Ralph Rucci (Q8982)
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Ralph Rucci is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Ralph Rucci |
Ralph Rucci is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Ralph Rucci wrote his show notes as an open letter to his audience, a direct appeal, which, in some ways, clarified his extraordinary technique, but in others merely served to obfuscate. Like so: "My dream is that the viewers will be hypnotized by the newness." That was Rucci's fervent wish for his use of tulle as an inset detail to reveal the body moving underneath his precisely sculpted jackets and dresses.Actually, in days of Rucci passed, a feeling of being hypnotized was a pretty common reaction to the designer's awe-inspiring craftsmanship. With time, it's become more distilled and lighter, as in outfits as beautifully cut as the springy little wrap dress in white wool, which opened today's show, or the monastic white crepe shirt dress that came later. A rain jacket in floral-printed PVC suggested the lightness was of heart as well as weight.Or maybe not. A longtime Rucci signature is artful slashing, the gaps articulated by tulle. There is a subtle violence in such a notion, and it was more obvious than ever in this collection. Seams obsess Rucci. Here, the simplest shapes were bisected by black lines, a nod to AbEx master Barnett Newman that was typical of the designer. In the same spirit, he incorporated the abstract sweep of some of his own paintings into prints for his eveningwear.It's that degree of hyper-aestheticism that divorces Rucci from the mainstream of American fashion. Sportswear? Scarcely. Just two examples—big, a dress in silk taffeta origami; small, a simple shell composed of minute wooden beads. And yet the audience response to a gown of silk crepe draped over a sequined inner column pointed to a human appreciation of the purest glamour. That is always bubbling under the prevailing fashion trends, and it'll put Rucci in the history books.
6 September 2014
Pulling a one-shoulder, long gold lamé dress cut on the round off the rack, Ralph Rucci said, "This reminds me of going out dancing in the late seventies and early eighties, places like the Saint, Paris Garage." If that slinky number was a flashback, though, this collection didn't have the patina of the past. Rucci is not a designer continuously on the prowl for new inspiration and new eras to mine; his ideas come from the fabric itself and from getting his hands on it. He's famous for details and finishings that are as close to couture as you can get in ready-to-wear, but this season the focus was less on his signature surface treatments and more on cut and silhouette. Rucci shared that he did a lot more draping on the body than he has in recent collections. That came across in a fabulous capelet dress that was essentially two circles, one on top of the other, and in a sparkly chiffon and silk lamé top almost spherical in its dimensions that he paired with leather biking shorts—talk about a great outfit for dancing. When he did turn his attention to surface details, they were astonishing: wonderful, yet subtle. A cap-sleeved leather jacket was inset with tulle that he took the trouble to pintuck. "I'm always searching for transparencies," he said. Where else but Rucci can you find that kind of workmanship in New York?
10 June 2014
Ralph Rucci has listened to the voices:You show too many outfits, you're confusing people, you must edit.So he did, offering up a Fall collection that was pared down and streamlined in a way that would have been unthinkable for Rucci even a year ago. His talent and technique are so protean that it may have seemed tantamount to insisting that Beethoven write not a symphony but an advertising jingle, except that here, the discipline worked wonders for Rucci. Not that he isn't already the most disciplined of designers, but that doesn't always translate in a world that wants the top story in point form. Which has meant that there have been times when Rucci has—for his ardent boosters, at least—seemed heartbreakingly out of sync. (He surely sympathizes with how Cristobal Balenciaga felt as the modern world grimly turned.)No more. The trim angularity of Rucci's new collection was an effective engagement with a fashion culture that sees the likes of Raf Simons and Karl Lagerfeld working on ways to turn the purity of couture into a more quotidian affair. Maybe that meant you had to picture footwear slightly more athletic than Manolo Blahnik's fetish boots paired with Rucci's outfits, but once you took that leap, the sporty energy of his outfits asserted itself. His articulated seaming was the clearest expression of that. He used to call it Frankenstein stitching because it looked like the fabric was scarred. Still does, except today Rucci was talking about the patterns created by crop circles. Definitely something for the next dinner party.There's always a major caveat with any discussion of Rucci's integration into the here and now: We're not talking jersey here. His collection was, as ever, an exercise in spectacular fabrication. But he was canny enough to defuse deluxe with unexpected interventions. It seemed safe to assume the intricately quilted coatdress that opened the show was exquisite napa. Wrong. It was vinyl. And color played a big part in tipping the collection toward something odder, more modern. Black was the foundation, but the accent shades were extraordinary: a sick green ("artichoke," Rucci called it), a flaring red, burgundy, lavender, persimmon.Nothing made the editor's eye more obvious than the show's dial-down on evening, once upon a time an opportunity for Rucci to go hell-bent for gazar. Yes, gazar made a guest appearance, a huge hand-painted swathe of it, attached to a simple black velvet tank.
But that gown's predecessor on the catwalk crystallized the designer's ability to infuse convention with peculiarity. It was an extraordinary column of chiffon and paillettes, colored a scorched rust. Nowthatwas a real aftermath of a dress.
