New York fashion; MBFW fall 2011 Chado by Ralph Rucci

One comes to expect excellence after so many near perfect collections and this fall 2011 is no exception.  This season Mr. Rucci not only infused some color into his normally somber but wearable palette, but very successfully brings a more playful and even maybe youthful element into the brand’s vocabulary.

Mr. Rucci is nothing if not consistent with his vision, not to mention, his consistent method of flawless construction and purity of silhouette.  He proposed the question as to why his clothes are usually associated with “older" women to which I can only reply a few possibilities.  Most evidently, the collection bears a financial aspect to which only women of a certain age may be able to afford, the taste level of each collection is stratospherically above the normal taste level of most 20 or 30 somethings (celebrities certainly not withstanding) and that Mr. Rucci does not bend to the trend of the moment nor chase said trend.

This season, the clothes are sumptuous; slick as usual, extravagant, exquisitely constructed clothes.  Mr. Rucci also told us that his is not fashion but style, a statement I would like to elaborate on.  In order to wear clothes like his, one needs to be self-assured with no need of "bragging” and most certainly a woman who knows what she looks best in and how to wear it.  He might be considered correct if one looks at it only from the point of view…the latest and the greatest.  He most certainly is incorrect if you view fashion as an art form and that fashion can be more than the look of the day.  The clothes harken back to a time when there was great pride in the finished garment and greater pride in selling to a retail clientele rather than loaning a dress to some starlet of the moment celebrity.  Women who buy and wear these clothes are not the run of the mill retail customer.   Ralph Rucci upholds taste, style and fashion in a business that seems to want to forget that fashion is a craft and an art.