 Good evening, everyone. I'm Caroline Bowman, director of Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and we are so glad you could join us this evening for this discussion with iconic American fashion designer Ralph Rucci. This lecture is part of our Design by Hand series, which is a very exciting collaboration between Cooper Hewitt and Van Cleef and Arpels. What it is is a biannual program of educational conversations and workshops focusing on craftsmanship, innovation, and the crucial role of the human hand in the world of global design. Each week of immersion programming spotlights a pioneering design organization or person through special programs that reach each of the museum's core audiences, from university students to high school students to adults and families. The program first began in fall 2013 with the bright and bold Finnish brand Mari Mekko. And then last year, we featured Heath ceramics who have been hugely influential in contemporary ceramic practice. We're thrilled to be bringing the Design by Hand series back into the museum, following our huge renovation, with the incredible fashion designer Ralph Rucci, whose garments are an ode to the grace of the female body. They are all about the miracles that can be achieved by the human hand. Ralph has a wonderful history with Cooper Hewitt. He's been featured in numerous exhibitions here at the museum, including Design Life Now, the National Design Triennial in 2006, and Design USA, Contemporary Innovation in 2008. Among his prestigious awards is the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, which he won, obviously, for fashion in 2008. And in 2011, Ralph was inducted into the Fashion Group International Walk of Fame. And you can see his plaque on the southeast corner of 39th Street and 7th Avenue, right in the center of the fashion district. The Design by Hand series will continue through spring of 2017 with an exciting new design partner every single season. Next fall, the focus will be on Pixar. Please check out our website, cooperhewitt.org, for all further information. We are incredibly grateful to Van Cleef and Arpels for their support of this unique program and for their continued dedication to design education across the world. We're absolutely thrilled that this strong support and partnership with Van Cleef and Arpels continues next month with the launch of Le Col in the United States. Le Col was founded in 2012 in Paris. And it is a very unique school and opportunity established for the general public to learn about the history, culture, and savoir faire of the jewelry arts. You may have seen the many banners all around this neighborhood, as well as the copious advertisements around the city. We couldn't be more excited to host the American debut here at Cooper Hewitt. And I hope to see many of you back for Le Col. And before we start tonight's discussion, I have the great pleasure and honor of introducing my friend and partner, Alain Bernal, CEO of America's at Van Cleef and Arpels. Alain, over to you. Thank you very much, Caroline. So Caroline shouldn't be here tonight because Caroline gave birth to a beautiful Hugo a few weeks ago and she's officially on maternity leave. But nothing was more important for her than the design by hand series and being with us tonight. So thank you very much to introduce this series. On behalf of Van Cleef and Arpels, I want to say that we are very pleased to continue the very fruitful collaboration and this amazing partnership we have with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. As you said, Caroline, it's not the first time we're here. It's actually the third time. And each time it's a wonderful series of lectures and an event at the Cooper Hewitt. The collaboration between the Cooper Hewitt Museum and Van Cleef and Arpels is, and I know you love that, Caroline, when I say that, it's a love story. So like in any love story, the most important is not love itself, but the proof of love. And we have so many proof of love in our collaboration. We have actually a past, a present and a future. The past is what we have created four years ago, which was a patrimonial exhibition called Set in Style 2011. I am sure most of you saw it, I hope. It was so far the most popular exhibition organized at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, so we are very proud of it. The present is designed by Hand Series, which means a lot to Van Cleef and Arpels because we are, as you know, a jeweler, a high jeweler. And nothing is more important for us than creation, than the creators, than the artist, the hand of the artist, the vision of the artist, the craftsmanship, the craftsmanship which is implied by the whole work of the artist. And for us, being here and putting a spotlight on a specific art and honoring a specific artist, designer or creator is something very important for us. The future, very short term future is, as you said, Caroline Lekol, Lekol, Van Cleef and Arpels. So you have done a wonderful advertising on it, so I don't have to repeat what you heard. Four more weeks today, 4th of June, we will be opening for two weeks here at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. Series of classes, of lectures, evening conversations. You can go online on the website and register for a class or for a conversation or with your kids to a family day during the weekend. So it's a very fascinating program. And the whole goal is to reveal some secrets about hydrary and educate as much as we can on this fascinating world. Mr. Rucci, Caroline has introduced you a little bit. I know that Brooke is going to introduce you even better after me, so I won't be too long about it, but I want to say that I'm personally thrilled that you are the honoree of this lecture. You are American, but you are a little bit French and Japanese. And I live in Japan just before coming to the States, and I'm obviously French. So just a few words about that. You are American, but you are the first American, the first American designer in 60 years to be honored by the Chambre syndicale haute couture in Paris, which is obviously as you can hear it, the highest rank in haute couture in Paris. And you showed your show for five years from 2002 to 2007, and the first time in 60 years, it's not every day that French people love to welcome American designers, so congratulations. And the Japanese part in you, which really touched me when I