9 February 2014
Only a man as obsessed as Ralph Rucci could consider a sixty-four-look show "a tight edit." The night before his presentation, he was running seventy-eight, unheard of in this day and age, when around thirty outfits is the maximum number that designers care to show. But Rucci is barely of this day and age. The intricacy and refinement of his workmanship have always located him in another era, when connoisseurship of clothing counted for the kind of clientele that still shows up for him and ovates furiously when he takes his bow at the end. But while the clock might be ticking for them, Rucci has managed the rare feat of transcending temporal limitations. Yes, there were some outfits in his latest show that spoke to the needs of ambassadors' wives and lady tycoons of a certain age, but on the whole, the collection he offered was so lean, light, and fierce that sixty-four looks flew by like they were…well, thirty.It was all the more remarkable when you consider that his materials were python, gazar, organza—the fine stuff of the couture that is his natural habitat, but treated here with a casual confidence. An ivory slipdress in matte python? A bubble of hand-painted organza, layered over a black leather skirt? They showed a relaxed side of Rucci that his longtime boosters have longtime hankered for. Technique is technique—it can enhance an evening dress but it can also elevate a T-shirt. That's what Rucci did to great effect here. One dressy look featured a torrent of electric fringes (he called them "eyelashes," and who are we to disagree?); another, equally effective, was not much more than an elongated tank in sheer black silk, slashed to the thigh over a little black sheath.There is always a point in his shows when Rucci takes his technical mastery for a walk. In this collection, that meant a crepe jacket whose midriff was made up of a "barbed wire" in black leather, or a wrap coat in laser-cut broadtail, or a dress in the basket-weave technique that looked like something he'd borrowed from a samurai's suit. There was a time when such effects would overwhelm Rucci's shows and leave you awed but somewhat breathless. With time, he's learned to oxygenate those moments. It's lightness that prevails now: jackets slashed and reconstituted with tulle-filled seams, tunics of gloriously shimmering paillettes, trailing laces and fringes to loan movement.
And most memorable of all, the aprons that Rucci wrapped around waists, in metal mesh or black velvet or bugle beads over pants. "The new suit," he called the look. And that's exactly how it looked—new.
7 September 2013
Chado Ralph Rucci dropped the "Chado" back in April and is now known simply as Ralph Rucci. The name change was the beginning of a big push for the New York brand. Today, Rucci was on set at the brand's first advertising campaign in ages; the Steven Meisel-lensed images will appear in September magazines. Later this month, the company is moving out of its Soho studio for a larger space in Chelsea. And on the racks, there was the beginning of a knits collection that the designer plans to develop and separate into its own business.More proof that Rucci has growth on his mind: the Rorschach print of his own design that appeared on everything from a slinky matte jersey tank dress to a cotton canvas jacket with the sculptural properties of an upholstery fabric. Rucci has seemed fairly print-averse recently, but a designer simply can't ignore them when they're so big at retail. Resort also finds Rucci experimenting with silhouette; an asymmetric, undulating neckline appeared on everything from a pair of silk tanks layered over full-legged pants to a white sequined evening dress.Other than that, there were new takes on old favorites: silk shantung separates in jewel tones, jackets with sheer mesh insets front and back, a dramatic white cotton blouse with tone-on-tone embroidery inspired by the work of the artist Louise Nevelson. A few pieces looked especially sharp. They were a satin coat in a still of-the-moment python print, and gowns in chiffon-weight lamé with cutouts at the midriff.
16 June 2013
Ralph Rucci cherishes the extreme. In his new collection, one gown featured a bodice of chiffon embroidered with jet in a simulacrum of DNA's double helix. So that's weird. But how's this? When the slit in the gown's gazar skirt was opened, it revealed a hand-painted version of Francis Bacon's iconic "screaming pope" image. Why? "For my own amusement," said Rucci. And, presumably, for the delectation of the woman who would choose to buy and wear a fashion reedition of one of the most famous works of art of the last century.There is often the feeling with a Ralph Rucci collection that a lot of it exists for his own amusement. His technical facility is such that he can make things happen that you simply don't see in the average, ordinary New York ready-to-wear collection. Here, there was a coat in a cashmere double-bonded with foam (a cashmere neoprene, if you will), another coat in a huge yeti shag of Mylar thread and synthetic hair, and a sheath of leather laser-cut into scales. Each of those outfits represented an obsessive exaggeration of one sort or another. But equally, there was a dress in sober black crepe detailed with a cross shape in tulle. And another dress, also crepe, whose matching jacket was cut away in the back to highlight the way the dress was knotted at the waist. The strictness was such that Rucci could picture them being worn by a female Inquisitioner. Once the designer had implanted that indelible image in one's mind, the rest of the collection marched past in a fetishistic haze.But fetish is, after all, what the great designers of couture's golden age expertly manipulated to their own ends. Rucci has always been acutely aware of that legacy. Here, however, he seemed to be making a more deliberate commitment to modernism—in, say, the linear quality of a drop-waist dress in micro-bugle beads, or the flashiness of a black vinyl coat. (Rucci is dying to get back to haute couture, and the hot-pink cashmere lining of that coat spoke a quiet volume about the private pleasures of haute dressing.) So it may be no wonder Lady Gaga has come knocking on his door. She craves the rare. Rucci can give her the precious and beautiful to go with it.
