Friends With Money

How Ralph Rucci, the only living American haute couturier, became a cautionary tale for art and fashion.

- Jessica Iredale

“Where is Ralph Rucci, exactly?” bellows André Leon Talley from the dais at Judson Memorial Church in New York, where he is seated on an actual throne, swathed in yards of crimson duchesse satin that Rucci has whipped into a caftan. It’s a fair question.

In 2014, Rucci, the second American ever invited to join the French Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, exited the label he had founded 33 years earlier amid a seemingly bitter rupture with his patron, the philanthropist Nancy Marks. Rucci had been keeping a low profile ever since, becoming the subject of speculation among his peers and former clients, the elite cohort of women who once made him a darling of New York society. On this particular evening in May, when he is staging a runway show for an LGBTQ fundraiser, he has yet to be seen. The venue is low budget but high energy, the crowd a motley mix of young activists and performers, and personalities like Marc Jacobs, Naomi Campbell, and Bethann Hardison.

Next to Talley, Sandra Bernhard, a pal of Rucci’s who has come out to cheer him on, drolly responds, “He’s backstage dressing everyone.” The designer is, in fact, fitting his models, who are not his usual doyennes but performers from the gay ballroom community. Aghast at the socialites and movie stars he recently saw on the pink carpet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s camp-themed Costume Institute gala, Rucci imagines his new muses in subtle black crepe-back satin and Elsa Peretti jewelry.

“Maybe I’m spoiled, but I was lucky enough in my past to have standards,” he says. It’s not the first time he has looked back at his heyday, when his front row was bursting with grande dames of every stripe, from Lee Radziwill to Martha Stewart.