rediscovered it, is the name of one of your most fashionable designers, line, which is Chateau. Chateau is Chai's tea, and Dau is the way of, and it's the whole art of Japanese tea. And it tells a lot about your work, which is all about the search of perfection, refinement, and just a sublime simplicity. So, we have a whole lecture tonight and discussion with you. I want to introduce the one who will lead the discussion. So, Brooke, you're gonna be the one speaking just after me. You're the deputy director of the Cooper Hewitt. You are the curator, writer, and critic. I don't want to say too much about you. You spent 10 years on the East Coast in Harvard and 10 years on the West Coast in Los Angeles, creating a few exhibitions, one of them being skin and bones, parallel practices in fashion and architecture, which was probably one of the most fascinating ones, contemplating the relationship between design and architecture, which is a topic. So, you definitely qualify to be here to animate this whole discussion. So, Brooke, over to you, and thank you very much. Thank you, Alain, for that nice introduction. I first got to know Ralph when I was working on the Skin and Bones exhibition, and I went to see him in his studio here in New York, and I was immediately entranced by his work, and I had never seen anything like it, and his work played a pivotal role in that exhibition, so thank you for mentioning that. We are absolutely delighted to welcome Ralph Rucci here tonight for the latest installment of Design by Hand. Ralph Rucci draws his inspiration from myriad sources, including far Eastern asceticism, modern art, and ethno-folklore. He's particularly influenced by artists, including Cy Twombly, Francis Bacon, Joseph Boys, Richard Sarah, among others, and as well as fashion designers, including Balenciaga, the original, Cristobal Balenciaga, Madame Grey, Coco Chanel, Charles James, Halston, Givenchy, James Gallinos, who I know is, Ralph is particularly fond of, and who is a living treasure here in the US, and as well as by a number of other designers from other fields, including Elsa Peretti, and curators like Diana Vreeland, who is legendary, and Patty Smith, the musician, and you'll see some images, I think, of Patty Smith in tonight's presentation. Ralph's work is known for its exquisite craftsmanship and attention to detail, and he's developed a number of techniques in his garments that are very original and that are generated from very Oat Couture techniques, including worm stitches, suspension techniques, the vibration technique, the thread of life technique, and I hope that we'll hear more about those tonight from Ralph. But his attention to detail and his quest for perfection and for craftsmanship in his collections over the years made him a natural fit for us for the Design by Han series. And Ralph himself has spoken of his almost obsessive interest in materials and fabrics, and he loves unusual materials that mix and reference both luxury and technology. Ralph Rucci was born in Philadelphia in 1957. He was always artistic as a child, but he decided to go and study philosophy and literature at Temple University rather than art or fashion, but later he did decide to go into fashion and he moved to New York and attended FIT. After graduating, he apprenticed with Halston before going off on his own in 1981. That same year, he showed his very first collection, which was essentially a made-to-order collection. His international breakthrough came in 2002, as Alain said, when he received the honor of being invited to be, to show a Couture collection in Paris, the only American in history to be invited by the Champs Syndical de la haute couture française. Ralph has been the subject of many retrospectives, notably at the Costume Institute of the Kent State University Museum, the Fashion Institute of Technology, a show that many of you probably saw in 2007, the Costume Institute of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Phoenix Museum of Art in 2008. He's also received many prestigious awards, including the Savannah College of Art and Designs, Andre Leon Talley, Lifetime Achievement Award. Please join me in welcoming Ralph Rucci tonight. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I have to look at all of you first before I begin this. I'm going to share with you first that this was, I'm so glad to be here because I had an, that's what you see this whole dramatic thing about. I had an unfortunate occurrence on Friday evening. I had been having some planes and I went to see a doctor, a specialist, and he looked at me and he checked me, and he said, gee, you're not going anywhere. I'm having some, hi honey. I'm having some CTs done tonight. And they checked me right into a hospital on Friday night and removed my appendix. It had ruptured. And that's, and I'm just telling you that's why you see this cane and this dramatic kind of thing. But I had to be here tonight and I wanted to talk because this for me is also very much of an experiment to do this tonight because, and I don't know if you know me, but you know that if you do, you know that I'm a very emotional man. So if I have breaks into or lapses into that kind of thing, bear with me, right? I want to thank Van Cleef and Arpel because, well, first I have to thank Cooper Hewitt, longtime friends and supporters of my work for many, many years. Such an intellectual artistic organization unlike other museums. And I've been honored so many years to be part of their family. And they call upon me with the most incredible requests, not just because of garments, but because of what is behind the intention behind the garment and how it fits into society. And I'm honored to be a part of the evening with Van Cleef and Arpel because my first real interest, I'm sharing this story with you as someone in the audience, quite, there's a young girl in the audience. She's one of the greatest Twalists. I won't embarrass her right now, but she's worked with me for many years and she's made clothes with me for many years. And we made clothes about 17 years ago for Elizabeth Taylor. So one night I had to go to Elizabeth's in Los Angeles and fit her. And I arrived at her house at six o'clock in the evening. And I think perhaps at about 1.30 in the morning I left, but before I left, we smoked a joint and she pulled out all of her jewelry and all of her Van Cleef and Arpel bucks and she would switch it on