A beautiful day in Central Park following Wednesday's snow. 3:15 PM. Photo: JH.

February 12, 2010. Yesterday, the day after the 12-hour “blizzard,” the Sun came out and shone and a lot of the snow on the city’s streets melted.

Click to view a vid by JH of Wednesday's snow day and the day after during the big melt ...

JH was out there with his camera making a video of along with some more JH photographs in and around The North Meadow of Central Park. Enjoy!

Last night was the Chado Ralph Rucci collection showing at Ralph Rucci’s studio on Broadway and Spring. This was a new venue for him, having shown in the Bryant Park tents for the past few years. The studio had been set up like a smaller tent runway, all white and mirrors. Hollywood in the 1930s/Van Nest Poglase at RKO working on the Astaire-Rogers pictures. Real glamour. Real. The show was called for 7. I made sure to get there on time but none of these shows ever start on time and this was no exception. After about fifteen/twenty minutes some people begin to get a little twitchy about it. I frankly like it because it gives me a chance to look around and use the digital to catch the mood of the place. From the Chado Ralph Rucci collection. Casey Ribicoff was already there when I arrived. Mrs. Ribicoff’s sense of style provides self-confidence just in the seeing. There’s drama, beauty, impeccability, glamour and pleasure. She wears a lot of Ralph Rucci’s clothes and despite the classic signature of his designs, they look like her clothes, not his. She was there with Robert Couturier, the interior designer. Next to him was the very pretty editor-in-chief of Elle Décor Margaret Russell, next to the beautiful Katherine Bryan, next to her was Anne Prevost in from London with her Finch (back then) classmate, my beautiful friend Sassy Johnson. Susan Gutfreund was there (you can see her New York apartment again on today’s NYSD HOUSE), Deeda and Bill Blair. Next to them Fran Lebowitz, Whoopi Goldberg and His Nibs Andre Leon Talley in his Vogue version of Middle Eastern accents. The transformation of the showroom gave everyone a lift. All the light and sparkle, an antidote to the greyness of wintertime. Ralph Rucci is the Crown Prince of American ready-to-wear-couture today I know that’s a contradiction in terms but almost all fashion is today anyway. He’s out of fashion stream of Mainbocher, Norell, Galanos, Halston, Blass, Beene. Everything has changed, however. Ralph has a customer. She’s a woman seriously interested in style. Meaning she knows how she likes to look. It’s achievement is discipline in its most refined form. Set next to anything else it is incomparable.

Casey Ribicoff, Robert Couturier, and Robert Rufino. Behind them, Deeda and Bill Blair.

Susan Gutfreund.

Teri Agins, center, Wall Street Journal fashion and style editor.

Patrick McDonald, Emma Snowdon-Jones, and Ike Ude.

Joanne de Gaurdiola.

Anne Prevost and Sassy Johnson.

Pre-show with the fotogs and papparazzi watching the entrance and arrival of Andre Leon Talley.

Robert Rufino, Margaret Russell, and Katherine Bryan.

Andre Leon Talley talking to Fran Lebowitz, (next to Bill and Deeda Blair) pre-show, Bill Cunningham of the New York Times in the blue sweater, talking to Susan Gutfreund.

Andre Leon Talley talking to Deeda Blair, Whoopi Goldberg on the left.

The back wall of the showroom, a room length mural by Ralph Rucci.

Bill Cunningham working the room with the guy in the back left taking it in, thanks to the mirrored wall along the other leg of the runway.

Blonde on the far left, Joanne de Guardiola talking to Robert Jangigian; seated: Andre Leon Talley, Whoopi Goldberg, Fran Lebowitz, Deeda and Bill Blair and the photographers.

Monique von Vooren arriving.

The bank of photographers at the end of the runway asked everyone on the sides to uncross their legs.

Ralph is also an artist. Those black and white walls at the top of the platform that you see in the showroom pictures, are his painting. Right now at the Onishi Gallery, they are showing a “collaboration” of Ralph and Hiroto Rakusho. There’s no distance between the aesthetics of his clothes and of his paintings. Indeed, Ralph’s clothes are often called wearable art. The women who buy/collect Ralph get the artist. Judy Licht told me last night that if she could afford it, she’d buy only Ralph Rucci because the few things she has, particularly a jacket, she wears all the time and want to wear only it. Martha Stewart was there. Melva Bucksbaum and Ray Learcy. Several women were wearing Ralph Rucci. It’s an older customer, or at least a sophisticated customer. The room was full of well dressed women (and men). The silver and white and bright yellow light of the room framed it. Sargent couldn’t have done it better. Or Van Nest Polglase. Cyber-wise, that is. The show got started about 7:35. It ran till almost eight. I got a shot of almost every number in the collection (a few times the digital got temperamental). We’re running a few today but the entire show on Monday. It was a pleasure. The artist and his collection. The audience loved it. The customers, the devotees, the collectors, loved it of course but I watched the eyes of the younger spectator/editors – the future. They could see the master’s work.

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