Ralph Rucci receiving a standing ovation, 2009.
Photo: Bryan Bedder / Getty Images
Ralph Rucci, the CFDA’s 2025 Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award honoree, creates garments that deliver luxury that is less quiet than serene. His customers, women like Deeda Blair and Martha Stewart, have refined their environments and personal styles to perfection. They are inhabitants of worlds apart which accommodate the time it takes for craft.
The designer, a Philadelphian by birth, has described himself as an “American couturier.” In the late ’70s, after studying literature and philosophy at Temple University, Rucci moved to New York where he enrolled at FIT. Graduating with a fashion degree in 1980, he started working right away and established his own label, Ralph Rucci in 1984. Ten years later he created Chado Ralph Rucci. The designer is known for his artisanal savoir faire and his signature is a suspension technique that renders his garments light and sometimes almost porous.