my fingers. And I had all of this stuff on my neck and my fingers and it was incredible to look at the way it was set and her enthusiasm and the stories behind it. So, is like nothing in the world, I mean. So it's an extraordinary. And it's how nice that you're still in the plus one dome. So anyway, it's wonderful to be here for that reason. Now, I decided that tonight, yeah, tonight, instead of standing here, because this topic by hand, is can we not start the slides yet? Go ahead, start. There's so many of them. There are so many images, instead of giving you a talk about A to Z and how I work on a cut or all of this, what you're going to see behind me are glimpses of my mind. These are conceptual books that have been put together over the past many years. And these are images that I collect when I'm working on a collection and I use as unconscious references in the development of a collection. And I try to, like for something like that, I'm going to refer to, those are Pina Bausch dancers that are screened on Gazar clothes. You're going to have many references to the great Pauline de Rothschild. But tonight, I want to show images and then refer to certain ones, certain images that we pop up that have taken significant importance. Like, can we stop there? Is it possible? Is it possible to go back and stop at anything? Or can I do that here? No? I'm sorry. An arrow. I'm really talking to somebody who knows what they're doing. Yeah, Ralph, will it bother you if we make it a bit darker here? Here, oh, perfect. Okay, that. Thanks. By hand. What, where did that go? By hand. That is the side of a double-faced black jacket. Do you have a connection of black? Oh, you don't. Oh, turn it down? It doesn't matter. Don't, we're going to get problematic. We'll just go on. You can continue. There you go. All right, this is a shoulder and an arm of a black double-faced crate jacket. This is a very good example because taking this idea, let me stop here for a second, taking this idea of by hand, it's not just a matter of making a garment by hand and closing the seams and calling it couture. There has to be, first of all, a relationship between the idea of the client, your intention, and the weightlessness of the garment. That's what signifies that a garment is couture. As if no human hand has ever touched it. That is what the French ateliers have given us since the 20s. And that's what America cannot give us because A, they don't have the tap as mostly and B, they don't have the time to support that. I maniacally over three decades blindly said that's what we're doing and I'm not interested to hear any other way. No, as I developed over the years certain techniques, I wanted to create weightlessness and at the same time suspend these clothes on the body as if each piece of fabric did not have a direct relationship with each other. They were just floating in space. So this is the flat preparation of a sleeve and a dart going into a shoulder. And you can see the white threads. Those are white basting threads. And all of these hundreds of pieces were double faced individually. You know what double faces? They're double faced individually. Then they are placed on a tool foundation. Then basted. After they're all applied, the basting thread is taken off and then the garments can be put together. That's one technique called the suspension technique. Okay. We could continue where you want to with slides and I'll stop when we feel like stopping. It can work like that, I think. But the overall feeling I want you to get tonight is that you're looking at conceptions, things that influence me, that went into the making of the clothes so that you can take away the idea of what goes into a hand garment. Not just by me, but from other people. And something like that. This great com de garçon designer and what she has given us as a community in working clothes by hand, in intellectual approach to hand, working by hand. You can continue. It's important to think about the audience and to know how you are going to respond to that audience because you no longer just have ladies who lunch or just ladies who travel to Paris to have their clothes fit. It's an international market now from all over the world and most often they're not the people who attend shows. So if they come to you, they want something very special off the chart that possibly hasn't ever even been seen before. This, for example, this, yeah. These are twalls from the back where I cut into crepe and then we suspended panels in between a garment so you could see the dimensions of the flat of the dress. And then we took it into this collection, same collection where you could see tool and there are bars under the tool of handmade bars of wool and sequins in paste in pockets of tool. So this gave you three dimensions. And this collection, we referenced Louise Nevelson's walls because the way those walls were constructed in black dimensional and all of the clothes were built in that area. You see if I would have put these in sequential order, it's impossible. There are millions and millions of things. So I want you please to bear with me because I'm in it says sort of discovery as much as you are in the working of the clothes. I've always worked with transparencies and how to bisect the body and show the body and elongate it as slim as possible. I give a great nod to those that inspired me as was said already, Valenciaga and Madame Cre and Charles James and Givenchy and Halston so many Jimmy Gallinos as well as the costumes of Japan and work where in China. You're going to see a series of images that I'd like to touch on now, right now actually. I think there's a great American in our midst because there's a great deal of talk about the by hand process which we're going to talk about. This is not possible in Omas anymore. They don't have the people and you don't have the audience. The images that I'm showing you now behind me are from a great designer and his name is Rick Owens. This man is the future, he's the moment, he is it. Rick is not making clothes for everyone, he's not interested. He is making aesthetic and he's building on each season's vocabulary. It has all of the pathos and drama of Madame Grey and the great Capuchy. He's doing it with a touch of what a girl would feel or a man would feel on the streets and wrinkled leather or cottons. The clothes are not made to perfection, the clothes don't fit well, but