CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/21/2023

80s fashion genius in 'Cinzia Ruggeri: Cinzia Says...'

“We can see that a dress achieves its full essence when it is in communion with those who interpret and wear it,” Italian fashion designer and explosive postmodern design thinker Cinzia Ruggeri wrote in 1982, “while as such it does not exist as a representation of itself other than as a construct at the level of matter and its technological transformations. Clothing is a mutable and ephemeral entity, and will communicate different messages when the same model is worn by different individuals.” Pictured here is "Bagnante," 1982, produced in collaboration with Occhiomagico: it's one of six Domus magazine covers to which Ruggeri contributed in the early 1980s, reproduced from Cinzia Ruggeri: Cinzia Says..., the remarkable, not-to-be-missed new monograph from Mousse Publishing. Liquid crystal fabrics that change color as the temperature changes, kinetic decorations that are activated by "fantastic lights" and battery-operated LEDs sewn along the "stepped" profiles of jackets, skirts and pants are among the inventions that characterized her work at this time.