Ralph Rucci’s Pragmatic Luxury and Haute Craftsmanship Has Never Seemed So Timely

“Every collection is a continuum of the last one,” says Ralph Rucci in the movie that was sent to his clients as a teaser for his Fall 2021 couture collection.

Directed by Matthew Placek, whose subjects have included Marina Abramovic, Julian Schnabel, and Philip Johnson’s Glass House, the film finds Rucci discussing the themes that continue to resonate for him, including scarification and the skeleton form, and his philosophy of couture.

Rucci’s clients know what to expect when they come to him—unimpeachable good taste, a nuanced color palette, flattering silhouettes, and his legendary workmanship. And so this season, when circumstances did not allow him to produce a full and wildly costly couture sample collection he set up his welcoming salon in a suite at the Ritz instead, complete with pin boards featuring sketches of the run of show. Alongside Rucci’s own atelier-friendly working drawings of each of the proposals were more impressionistic and gestural watercolors by artist Bil Donovan that illustrate the collection he envisages for Fall 2021. Fabric and embroidery swatches complete the picture—Rucci’s suppliers include the embroiderers Jean-Pierre Ollier—“I feel he picked up the reins of Monsieur Lesage,” double face wools from Raphael (“They harken Mila Schon), and silks from Taroni.

The work pays subtle homage to the masters of fashion whom Rucci reveres—Cristobal Balenciaga, Charles James, and Madame Grès among them—but his aesthetic is uniquely his own and he has always traced an independently minded path. But in a season that saw Demna Gvasalia reimagining Balenciaga’s volumes with a fierce elegance, Maria Grazia Chiuri’s focus on sophisticated daywear at Dior, and Virginie Viard’s wearable chic at Chanel, Rucci’s world of pragmatic luxury and celebration of craftsmanship has never seemed so timely.

Rucci’s signatures are all here—the balmacaan jackets with their curving seams, (this season in broken white or dove gray cashmere from Colombo, or chocolate moiré, for instance), and the coats that skim the waist and bell into fullness—contouring the body with fabric tubes laid on tulle in a mind boggling tour-de-force of painstaking handwork (Rucci calls them “vibrations”).

This might not be the moment for the designer’s fabled ‘Infanta’ gowns, as he concedes, but instead there are the evening shirts worn with lean pants, à la Babe Paley or Gloria Guinness, and a jewel-crusted sleeveless tunic that is a frank homage to his revered Pauline de Rothschild—and for which Rucci suggests a palette of lime, tangerine, or citric yellow. A tulle evening cardigan is embroidered with a tracery of freshwater seed pearls and a bias cut caftan is printed in organza from a composition of Rucci’s incorporating a favorite photograph of Joseph Beuys and some of the designer’s pensées.

“This season I found was so happy and joyful,” says Rucci, “and those that popped in just loved it although I had trepidation—if I’m presenting in this manner is it going to be understood? But clients found the one-on-one intimacy wonderful.” As Rucci points out, “it’s rare that a piece is ordered as shown, so a client feels they are really investing in something individualistic.”

This season at the Ritz these intimate discussions with his clients lead, for instance, to the pearl cardigan—designed to be layered over a “Raj” tunic—being instead paired with gray flannel pants and “a clean white shirt.” Rucci was delighted: “You could wear that pearl cardigan to dinner as you would a string of pearls!”