that's not the point. There is a whole cult. I don't know if you go down to the boutique on Hudson Street, if you could see the furs that his wife Michelle Lamy does, you would be speechless. I am taken with Rick's aesthetic because I take this profession so seriously and when I see his work, I'm speechless because there is nothing, nothing happening outside of Rick in terms of newness. You could look at all of the Parisian collection. Can we stop for one second? The images, thanks. There's nothing, I think. Rick is giving you an aesthetic that is not by hand, it is all machine made. They really don't do custom, they're not set up for that. It's all ready to wear in a factory to be stamped out. But it's the future of what the hand could mean because it's such a pure aesthetic of individuality, unlike Comte Garçon, that I think she verges sometimes on statement being too strong and screaming fashion. Rick quietly states that he doesn't really care about an opinion, he's showing his work and he's enjoying his life. And you wanna hear something incredible? And in a way, this liberated me because I should also be very frank with you in saying after being in this for 34 years, and as you well know after this past year, I left my company and I am in a state of transition and reevaluating myself and my point of view. I find Rick very inspiring because Rick spends every afternoon from 12 until one taking a nap. Can we conceive that? No, never. But yes, it's true. So I wanted to show Rick a bit and just mention him because for me, he's become a very modern touchstone of the future. Now, this is not to say that there's not some young artist in Paris or here even in New York who's making May to order clothes and they're all being hand cut and basted and finished by hand. And the point of view is May to order or couture whatever you wanna say. Yes, indeed it could happen. But I just wanted to mention him. When it comes to my work, I've always focused and dwelled and I was obsessed and fanatic about it. I kept blinders on and season by season, year after year, I wanted to develop a vocabulary. People said I was very impossible, I didn't listen, if you say that, obviously I wasn't listening to you for a reason. So you should say that and that's the way I handled it. I listened to those that should be listened to and my team and I are a touchstone. And I still say have even though I don't work with them daily and those that I did work with. The team that Kathy Horne wants called the greatest workroom in the world and I think that's pretty heavy coming from Kathy. Twalies, Tempremier that know their certain field if they work on twals for a tire or twals for a flu or a both or just or experimental kinds of evening clothes and bias. Whatever their expertise might have been, I formed a house over the years and a house in couture, they speak the same language and you learn each other and this is how, can we not do slides until I get to that because this is important, thanks. We learn from each other and this is how you make a couture collection. The vocabulary of technique develops in this almost unconscious and conscious practice together. You sit around, you come up with, I come up with a design. We talk about resolution in the design. I come up with a technique. How can we take this technique further? There's an excitement. This is design, everyone is involved in it and the process is extraordinary and this is how a couture collection is born. A sketch designed by design, twal by twal and it fittings how they come to life. You know, for example, when you saw the 2007 exhibit at FIT, remember all of those big infantas that were hanging from the ceiling? Those infantas for me were just so exciting and I finally, I think, I don't know how many years ago I said, well, I wasn't making them to sell them. Maybe we would sell a few, but they had to be made because you had to show what the human hand could do and there was one woman in my work room and she's sitting here, Gail Gondik and she would make the infantas and they would take forever and they would take hundreds of pieces and we would have many fittings but they were the most exciting things to put together because not only fashion and technique but history and culture came into play and then you had majesty. You see, a word that doesn't really exist. Okay, I'm going to go back. We could continue slides. I start every... No, that's going too far back. That's Rick, when you had a couple of rooms. There you go. I start every collection not thinking about clothes. I think about, and I take all of my files of rooms and homes that I've seen that have inspired me and chairs and light and colors and how people live the way Pauline would put a tray on the floor and use it as a table or the mutations of colors and because most women or this extraordinary Robes on Giving's room from the late gust to sales home in Los Angeles most people see each other in their homes not in restaurants and quite frankly, not at parties because look at what happened two nights ago with a fiasco of poor taste of borrowed clothes and borrowed jewelry on unfashionable figures not representing taste and style and I kept on saying, do any of us, Mrs. Vreeland, Chessie Rainer when the events were incredible as a kid I used to go first when Mrs. Vreeland first started and stand outside of across from the metropolitan these incredible women from Paris get out of the car and could tour and there were events that showed taste and fashion to this moment perhaps it'll never go back so I went off that tangent and I got it out so I was saying that women see each other in each other's homes and the clothes have to reflect that and often the homes are filled with beautiful art and furniture and upholstery and craftsmanship and cloth and sculpture that the clothes have to affect that and balance that in not just so much subtlety but equality of quality honesty and integrity of product you know, if a beautiful woman is sitting next to a side twombly she can overpower the side twombly without question and she could be wearing a white cotton shirt and I think that's also so much in why I work and dwell on clothes that are made by hand because they also, if a woman even can purchase one piece it affects the way she holds herself it affects the way one of the most important characteristics is transmitted and that's called grace so I suppose I work with adjectives