At the exhibition "La règle du jeu?" by Cinzia Ruggeri at Federico Vavassori Gallery in Milan, there was a black see-through négligée covered in plasters, hanging in front of a window. When the summer breeze kissed it, it moved and seem to float in the air, like a soft and sensual ghost.
This image probably appeared in the mind of many friends of Cinzia Ruggeri when they heard she had passed away on Wednesday night. Hearing about her death was a bit like imagining that dress losing its physical consistency, and being swept away to be taken up above in the sky by a mysterious force. Born in Milan, Ruggeri displayed an attitude for the art world since she was a child. As she told me in an interview: "Whenever somebody asked what I would have liked to become once I grew up, I would say an artist. I loved painting and sculpting and I used to drench my hands in colour paint or sculpt at night."
She did her first exhibition when she wasn't even 18 at the Galleria del Prisma, in Milan, that was accompanied by a brochure with a surreal introduction by Italian writer Dino Buzzati.
Ruggeri then studied design at the local Accademia delle Arti Applicate in the '60s and moved to Paris to work for Carven. Upon her return in Italy, she settled down in Milan and focused on her own collections, becoming well-known for her conceptual and surreal creations that mixed fashion, architecture and interior design.
She soon displayed an Elsa Schiaparelli-like sensibility, as proved by her "Abiti Natura" (Nature Dresses) with their backs covered in ivy, her "Abito Muretto" (Wall Dress), from her Spring/Summer 1983 collection, the "Dress with Octopus" (S/S 1984), a practical yet fun garment that turned the body into a surreal yet sensual sea creature, and the Piero della Francesca dress, a simple design with a strong art connection.
Ruggeri started exploring different themes and came up with collaborations that went beyond the world of mere fashion: she regularly appeared on design magazines such as Domus and collaborated with Alessandro Mendini.
Her fashion shows were also considered theatrical events, with exclusive performances of light and music: in the '80s, Brian Eno created sound-emitting luminous ziguratts for one of her runways, causing a sensation in Milan.
Her "transdisciplinary" designs inspired by Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism, and performative dresses (at times with conceptual titles such as "Evolution of the silhouette rendered in terraces, to favour excursions through wintry geometries with luminous signals for UFC (Unidentifed Flying Clothes") proved she was ahead of her times.
Ruggeri experimented with behavioural garments and materials that changed colours according to body heat. For example, she employed liquid crystals in her clothes that enabled her, thanks to the change of temperature, to create from a single model a number of variants of colours and patterns. She was one of the first designers in Italy to use new technologies offering kinetic solutions for dresses (achieved by means of chromatic sequences and a band of polarised light), and designed garments with micro-ventilators inserted inside, so that the sleeves would puff out. In a nutshell, she came up with wearable tech ideas before wearables were even invented.
"Fashion allowed me to explore the wearer's intimate secrets, needs and desires, but also a person's crazes, fads and nervous disorders," she once told me in an interview. "I loved this aspect of fashion as the entire point behind my work wasn't to continuously and bulimically create, but to tackle and explore these issues also through behavioural garments."
There were aspects of fashion Ruggeri hated, though: she never came out on the runway at the end of her catwalk shows, since she thought there was no point in doing it as she had just done her job. She also had a deep dislike of clothes labels, so, rather than using her name, she once scattered bits and pieces of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days on different labels of various garments. Even if you bought them all, you wouldn't have been able to read the entire thing, but you would have still wondered what that was about and the doubt would have remained with you.
As the years passed, 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.
After retiring from the fashion world, Ruggeri went to work at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano (NABA) where she often organised events and exhibitions of her students' (of whom she was immensely proud of) work.
She continued to create, though, and her fashion designs were widely exhibited, appearing at the Venice Biennale, and during iconic fashion exhibitions such as "The Genius of Fashion" (FIT, New York), "Fashion and Surrealism" (FIT, New York) and "Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970-1990" (Victoria & Albert Museum, London).
In 2011, the "Homage to Lévi Strauss dress", an iconic dress with three-dimensional ziggurat-like motifs that was immortalised by Antonio Lopez on a 1983 Vanity cover and that was also featured on the cover of "Aristocratica", the 1983 album by Italian electro pop band Matia Bazar, was bought by London's Victoria & Albert Museum, officially becoming part of the extraordinary fashion design collection of the prestigious British institution.
In 2015 Milan-based cutting edge boutique 10 Corso Como in Milan dedicated to Ruggeri a retrospective and in recent years there have been further events dedicated to her at Vavassori in Milan and Campoli Presti in Paris. Some of the exhibitions also featured her hilarious accessories, such as her "Schiaffo Bag" (Slap Bag; a handbag that doubled-up as a handy and ironic weapon...) and a pair of boots shaped like Italy with the Gargano sticking out, accompanied by Sicily and Sardinia clutch bags.
Copied by many, unknowledged by most, Cinzia was a volcano of ideas ready to erupt every five minutes.
During an interview we did at her house, she stood up multiple times to go to another room and return a few minutes later with something to show - a clutch, a book or a drawing.
The stories she shared with you never revolved about famous people, but they were mainly about inspirations and how to find them in the most unlikely places, to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary: for example, women who obsessively played with the pendants on their necklaces inspired her shirts with an appliqued embroidery of a dog house on one side and a tree on the other and a little chain with a movable dog in between. In this way wearers had a purpose in that gesture they would keep on repeating with their pendants - they could take the dog out for a piss.
In a fashion industry full of selfish egomaniacs, Cinzia Ruggeri represented the humanity gone missing. Her greatest work and the heritage she leaves behind is not the "Homage to Lévi Strauss dress" (that remains a wonderful piece of fashion design), but it is her circle of friends: Cinzia had the magic of connecting people, and the people she connected share her humanity and integrity.
A few years ago she told me via email that she had been contacted by somebody who wanted to buy her name. She was doubtful and commented, "Maybe it's better dying destitute than drag my name through the mud in these last years I'm left to live!"
Cinzia, we will miss you, but we know you're up there probably busy catching up with Alessandro (Mendini) and Dino (Buzzati) and making new gowns for hundreds of angels. They won't come with LED lights, but they will integrate real stars. And it's a shame we won't be able to see them from down here, but, somehow, we know they will be extraordinary. Just like you were.
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