Ralph Rucci to Return to the Couture Calendar in Paris With RR331 Label

Seventeen years after Ralph Rucci became the first American designer since Mainbocher to show a couture collection in Paris, he is about to return to that stage this summer. The designer has been approved, but he has not yet been awarded a date or time on the couture calendar, which runs June 29 through July 4. In a phone interview Thursday, Rucci said he will be happy with whatever fate is decided upon since he sees it as his destiny. “It’s really quite extraordinary. I’m excited. It’s a new step in life,” Rucci said. “I need to do this because there is very little, if any, of an American couture left, and you must go there.” Five years ago, the designer officially left his own company and now designs clothes under the RR331 label. His return to the European stage will be far from more of the same. “I’m not going to be bringing what I’ve already done in the couture — beading and feathers and all of that. I’m getting away from an element of decoration. I’m just bringing cut, a monastic quality, a reduction of decoration and more implementation of intensity, of drape — technique that the couture was founded on.” Rucci

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