great deal now, in my career I started to talk about suspension techniques and I experimented with that a great deal and I used it on many different fabrics from double face crepe and chiffon and heavy file and duchess satin and we even used it on organzas and we tore organzas apart and we created dimension and cloques I also, and we'll get to it this is African tattooing that leather those are individual microscopic pieces of leather that are applied on tool as African tattooing and weightless a leather dress that's totally weightless other techniques that I developed if you remember there was one that was called vibrations where we would take a quarter of an inch tubings, double face them, make them by hand and take a pattern on a jacket or a dress and then sew these on individually I would also do some topography designs where we would use a silk moray and back it with, we could continue keep on going we would back the moray with cashmere stitch it to look like overall topography I would lacquer lace and then take the pieces of the lace and cut it that was plasticized and put it between sable pelts and you see I would do these things show what could be done by hand and maintain a level of such special design ideas that aren't just old world couture that could be seen as modern so that a woman like that could wear the clothes and not look like she's wearing couture couture as we know it could either be two things clothes made by hand could be two things they could be outlandish costumes that are made for the runway when you know that I find that abhorrent I don't find it in any way accomplished they can also be and they can also be this race against time of designers thinking that they have to dress an audience that they call young which is such a misdemeanor because even though you have some 20 girls in their 20s buying $60,000 or 60,000 euro suits it doesn't make it young what makes it young is the point of view the execution and not the commercialism of it I prefer couture that addresses the intellectual stimulation of a woman and the associations that she could make with garments that are made by hand these are all hand techniques caviar beads on crepe looking like a shoreline and there is an example of it on the hem of a dress these are from the Louise Nevelson collection does anyone have any questions at this time because I think it might be nice to if you want have some questions or I could continue because we have many slides because I didn't want to limit it at all and I don't think we even have by hand again other techniques that we've tried to use over time were taking and this is very important taking the precious effect out of the clothes and destroying it taking chiffon and tearing it up and when Missusage was alive God rest his soul we had so much fun and I would work with him and we would he would have too much to drink I would too and we would go back to the office and he would just come up with the most extraordinary things like tear apart chiffon magnify my skin on a Xerox machine and take what he would shave it first magnify it and he would say let's do embroidery to look like the pimples of an ostrich skin do you remember? Do you remember? and we did embroidery to look like ostrich we did embroidery to look like Galusha, shark skin and so many things there were his great ideas but I had to stop and show you this is the latest fall collection from the great Yoji Yamamoto, is that it? 140 slides? Is that it? I could keep on going I told you so I feel I feel that even though it's been 30 plus years I have so much more to say and I'm in a space of being able to decide to say in different ways in fashion as well as in the arts and I think that there's a fairly new platform especially in made to order clothes that exists in America Is that a new set? That's incredible This is your Lissage, it's a jacket made entirely of braided chiffon and then put back together I love to tell this story because it's so special to my heart, it's before Chanel purchased Lissage and you were able to do a jacket like that and I will give you a comparison cost even though I never talk about numbers you were able to do a jacket like that for $15,000 today a jacket like that is 36,000 euros to go through Chanel's Lissage house I was saying that the idea of the hand is such a huge topic and when it comes specifically to clothes it's by no means a dead story a finished story New York City, I'm sure because I have a feeling that most of you in the audience are complete fashion aficionados and you adore fashion but you don't feel fulfilled at what you're looking at, at what you're seeing you long to look at clothes that are made and finished in a certain way and it's the only thing that I think that will return in a very significant manner because the women who do shop and can have anything and even those that are young and they have the same position are beginning to see the difference and because there's such a huge homogenized look in fashion that you're going to begin to see more small businesses opening with higher quality products made by hand one of the problems that's a side problem and I think I'd like to mention this because it is a problem you don't have enough American workers to fill the slots that can actually make the clothes and a problem that I have experienced over the years is that you have to show proof to the American to the immigration offices that you want to employ that woman even though she's not a citizen yet and to start her citizenship it costs you a great deal of money and the proof that you have to give the American government because it's an entirely quid pro quo let's make money on this whole situation and that's the real problem because starting a business and maintaining it the cost that you have to have to create citizens out of these great workers because quite frankly the American hand finisher will say to you this is too much work it is only the Russians and Germans Italian women who are schooled and are willing to work and not think of hours pertaining to it just a little bit what put me at the center of my existence in my career was as we have mentioned is when I showed Couture in Paris because the first show because I was able to do exactly what I wanted to do and show it and I didn't have to think about one thing it was just exactly the purity and integrity of how I wanted to do it and of course overnight I was