Runway Success

Some fashion shows are spectacular events. The shows are composed of wild, over-the-edge and expensive designs showcased to stars, celebrities and the press.

Who would even wear some of the clothes paraded down the runway?

Nobody actually. The Paris fashion shows are outrageous, but irrelevant. Paris is the big league of fashion — about as big league as it gets in fashion. Behind the theater of it, Paris haute couture is really about fabulous materials, creativity, workmanship and art.

When Ralph Rucci was invited to show in Paris last July — the first American to show his own couture collection there for more than 60 years — it was a very big deal.

Rucci did not take the direct route to Paris. The son of a south Philadelphia butcher majored in philosophy and literature in college. While doing research for a term paper, he happened upon pictures of designs by Cristobal Balenciaga. To this day, Balenciaga is his inspiration.
"Something just clicked and I started to drape," says Rucci. "I took sheets and I cut into them and I draped them on my sister."

In 1981, at the age of 24, with some money his aunt gave him, Rucci showed his first collection in a New York City hotel room. Family, friends and one journalist attended. He sold a single dress. That's all. But he did not stop there.

"I was sort of a lobby, subway couturier," says Rucci. "I would meet my pattern makers in lobbies of the buildings they were working in full time. I would meet sample makers on subway stops with silk chiffon gowns."

So it went until a 1987 disaster. Rucci had a huge order from a major store before it was suddenly cancelled in mid-production — leaving him $200,000 in debt.

"We had this enormous order from a major store and it's cancelled while it's in production," recalls Rucci. "We got out during the night and then I said, 'I would sort it out and I'm not going to declare bankruptcy.' And I did not. And it took me eight years to pay everything, but my reputation's impeccable."

Like one of those punching bags you knock down and it bounces right back up, Rucci scraped together enough money to start over in 1994. He called his new company Chado Ralph Rucci, after an elaborate Japanese tea company.

Chado is the closest thing you'll find in the United States to a French couture house where every garment is one-of-a-kind and made by hand or close to it.

Obsessive perfectionism runs through the Ralph Rucci workroom like a family trait.

"Every season we all have to move up another notch in our excellence in what we do," says Chado employee Shirley Campbell.

Even though this time the business is hugely successful, Rucci works seven days a week.

"I don't like to leave the business, I have control problems," says Rucci. "I'm a control freak. I really don't like it, but I am. And I'm so afraid of losing anything now."

Just like Paris couture, a Ralph Rucci evening ensemble can run into six figures. A serious suit can cost over $15,000.

"I'm sure it's (fewer) than 1,000 women around the world who buy it," says long-time Rucci fan and New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn. She says if a customer has the money to spend that much on a dress, then what's the big deal?

"I think it's sort of pejorative, in a way, to say that women's clothes are somehow obscene if they're expensive, but if it's a man's obsession with a vintage car, it's not obscene," says Horyn.

Joan Kaner, fashion director for Neiman Marcus, says women want to dream about clothes. "They want to buy something and say, 'When I walk in, I am going to be and act like a princess or a queen and feel like that,'" says Kaner. "I think Ralph has allowed people to dream again. Women to dream again ... to have that moment of perfection and beauty."

You'll see Kaner at every Ralph Rucci show wearing his clothes. She was one of the people who urged him to try for Paris.

"We said, 'Go for it. Your clothes are the quality of what we see on the runways in … at the couture. You should definitely do it.'"

When CBS News Sunday Morning paid Rucci's New York workroom a visit — three weeks to the day before the Paris show — most of the clothes were still being made.

When he was notified that he would showcase his work in Paris, he says it was scary and he wanted to start over to create some new designs because nothing was good enough for the show.

With 48 hours before the show, inside the Ritz in Paris, Rucci was trying to decide which model would wear what clothes. He left the hotel only once in a week.

Then finally, the day, Rucci claims, his serene arrives.

"I'm centered and I'm trying to be very within myself, so I could enjoy every moment because it doesn't take a month to make a garment," says Rucci. "It takes a lifetime to make it."

The kind of women who can afford to wear Ralph Rucci can afford to fly to Paris for a fashion show. So, his faithful clients attend the show in force, including, Marjorie Fisher, Jan Calloway and Nancy Brinker — to name a few.

Members of the big-time fashion press, who'd been ignoring Ralph Rucci for 20 years when he couldn't even afford to pay his rent, are also in attendance.

Did he ever doubt this moment would come?

"Never...never, ever, ever, ever, ever ... never," says Rucci.

All along, Rucci never stopped believing. He knew deep down that he could create clothes that make women dream about being beautiful.