One of my personal "fashion dreams" would be to see Cinzia Ruggeri's coming back into the fashion arena. So far, rather than seeing her own designs, I have seen her ideas coming back in other collections.
Born in Milan, Ruggeri studied design at the local Accademia delle Arti Applicate in the ‘60s. Even before she graduated she started exhibiting in local Italian galleries and, after her studies, she moved to Paris where she worked for Carven.
Upon her return, she settled down in Milan and started working on her own collections, becoming soon well-known for her creations, clever mixes of disciplines such as fashion, architecture and interior design reinterpreted in a surrealist key.
In the '80s Ruggeri designed some of the most iconic pieces ever created in Italy, from her “Homage to Lévi Strauss dress”, with its three-dimensional ziggurat-like motifs to the “Dress with Octopus”, that turned the body into a surreal yet sensual sea creature (and that somehow anticipated the seapunk trend…).
Her fashion shows were also considered theatrical events, with exclusive performances of light and music: in the ‘80s, Brian Eno created for her a ziggurat-shaped light installation for one of her shows in Milan.
Ruggeri developed “transdisciplinary” pieces that were inspired by cubism, futurism and constructivism, and combined fashion, the scenic arts, photography, anthropology, geology and ecology together. The designer also started experimenting with behavioural garments and materials that changed colours according to body heat.
For example, she employed liquid crystals that enabled her, thanks to the change of temperature, to create from a single model a number of variants of colours and patterns.
As the years passed, apart from creating also iconic accessories such as her "Schiaffo Bag" (Slap Bag), Ruggeri began working in other fields: as an artist she designed theatrical productions, ballets and artistic events, venturing into interior and furniture design and designing wardrobes, glasswares, mirrors, pieces of furniture and home accessories for different companies.
Her fashion designs have been widely exhibited, appearing at the Venice Biennale, and during iconic fashion exhibitions such as “The Genius of Fashion” (FIT, New York) and “Fashion and Surrealism” (FIT, New York).
In 2011, the “Homage to Lévi Strauss dress” was bought by London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, officially becoming part of its extraordinary fashion design collection. The dress was showcased during the “Postmodernism: Style & Subversion” exhibition at the V&A that has currently moved to the Mart in Rovereto (until 3rd June 2012).
I did a post last year about contemporary designers/recent collections inspired by Cinzia Ruggeri's creations and so far her designs resurfaced here and there during the Paris Fashion shows.
Zandra Rhodes’s collection, presented during the ON|OFF showcase, featured a coat with a ziggurat/zigzagging pattern that called to mind a Ruggeri dress from the ‘80s (check out also the yellow dress in the Matia Bazar video embedded in this post).
You could argue this was a retrospective catwalk show to honour Rhodes’ creations over the past 36 years, so the coat wasn't new, but I think Ruggeri's ziggurat designs pre-dated it anyway.
The second collection that somehow reminded me of Ruggeri was Manish Arora's: the latter opened with all white or all black dresses/skirt and tops embellished with bits and pieces of grass protruding from a wall print and also featured tulle blouses with appliquéd flowers matched with leather skirts in iridescent laser-cut leather.
While Ruggeri was among the first ones to use iridescences and silvery fabrics in her designs, the comparison here is with her "Abiti Natura" (Nature Dresses) with their backs covered in ivy and with her "Abito Muretto” (Wall Dress) from her Spring/Summer 1983 collection.
Bizarrely enough, also the make up and hairstyles of Arora's models looked a lot like those featured in Ruggeri's early '80s lookbooks or sported by the singer of Italian early '80s band Matia Bazar (often dressed and styled in those years by Ruggeri).
Time to bring back Cinzia Ruggeri then, I wonder, while I’m currently thinking of turning my dream of bringing back Cinzia Ruggeri into a mission...
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Posted by: raman | March 05, 2012 at 05:17 AM