shocked at the reaction in France shocked that I was embraced the way I was so my aspirations that's why I think you called me French my aspirations have always been to get back to France because we do have a huge public in Europe and I think that's where the work is most received en masse you know I would love to talk with you right now I think I've done enough talking please let's turn off the lights did they bore you? was I scattered? so Ralph why don't I kick it off and start us off with a few questions sit down and then open it up to the audience I think these should be these are on right I have a lot of questions for you even though I've been looking at your work for many years but you I'll keep you over here you studied at FIT but how did you learn all of these extraordinary techniques or how did you know how to describe what you wanted to achieve to your team okay two different questions can you hear me two different questions when I was at FIT I had already been through college so I only wanted to work for one person and that was Halston because I thought he was the only designer in America I have big opinions as I think you already get I thought he was the only designer in America doing anything original and he was he changed fashion and he was a genius so before I got to Halston I had a complete deadbeat existence and all I did was make twalls morning, noon and night pull muslin grains and drape on grains so I can do it on the bias and I could just be very quiet and say of course I know how and that's what happened I trained myself that's the other part of your question I know how to do everything I used to love I know how to do everything and I know how to instruct and I know what I don't want and as I keep on referring to Gail there's a wonderful co-worker in the audience and there was always a moment in the collection making of a collection where everybody was always very into the work and they would get silent because I would slide into the workroom and it was usually after the collection was designed and I would throw in the last ten ones angry and furious and no one would talk to me and I would go up to the table and I would cut or sit down and start some hand work on a garment and it was such sort of the quarter back coming in and giving the last push so that's part of your answer the other thing is that with the techniques I, through my research because the research was like maniacal I would take little bits and pieces and I worked with a great artist her name is Larissa Rizhova and I would call Larissa in and here's this young girl from Russia who had absolutely no exposure to Franz Klein let alone the scribbles of side to side twombly and I would say Larissa let's take this and braid it but pull it apart make it look more twombly let me see what you have later on okay and she would come back with visionary things and over the years this is how you develop the vocabulary different team members they then become connected because it's a family and that's what couture is you can't open up a couture house today and show a couture collection in six months a couture collection is the life of a team that can talk and breathe together you know are there students students today in fashion schools in the U.S. learning any of those techniques that you taught yourself I was so surprised and honored to hear that many of our techniques are being taught in various schools because one of the we do one called worms I was just going to ask you about that the worm technique I don't even remember how that developed it had was for the first couture it was spring 2003 couture and I was making double-faced clothes and I didn't want to just double-face the seam I wanted to double-face each edge kiss the seam and then connect the seam with a worm so you had triple work on the garment so that also if you move slightly you had a quarter of an inch of skin showing but we then did it degradé graduated so it went from wider to lower down there to wider so it was this opening slits and we came up with this technique where you take the two kissing bits of wool you pass your needle through the top right then you pull it through and then you do 11 wraps exactly 11 wraps to create a quarter you're laughing to create a quarter of an inch bar and then you pull your thread back into lock that locks and it establishes the worm we did this on hundreds of garments and we even put this into ready-to-wear production but that's when I had my own factory madness and we would ship it to stores across the country I heard that they're teaching this in schools it's amazing that they're doing this I think one of your one of the suspension suits the one with cream and the orange that has 85 separate pieces or something or more because some of the suspension pieces include amazing amounts of individual pieces that are all then put together by hand to create that effect you understand that the suspension pieces are all the silhouette of the garment jacket, dress gown are created then the are drawn in each piece is cut out and numbered, seam allowance is allocated then each piece is cut individually each piece is then sewn to the lining each piece is then put on a template then all tacked together and suspended then it's cut off by basted thread off of the template and you have this invisible garment made up of pieces just attached, tacked to each other not just sewn they're held together inside of the lining but they're not, they're just floating in space the biggest one we ever did was in Infanta that Gail did you know it, it's photographed and it's chocolate brown Tarone satin duchess and it had over I think pieces it took the workroom three lights to make I was saying hurry but what we did to make it more interesting I had come back from St. Petersburg and in the museum I discovered Tula embroidery that small town in Russia called Tula metalwork that looked like burnished grey metal with gold specks Tula, very rare so I was mad, everything has to look like Tula metal embroidery then blocks of fabric out to be embroidered to look like Tula metalwork and then quickly cut some of the pieces in metal and let them float but that Infanta and it's part of, it's in the archives it's not in a museum and was that for an individual client that dress? it was for the show and it was length for some for the show and the other thing about the suspension technique that is really, it's not just