Pirelli’s relationship with beauty is an intriguing one. Starting in 1964 as a raunchy pin-up perfectly primed for the walls of male-dominated, bravado-breeding garages stocked with Pirelli’s primary product of tyres, The Cal – as it’s now known – has featured famous faces like Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Gisele Bündchen and Monica Belluci. Equipped with a purring pout, unblemished skin and a distinct lack of clothing, the beauty that these models represented in the early versions of The Cal was very narrow and inherently coded by the straight, cis, male gaze. Since then, the calendar has experienced a metamorphosis, moulded by changing times, sensibilities and interpretations of beauty.
Despite this change, remaining at the heart of The Cal is the importance it places on the person behind the lens, their interpretation of contemporary culture and how this applies to what is considered beautiful. From its inception to the modern day, a total of 50 Pirelli calendars have been birthed into circulation, with 39 pioneering photographers imparting their vision onto the pages. From Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel and Annie Leibovitz, getting the call from Pirelli parallels for photographers what it might be like to get the call to be on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for actors or musicians. It’s both an honour and a big responsibility, and not to be shoved into incapable hands. As a result, Pirelli’s selection always highlights someone at the top of their game, endowed with a hefty portfolio and their own distinct take on beauty. Enter this year’s photographer, Ethan James Green.
Born in Michigan and based in New York, Green has risen to prominence with his impressive ability to translate the essence of his subjects, coloured by themes of identity, sexuality and personal style. Collaborations with Alexander McQueen, Dior, Fendi and Louis Vuitton pepper his portfolio and his most recent monograph, Bombshell, which was released earlier this year, explores how femininity, glamour and sex appeal manifests in different ways depending on who is embodying them. With talents for the 2025 Pirelli Calendar ranging from Hunter Schafer and John Boyega to Simone Ashley and Jodie Turner-Smith, Green’s focus has been identifying the sensuality of each subject, producing a body of work that feels current, captivating and distinctly his.
Intrigued to find out more about his process, we sat down with Green to discuss how his experience shooting The Cal has been, the changes he’s observed in society’s interpretation of beauty and what beauty means to him.
The modern Pirelli calendar champions the type of beauty that goes beyond traditional aesthetics, so as the photographer for this year’s edition, how has this ethos influenced your work?
This calendar is definitely a celebration of beauty and with my work, having a variety of people has always been a very important thing. We wanted to go back to the beginning of the calendar while getting today’s version of that. So, it’s a little bit different than I would say the past 10 years. There’s more of a sexiness focus, but we wanted to show how sexiness and the idea of beauty has expanded in the past 10 years.
What does beauty mean to you?
Beauty means a lot of things. There’s beauty that we see on the outside of someone and that’s usually a very initial response that we get but then the way that we feel about ourselves can change how we look at the same time, so I think that beauty inside really can show outside as well.
As someone who captures this beauty for a living, what changes have you observed in the way that society views beauty over time?
I mean there’s obviously way more people that get to be put in the beautiful group now, which is great. It’s not such a narrow idea now, it’s about uniqueness again. There’s something so boring about the same type of beauty and that makes it really exciting for someone like me because I like to take pictures in a very classic space but being able to pull more of a variety of people into this arena where we’ve seen the same over and over again makes my job really exciting.
How do you feel that your photography style contributes to Pirelli’s mission of promoting this idea of a modern beauty?
The way that I take pictures is very classic. I love to revisit lighting and settings that Avedon or Ritts or Meisel or these photographers that have shot such classic iconic pictures [used]. It can be really powerful to bring in people who weren’t included in those spaces before, instead of burning the house down, I’m a redecorator. It can be equally as powerful, if not more, to include people in spaces that they weren’t before and to be able to see them in that light.
How have you ensured that the uniqueness of each of the cast members of the calendar this year have been captured in your photographs?
Because of my work being so much about collaboration with the subject, I like to try to have a space that someone is fully comfortable. Those walls then come down and it makes it so I can capture someone as close to their true self as possible. So, I think just through collaboration, making it so people just feel really good to be themselves.
Obviously there is a really diverse cast for this year’s calendar, which is really exciting: Hunter Schafer, Simone Ashley, etc. Why is working with such a diverse range of subjects important to your craft?
It’s just the generation I’m a part of. For me, I’m never approaching a project being like ‘I want to have diversity,’ that’s just always been how I do it. It’s not so much of an effort, it’s more, I don’t do a shoot if it’s not that way, why would you want to do it any other way? It’s boring. The generation I’m a part of, I think a lot of people my age would feel the same, it just makes sense.
Photography from the backstage of the Pirelli Calendar 2025 by Ethan James Green by Alessandro Scotti.
Behind-the-scenes imagery of Ethan James Green shooting the 2025 Pirelli Calendar
