 subjects, including himself. Between the all-powerful actress Hunter Schafer to the legendary Indian-American writer and model Padma Lakshmi, New York-based artist Martine Goodier, Vincent Cassel, and Jenny Shimizu, the 2025 Pirelli Calendar will feature on-screen stars, fine art producers, and activists alike to represent a diverse palette of beauty.
While The Cal’s fashion through the years has notoriously landed somewhere between exaggerated and exposed, the 51st docket focuses on a lack of clothing, reverting back to the technique seen in Herb Ritts’ 1994 calendar and Richard Avedon’s 1997 edition. When narrowing down his approach, Green lingered on both Avedon and Ritts’ print books, noticing how the sensual, sexy style had been done tastefully despite preconeived notions of nudity. Inside a studio in New York, Avedon shot “Women of the World,” and on a beach Ritts captured his vision of “Modern Classic” with Cindy Crawford and Kate Moss. For Green’s upcoming docket, he decided to do both.
“I thought, let's combine,” Green told The Independent the day after his shoot wrapped in Miami. “Classic settings and we have a contemporary cast. So, that's the combo I like to have a lot, classic with contemporary, continuing something that's been there but with today mixed in. Refresh. And that's our refresh.”
“I think the big thing is just going back to showing some skin and not being afraid to and just doing it in a respectful way,” he added.
“I mean, I think that it’s more loaded than that,” Tonne Goodman, the calendar stylist, chimed in. “I think that what’s going on in society and culture globally is so threatening to the individual and to the core of the individual. And the core of the individual is the way you’re born, you’re naked, and it’s who you are.
“The fact that that is being challenged now is horrible,” she continued. “I think that in doing this, it means that you have to appreciate it.”
With the help of Goodman, the former senior fashion editor responsible for 200 Vogue covers, Green’s “reveal” came to fruition. Goodman and her team plucked barely-there garments, sheer blouses, speedos, chiffon dresses, and leather molds to create an “in the nude” illusion, dropping the exaggeration of mod editorial. In some cases, organic materials were used as scanty cover-ups over underwear.
Working as the stylist for this shoot, Goodman found trying to “undress with clothes” a challenge as someone whose forte is archetypal fashion selection (though her June-July 2020 WSJ Magazine cover of supermodel Doutzen Kroes is comparative to the calendar styling). “The idea to undress with clothes was the challenge,” she said. “That's where the reveal comes because you can't reveal something unless you have something covering it to take it off to reveal.”
More than that, the sourcing process also proved to be difficult. Goodman admitted she had to scrub a number of sites, combing through the provocative and the vulgar before finding the dainty, freeform garb that suited and pleased each model’s personality.
Back on the sandy beach in Miami, under claps of thunder and undulating lightning bolts, Padma Lakshmi let out a long exhale, contemplating current conservative morals as her white garment clung to her skin. She’d just finished posing for Green in the water with only the see-through bodysuit on.
“I was modeling in the 1990s and it was much freer then,” she explained. “I think we’ve become much more conservative today, and some of that is good. A lot of the stuff that was happening in the 1990s needed to go away. But I don’t think that nudity is anything to be afraid of because I think a woman’s body is one of the most beautiful creations in nature.
“I’m at an age where I don’t, I’m not afraid of my body. I feel more beautiful. I feel more sensual today than I ever did in my twenties or thirties,” she noted, adding how Green’s calendar was a “talisman of femininity.”
For the 32-year-old British-Nigerian actor, and first time calendar model, John Boyega, the inclusivity woven throughout the 51st docket has been what’s resonated with him most in this opportunity. “I like the inclusivity, the acceptance of beauty in different shapes and sizes. I like the fact that we’re celebrating that beauty can be defined in different ways,” he told The Independent after he wrapped his studio shoot with Green.
“You know, there’s always that feeling of beauty that you can relate with and connect to. Beauty is life. Even in the dark, there is beauty,” Boyega added.
Like the beauty that is promised to be rife in the pages of the 2025 Pirelli Calendar, the docket as a whole is sure to act as a guiding figure against society’s resistance to the mind-body connection. “There is an expression that my sister actually said, which was, ‘The arts have the power to deliver us from evil,’” Goodman said, knowing she, Green, the cast, and crew did just that with their 51st edition of the Pirelli Calendar, set to release later this year.
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