for the effect or sort of for the wow factor of all of these pieces that are floating in this garment but it also enables the garment to really fit the body you know as we're talking about this something just hit me please do not feel that I talk and I'm very proud of all this but I have an egotism about it that this is the ultimate that's important and this is what matter absolutely not I just want you to know that this is what I applied myself into this metier in my life because also as Jimmy Gallinot said to me you better know your limitations because I know you can't dress the world he's right and for example when people said to me you should do jeans why? leave I Strauss is in existence it's perfection, it's the couture of jeans so I don't want you to have this impression that sometimes people draw a way that I have a certain snobism about it's not, it's just what I prefer to do and I think a lot of it was about experimentation on your part too to see how far you could push those techniques and how far you could push you know what you were doing and to make it different yeah that's the key you start with every collection where you left off and then you have to push yourself forward if like for example I said I really want to do ski parkas and then we entered the whole realm of doing on season 18th century Baroque, Damask ski parkas and quilted them and on the inside you have silk organza with cherry red or bright yellow duck feathers so you saw all of your down inside you're very beautiful so maybe I'll ask you one more question but then we want to we also want to open it up to the audience too so I don't want to ask all the questions that people might have on their minds because I'm sure you have a lot I've been in a hospital all weekend I could wait together so you know so much about fabric Ralph and you have used many many different types of fabric in your work so what's your favorite do you have a favorite fabric to work with and why? double face cashmere it's like using a scalpel cutting into canvas it's my favorite fabric I go back to it it started 25-28 years ago with a great mill of Colombo and I started gradually saying I can't afford this I chose three colors maybe 10 yards each and it built it built and it created my business and no one was really using it and then with the double face cashmere I saw the rigor of what you can do with it from Philippe Venet from Mila Schon from Balenciaga and to this day clients that I have my own things that are made in it it's an impeccable fabric and I still work with Roberto Colombo and it still feels very light it's very light we use a 720 gram usable even in the spring we have it combed to have that satiny finish that they call Zimbabwe beautiful now you know what it's interesting that the younger designers that they don't like that finish they wanted to look felted and worn and fleeced and piled as if it were which is interesting for example I referred to the great Gricoan Rick's cashmere coats are $7,000 and it's all fleeced and worn and piled but that's the aesthetic we have some microphones or Amanda has a microphone and she will be happy to pass it to people that have questions so let the questioning begin how's it going my name is Brennan Manuel I'm a menswear designer thank you for coming out it was great to see you and hear you talk about your work two questions the first question is how do you keep going because I know sometimes turning your passion into a business can be stressful, can be draining is there a mantra you have, is there something you tell yourself is there a place you go to not dim the light of the initial enchantment that you have when you first got into it wow the first question you had to go and hit the jugular huh great question you have to have an inhuman fortitude you have to realize that if you have this enormous passion and blind ambition you were chosen, you didn't choose anything you were chosen and you have a responsibility to live up to that and if you're already in business struggling you have a responsibility to those that are around you to do everything that you have to do stay calm and maintain where you have to plot the course and make it even more extraordinary than you thought you could today I think also you need someone to oversee your business as you were overseeing a creative or perhaps you are the business but you can't do everything and you should understand that you're not doing any less it's just that the business has changed and it's not compassionate it's not sympathical to artists they're not interested stores cannot buy clothes they cannot buy clothes because they also have deals with big names to buy real estate and to put clothes in that real estate so they have to work with those organizations and a young person starting out is off to a very different foot I'm not going to say the big word money because you know that I would be very, very careful in seeking money because you don't want to take money just for the sake of thinking that that would keep you alive and having a future because it's not that easy to go one step at a time and you look very young and just remember don't be impatient I mean I was impatient but I awakened one day and I was 50 years old and I started when I was very young and 3 decades have gone by and I still haven't accomplished what I really need to accomplish I'm not that young I have a law degree so it's kind of took some time second question was are you open to having someone like myself connect with you on a more personal level like come to your office see the clothing in person talk to you learn a little bit more about knowing what you know thank you I receive so many requests like that I don't have the time to meet everyone I understand but thank you I am on Facebook which I love and because of this there are hundreds of people that ask the same thing and this is the other thing I don't have all the answers I'm not a guru so besides not having all the answers I don't have the time it's a very truthful answer I respect that but I'm going to put in a little plug for tomorrow's workshop the adult workshop tomorrow I think it's 6.30 to 8.30 here at Cooper Hewitt and I know there are still a few places left in it so you can go online to cooperhewitt.org and register and have a little more FaceTime with Ralph good evening Mr. Rucci my name is Leonid I'm graduating from Parsons and thank you so much for coming