9 February 2013
After a colorful Spring collection, Ralph Rucci dialed things back for pre-fall, opting to use primarily black and navy and experimenting with fabrics instead. Having discovered and fallen in love with a neoprene-bonded cashmere at a mill in Florence, he used it to create some memorable coats, especially the one with his signature curved sleeves and a seriously major to-the-ankles cape. On the more practical side, there was an all-weather canvas-silk trench with a removable stamped rabbit lining at the collar and cuffs. Another piece of outerwear worth mentioning: a leather blazer with elaborate trapunto stitching on the back and a long line of buttons on the sleeves, so they can be worn rolled up to the elbows.Rucci tried his hand at some new dress silhouettes, adding dolman sleeves to one nipped-waist frock and cutting an amethyst silk-velvet cocktail number with a plunging V. Neither of them rivaled the simplicity of a sleeveless, zip-front wool jersey sheath. As for gowns, he showed only one, but it was a beauty: narrowly cut and sleeveless in black silk velvet with leather insets.
19 December 2012
Carmen Dell'Orefice kept the cameramen occupied before Ralph Rucci's show got underway tonight. No one could take their eyes off of the still beautiful octogenarian model as she vamped it up in a long red coat by the designer and white kid gloves. Dell'Orefice's outfit choice was a fitting one. Rucci embraced color with gusto for Spring: shocking pink, chrome yellow, coral. All of them came together on what must've been one of the show's most difficult pieces to complete: a black double-face wool crepe suit, one arm of which was braided entirely from tubes in those colors. Rucci has long made a virtue of the technical feats performed by his New York atelier—he's been in business for 31 years—and this collection wasn't short on them. There was a twinset made from densely woven and braided strands of leather not much wider than al dente angel hair, a black smoking with patent insets on the back, and a taffeta gown with no fewer than four layers of skirts, to rattle off just a few examples. Counterbalancing such lavish offerings was simpler fare like a citrus yellow T-shirt dress in Ultrasuede, a pink plissé frock with a trapunto bodice, and a ravishing, if understated, caftan in double-face silk crepe.But it's the couture-grade workmanship that has put Rucci where he is. Not all of his indulgences were as well judged as that caftan. A caviar-beaded blouse in coral and its matching duchess satin stole were a bit de trop. It may not look like much in the picture, but to this reviewer's eyes at least, the show's most winning piece was a white silk cloque dress with a pink plastic detail at the waist. It captured two things: Rucci's refined sense of proportion and cut, and his exquisite taste in fabrics.
9 September 2012
The news at Chado was color. Ralph Rucci is a man who likes to work in tonalities of white, tan, and black and come up with evocative names for each, but for Resort, he went Pantone on us. The strongest pieces were a series of matte jersey dresses—as slinky and sexy as anything he's done despite their long sleeves. A scarf-neck, plunge-front style in amethyst was particularly persuasive. The other pieces that stood out were designed to cover up rather than cling, but they'll attract attention nonetheless. The first was a grass green tunic in pongee silk with a deep navy hem, shown with matching green pajama pants; the second was a white caftan in the same pongee silk but cut slimmer than he usually makes them, banded with navy and blush pink. Keep the sunscreen and the salt water far from these beauties; they're too special to wear to the beach. Special is what Rucci, well, specializes in, but his evening offerings were rather subdued. Clients looking for a glittering New Year's Eve gown will find only one here, in white lace smothered in caviar beads with a matching floor-length coat to match.
19 June 2012
Ralph Rucci opted out of a runway show this season, which had both its negatives and its positives. His clothes have a lot of drama in them, and some of that got lost in his Broadway showroom.On the other hand, feeling is believing, and Rucci uses some of the most sumptuous materials known to man. There were racks of double-face cashmere skirtsuits with his signature 3-D quilting techniques, but even more luxurious was a double-face alpaca jacket and coat with satin trapunto details.You could have your pick of furs: Mink in both sheared and knit varieties was nice, but if you really want lavish, and Rucci's clients often do, there was an ivory bouclé coat fully lined in Mongolian lamb, modeled after a Chanel number that Coco was working on before she died. Rucci crafted another style from strips of Russian sable and leather braid; it was as warm as it was weightless.In the mix were everyday dresses in wool ponte and "nun's veiling" sheer wool gauze. "Not every occasion is a state occasion," joked sales director John Lindsey, but occasion dressing is where Rucci's heart lies. For Fall, his strongest offering was also his simplest: a black silk velvet column gown with a horsehair back. It looked smashing under a leopard velvet coat he had specially loomed in Italy.
15 February 2012