out today it was a great pleasure to hear and for young generation of designers like myself it's really important to keep this heritage and the craft going I hand over all the fabric for my senior thesis and I could really relate to what you're talking about the soul of the garment and how much work it takes and that I would do nothing else and the question that I have is when I was making my collection there was a point when I really realized that this is it and the garment is alive when it goes on the woman's body you can see how happy she is when it starts moving on her with the body I was wondering is there a moment for you when your garment comes alive you hit it you know after the sorry you hit it you do the sketch your first twall, you fit your first twall you make the corrections it goes into a cloth that's similar and then they cut it into cloth and when your model tries on the garment I like it or hate it but it's getting there but it doesn't really hit it until you see those girls lined up before they go out and everyone's in hair and makeup and every inch and I'm usually a shutdown I'm so silent because that's when you realize that you just took dictation from a higher source it's that simple I just wanted to ask you if you have like a ritual before the show before showing your collection but I guess you just answered this question the ritual is always I usually finish fittings deep deep into the morning dawn 6 and they're still doing alterations which I love because they're all high from being up all night two nights and they're having breakfast and so on and they always say to me because I'll joke around I just think I want to add one more thing and get out and then I go home and I'm with my home until I have to go back and show the collection and everyone allows me that space there it's very calm everyone is all organized and I've never in my life shown a collection with any hysteria behind the scenes because it has to be like a procession it has to be a cadence perfect thank you so much thank you for those good questions yes good evening thank you I enjoyed your lecture very much I'm curious about who the couture I don't want to say client is because it was rich European women then some American women and then women from the Middle East so I'm wondering is China coming into the picture the Asian market is the most important market in couture right now the Asian market and the Saudi Arabian market still support all the couture houses as a matter of fact Chanel can't even keep their orders filled because of the Asian market it's amazing amazing other questions can you say something about the jacket you're wearing it has a wonderful sheen and it seems to have a lot of body too is that something that you made yourself or it's a fabric that we always use especially in resort in spring it's called silk Rodsmere it has a shantung like effect but it has no slub and it has a sheen and it's made by the mill taroni and it's 100% silk and it looks like it's got nylon or something holding it up no nylon I've perspired to and my girls make me jackets and I always have to make sure I fit into them Hi Ralph Ralph your metier has been clothing you're a painter you like to cook is there a field or craft that you would like to explore in the future even as a hobby just something that you haven't attempted yet that you would fantasize about doing you know Gail in this next step there are so many entities to begin to develop besides the furniture if you mention the furniture carpets and all of that things for the home I'd love to begin to work on conceptual installations and conceptual performances and I've been approached by a magazine my first one so that's the immediacy of what I could see I'm not pushing myself because I want to do things slowly and it could never happen but you know what most important and this is the most truthful thing because of life's changes and what you go through emotionally making myself a better person and shedding what fashion what was attached to me in fashion and improving myself yeah is there anyone that you've never dressed that you would love to dress I've tried so many times it has to be two answers I've made him half a dozen red cloaks do you know who it is no Andre will take Andre has hundreds of things the Dalai Lama the holy man of earth our spiritual leader and you know who Amma is Amma Che from India I've made Amma double face cashmere coats in white cotton coats when she has to go and Amma is she helps me a great deal so I make Amma clothes so she doesn't count even somebody not living that's easy but you see my head doesn't go towards any sort of celebrated figure that's going to be photographed on a red carpet I can't imagine I was just thinking of certain iconic women that you might have said I wish I had had the chance to make her again Maria Medici great answer imagine she wore those 14 inch Chopin's around Venice she just did not play she really knew how to work Maria Medici and the greatest collections that were made at Jean-Franco Forêt at Dior Couture were those big ball gowns that he made and lommage to Maria Medici if you remember them he was an amazing architect imagine putting Maria Medici in velvet pants suits like a man so she can camouflage within her intrigue can you see that yeah and Ralph you've spoken in the past about your first encounter with the work of Balenciaga I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your first encounter with the work of Sy Twombly oh well when I first saw Sy Twombly's work it was as if Jethro Baudin from the Beverly Beverly Hillbillies was completely out of whack what is this and I knew it hit a nerve and I devoured it and then I snuck into museums and I would genuflect and study and it hit my soul and I have I think every single catalogue sonnet and book on him and his work is his work is for me the greatest ever in history of art because he could have painted for example like Caravaggio but he chose to reduce his psyche and that's what I meant by one of my aspirations to reduce your psyche to where silence and purity and simplicity are the most important I'm spelled bound by him I want more other questions just so sweet nice note to end on thank you Ralph so much was really lovely and we'll look forward to seeing more of Ralph around the Cooper Hewitt in the next couple of days for our Design by Hand workshops thank you everybody for coming tonight